Halloween

What did you dress up as for Halloween this year? Something scary? Something silly? Something clever? Perhaps something a little on the scandalous side? If you live in Colorado, did you have to design your costume around your winter coat? Whatever you dressed up as I hope you had a spooky holiday filled with an absurd amount of candy, pumpkins, cob webs, and face paint!

Here, we do not celebrate Halloween. In fact, the holiday Halloween, as best as I can describe it, is similar to Lord Voldemort’s name in Harry Potter – it is forbidden to even mention it. Halloween is so frowned upon, that we would be asking for serious trouble if anyone heard us talking about it or if we tried to do anything for it. I cannot offer you any reasonable explanation for this extreme thinking so I will only describe it to you.

Heather and I discovered just how extreme Hondurans’ ideas are on Halloween in various and surprising ways. She had a discussion with the Honduran men that she works with and she commented heavily on how defensive and opinionated they were. She said that she had never seen them stand so firmly on a subject or seen them get so worked up over any topic; they simply would not budge on their opinions. We later discovered that our next door neighbor had been waking up at 4am every morning for the week preceding Halloween with an army of women who were all praying for countries and people who celebrated the holiday. They spent several hours each morning praying fervently that whoever celebrated this holiday would change their ways of thinking and lifestyle to follow God instead. Then on the actual day of Halloween we went to women’s group at the church. Although the topic was far from any idea connected to Halloween, the speaker somehow found a way to incorporate it. Her opinion on the day was equally as strong and she had no hesitation in sharing the horrors of Halloween so that everyone would agree with her. Then, as a group, everyone prayed passionately for the souls that celebrate this holiday. Needless to say, I felt a little uncomfortable whenever any Honduran mentioned Halloween because I did not want to be condemned to hell by them.

The only logical thing that Heather and I came up with is that they must have heard horror stories about what some people do to celebrate Halloween. They see it as purely a satanic holiday, which translates to any person who celebrates it, is worshipping Satan himself. I’m not sure if they think we all sit in circles and chant to Satan or perform sacrifices or become possessed by his spirit, but I imagine their ideas aren’t far off from that. They are convinced that followers of Satan have chosen to target children because they are so young and innocent, and their minds are easily manipulated – which explains why you mostly see children dressing up and celebrating the holiday. I so desperately wanted to cry out that Halloween has turned into this commercialized holiday where you get to dress up as your hero or some goofy character and then stuff your face with a ridiculous amount of candy until you get a belly ache! However, I knew that I could convince no one that our intentions with the holiday were harmless, so I never confessed to celebrating Halloween. If I am going to live in this town for another 7 months, I don’t want anyone thinking that I worship Satan.