FAYETTEVILLE — The wonderful children’s picture book “Where the Wild Things Are” is now a movie. I hope the film lives up to the enchanting quality of the 1964 Caldecott Medal award winner. I loved reading “Where the Wild Things Are” to my children, and maybe moreimportantly, they enjoyed reading it to themselves.
The book is an empowering journey of fantasy, allowing a child to explore and express the emotions of anger and outrage that live within all of us. It is a journey of catharsis, where a child’s frustrations and fears may play themselves out creatively, allowing them freedom to return to a comfortable nest of love.
It begins on a night when Max is “making mischief of one kind and another” and is sent to bed without his supper. His bedroom magically transforms into a forest and ocean as he travels to the land “where the wild things are.” There the yellow-eyed beasts “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said ‘BE STILL,’” and Max is made “king of all wild things.”
After pages of “rumpus” illustrated fantastically by author Maurice Sendak the monsters stop, and Max sends them to their bed without their supper. Then Max makes the long journey home to “his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him” - now pause, and turn the page very, very slowly - “and it was still hot.”
“Where the Wild Things Are” does something important and does it well. It allows children to process creatively their powerful emotions.
Halloween does the same thing. Halloween is a good and healthy tradition for children. Through their costumes children can become their own fears. They can claim great powers. They can act out their dreams. Halloween is empowering and cathartic, like “Where the Wild Things Are,” unless grownups mess it up.
Shame on superstitious Christians who spoil the fun and fantasy by acting as if children’s dressing as “wild things” will make them vulnerable to some sort of evil spirits. They call it the “Devil’s Birthday.” Balderdash! Halloween is the Christian celebration of the night before All Saints’ Day - All Hallows’ Eve. Like Christmas, Epiphany, candles, Christmas trees, and Celtic crosses, Halloween is a Christianized adaptation of celebrations and symbols of earlier faiths.
Shame on fear mongers who exaggerate threats and take the life out of a community with sanitized “Fall Festivals” in malls and church assembly halls. Such activities tear the fabric of our relationship by reinforcing the crippling message that our neighbors are strangers and dangerous.
Some overly scrupulous parents “protect” their children from this wonderful celebration citing exaggerated safety concerns, while they will drive the same children in dangerous cars, let them ride bicycles, play baseball and football and soccer, and keep firearms in the house. Nothing is perfectly safe, but the biggest threat at Halloween is a skinned knee from tripping over a princess’ skirt.
City planners and sociologists know that neighborhoods that are conducive to Halloween tend to be neighborhoods with strong social capital - with safe sidewalks and good lights, front windows and easy access between neighbors.
Halloween is a wonderful time for neighborhoods and communities. Fierce three-foot goblins and wise wizards walk excitedly to our doors to speak the liturgical words “trick or treat” and to be rewarded with candy from their neighbors. We are all friends and neighbors, and we share the work of treasuring our little ones. Let our homes be open and welcoming, and let the children reign on this special evening.
Halloween plays to the power of imagination, an essential spiritual and religious facility. It allows children to act out their fantasies - deflating their fears and embracing their powers. On Halloween our sidewalks and porches are where the wild things are. And when love brings the little monsters home with their bags full of treasure, we tuck them into warm beds just a little bit more alive than they were before.
Lowell Grisham is an Episcopal priest from Fayetteville
Opinion, Pages 4 on 10/26/2009