It’s Halloween and I’m wondering about yard displays….

Because I make a living educating professionals about our death-phobic, grief-illiterate culture, it’s no surprise that I wonder about the inordinate number of Halloween decorations that feature graveyards and skeletons. Why the fascination with cemeteries, headstones, and carcasses on front lawns when, as a culture, we avoid the topic of death at all cost? More curious is our lack of thought for newly bereaved, grief-stricken people who ride down a street with copious fake graveyards and ghoulish, morbid scenes featuring dead people; the most insensitive of which depict a person that appears to have been hanged.

Lest you judge me as a killjoy who doesn’t appreciate this celebration, my thoughts are born from curiosity not condemnation. I am not advocating anything; just asking. Why do we display scary things in such a cavalier way, exposing trick or treating children to something that we actually fear? Most people fear death, many people won’t even go to a cemetery, lest consider being buried in one. So what’s the attraction with putting a fake graveyard on our front lawn? How come we feature so many death scenes on a night when youngsters are play-pretending fear, yet we don’t talk openly to our children about death? Why do we put people who have lost a loved one to death by hanging through the anguish of confronting a display that includes such a death? Why is it that while we admit ignorance about death and grief loss, we willingly, excessively display false perceptions of these? What does it say of our emotional and intellectual response to things that scare us? How do these practices reveal and perpetuate our culture’s death phobia and grief illiteracy?

I work in the funeral industry, we meet death and grief every day, and yes, we do have a sense of humor. We celebrate Halloween and there are even those among us who have moved from the soft messages of pumpkins and scarecrows in our yard displays to the ghoulish. Culturally, we have traveled a long way from the original intent and practices of All Hallows Eve. The traditional celebration, the evening before All Saints Day, was to honor the deceased heroes that people wanted to emulate. The annual practice of naming and honoring the dead now has no place in modern day Halloween practices. Possibly the traditional celebration of All Hallows Eve was more genuine and straightforward about death – maybe even a bit healthier.

Just saying, this year, I’m really wondering about all those Halloween displays…