The projections are in: American consumers are set to spend over 11.6 billion dollars this year on Halloween. That’s larger than the Gross Domestic Product of some countries. And it begs a question: why are we becoming so fascinated with Halloween celebrations? Why is this no longer primarily a children’s holiday? Are Millennials just desperate to hold onto something from childhood—something innocent yet thrilling, a way to grasp at a fleeting sense of mystery in an increasingly rational, secular world? Perhaps our growing fascination with Halloween and the spooky reflects a deeper trend in our culture.
Christianity and Secularism
You may have noticed that Christianity isn’t exactly cool, or hip. To be fair, few things that require commitment and fidelity are. In the last 25 years, 40 million North Americans have left the church. What is causing this great dechurching? Contrary to what we might think, it’s largely due to apathy and passivity rather than a stark rejection of Christianity. That is, people leaving the church do not see themselves as leaving Christianity, per se. They simply don’t know why church, the Bible, and doctrine are vital to the Christian faith.
For most Westerners, religion is sentimental and spiritual. It’s the thing in the back of our mind that helps our nagging conscience and grounds some sense of morality, but it does not rise to a place that orders our loves and commands our devotion. But as many sociologists and cultural commentators have pointed out, when people leave institutional religion, they’re bound to find—or create—new rituals.
We might be surprised to hear that adults are spending over 11 billion dollars on Halloween festivities, but it makes perfect sense. Most of these people have expelled religious practices from their lives. They do not attend a weekly worship service where they commune with the divine, where the transcendent stoops to them in word and sacrament, or where they confess an ancient creed and faith that is older than their nation’s constitution. And so, they go looking—foraging for the transcendent—through commercialism, dress up, even through spiritual practices they learned about online such as “manifestation” (the idea that we can intentionally bring our desires into existence by appealing to a universe which collaborates to make good things happen for us).
One hardly has to be an expert in Eastern Mysticism to recognize that these sorts of practices are actually quite old and worn out. “Manifestation,” for instance, assumes that all of nature is shot through with divinity. All we have to do is connect to it through little practices and rituals. As Lydia Sohn pointed out in a piece for the Atlantic in 2023, manifestation gurus have positively flooded Instagram and TikTok:
The methods for manifestation are as bountiful as the coaches. Take, for example, the 3-6-9 method. In one TikTok video, over ethereal background music, a young woman instructs viewers to write what they want three times, why they’re manifesting it six times, and how the desire makes them feel nine times—from the perspective of having already achieved their goal. (The creator’s goal was to reach 30,000 followers on TikTok.) “The results happened in 3 days,” reads the caption beneath her video, which has more than 150,000 likes.
It would seem, as Michael Horton observes in his book What is Secularization?, that secular people are not becoming more rationalistic when they abandon Christianity but increasingly spiritual. Secular societies don’t become less mystical, but more so. And the mystical/ spiritual practices which they adopt aren’t new, but tend to be quite old and worn out.
For a generation that’s increasingly disillusioned by organized religion and fundamentally disconnected with traditional expressions of transcendence, it’s striking how legalistic and shame motivated these practices and views of the world are. Our hyper-therapeutic culture is fueled by a desire to root out shame wherever it rears its ugly head.
I don’t mean to denigrate counseling or therapeutic methods—that discussion should be kept for another time—but to point out a trend: shame-talk is everywhere, and so are the proposed methods for dealing with it. In a secularized society, we’re left with a feeling of the transcendent and spooky without any satisfying place to go to lay down the burden of our shame once and for all. No amount of nostalgic thrills, costumes, or candy can do away with the nagging feeling of guilt. We can never manifest away our shame.
The Greatest Fear in Secular Society
The problem is that many of the places where modern people seek transcendence—whether in Halloween, crystals, astrology, or other “spiritual” practices—are ultimately unsatisfying. These efforts often reflect a yearning for innocence, a simpler time where things weren’t so complicated, or a connection to something mysterious. As a result, many find themselves grasping at shadows which provide momentary relief, but never lasting peace—drawn in by the allure of the spooky season, but left with nothing but credit card debt, Halloween decorations to put in storage, and a hope that next year will scratch that itch for something nostalgic and mysterious.
This isn’t to say that it’s wrong to celebrate Halloween. But it’s important to realize that if this is our primary avenue for tapping into transcendence, then we will lose the lasting connection which our souls long for. As Augustine said so long ago, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” This longing for the transcendent cannot be satisfied by our efforts. The stranger must draw near to us; God must come down. This is our greatest desire.
Yet this is our greatest fear. We long to know and be known, but none of us can manifest this into existence. What will become of us when the transcendent God draws near to us? What will become of our faults, guilt, and shame in the presence of the God before whom shadows flee (1 John 1:5): everlasting blessing, or horrors beyond our comprehension?
The reality is that this God—not witches or zombies or ghosts—is the stranger we most fear to meet. He is holy and we are not. But the invitation of the Scriptures is to step into the presence of God, not in fear of being consumed, but with the confidence that God has made a way for us to know and be known in Christ. He doesn’t do this through gnostic secrets or spiritual, individual, enlightenment, practices like manifestation. Nor does he withhold himself until we deal with our guilt and shame and clean ourselves up enough to approach him. God, in Christ, makes a way by bearing the shame in our place and making the declaration of this good news available to all people through the free offer of the Gospel. Only the Gospel speaks to the inbreaking of the supernatural and transcendent into our world. And only the Gospel invites us to step forth into the presence of God, not in fear of being consumed, but with the confidence that we, in Christ, are welcomed into the divine mystery, safe and secure.
Caleb Wait
