All Hallows' Eve

Rethinking Death

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In 2004 my family and I were living overseas and in November took a holiday to Krakow, Poland. On the evening of All Saints’ Day we visited the largest cemetery in Krakow and were wowed by the astonishing celebration. It was a cross between a festival and a funeral, somber, but joyful. It seemed to go on for miles. This enormous cemetery was filled with candles and flowers and music and people, celebrating and honoring the dead. But gravely.

The cemetery in Krakow, Poland on All Saints night. Both pictures are the same shot, one with a flash, and one without.

In many Christian Churches November 1^st is All Saints’ Day (All Hallows’ Day), one of the holiest days of the year. While we have specific days in the year to honor specific saints, All Saints’ Day is the catch-all day to remember and honor the rest. In its largest vision, All Saints’ Day remembers all the faithful departed.

Christian holy days follow the Jewish practice of being celebrated from sundown on one day to sundown on the next (In case you ever wondered why we go to church on Christmas Eve… if it’s after sundown, the holy day has begun!). So too All Saints’ Day early on began to be celebrated starting the night before, which became known as “All Hallow’s Eve.” It was a time of prayer and worship on behalf of the deceased. There are lots of stories of how and why it evolved from there, which is too long to address here. I’ll just note that All Hallows’ Eve, “Halloween,” has always been an evening of the dead, and from that evolved over the years the more macabre and frightening elements of the holiday.

However, over the years my feelings about Halloween have shifted. It’s fine that people have the chance to wear costumes and children get to trick or treat, it’s fun, but the idea that death must be associated with darkness or evil no longer rings true. What we have learned from Near-Death Experiences (NDE), after-death communications, dreams, visions, shared death experiences, mediums, and countless STEs is that death is not a gruesome topic, but simply one of transition. Our body dies, but our consciousness continues to live. As a result, we lose our fear of death.

“After a wonderful NDE, people almost always report losing their fear of death and believing that the essential purpose of human life is to develop our capacity to love.” – “Characteristics of a Near-Death Experience,” as found on the IANDS website

After death, we continue to live in a new form. And those of us still embodied can access those other realms and continue to be in communication with those saints who have gone before. St. Paul reminds us that the dead continue to support us in this life:

“We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” – Hebrews 12:1

In fact, as I noted in an earlier post, I believe St. Paul himself experienced an NDE. You can read about it HERE.

And in Philippians he makes the classic NDE lament that he wishes he could die and return to that beautiful place of death where he can be with Christ, but he knows he must stay on earth and finish the work he was meant to do:

“If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me, yet I cannot say which I will choose. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.” – 1 Philippians 1:22-24

Paul does not appear to find death frightening, macabre, or ghoulish, rather, it is a time of joy and fulfillment, with continued connection between those on earth and those who have transitioned. Spending All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints Day in communication with the Divine, the transcendent, and our loved ones who have died, through joyful prayer, worship, or other forms of connection, seems exactly right.

However, not all NDEs are happy events. Estimates vary, but between 1- 15% of NDEs are distressing. Studies show that the people who have them are not any more sinful than those who have pleasurable NDEs, but their experience is just as powerful.

“Whereas virtually all pleasurable NDErs lose their fear of death, distressing NDErs sometimes express a fear of death and often ask, Why me? Why did I have a distressing experience when most people have a pleasurable one? Rommer concluded along with other researchers that, in the long run, as with pleasurable NDErs, virtually all distressing NDErs ultimately found the experience extremely beneficial… A psychospiritual descent into hell has been the experience of saints and sages throughout history, and it is an inevitable episode in the pervasive, mythic theme of the hero's journey.  Those who insist on finding the gift, the blessing of their experiences have the potential ultimately to realize a greater maturity and wholeness.” – “Distressing Near-Death Experiences” as found on the IANDS website.

Could this be the blessing of a macabre Halloween? Could it be like a distressing NDE, that looking at our shadow side, facing our fears, especially of the unknown transition into death, allows us to grow? The only way past something difficult is through it. Perhaps Halloween, as it is currently practiced in the secular world, gives us permission to express our fears, to overcome them, to realize they don’t have power over us. It opens our eyes that we need not fear death, or the things that go bump in the night, which helps us wake up to the reality that the ground of our being, corporeal or not, rests in a God who is love.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post, or any of my posts, so more people can discover them on Substack and elsewhere.

All Scripture quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

https://iands.org/ndes/about-ndes/characteristics.html

https://iands.org/ndes/about-ndes/distressing-ndes.html