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Holidays are not all of the same rank.

Some holidays come to us with outstanding spiritual resumes. There is no question that Easter and Passover and Ramadan arrive in the sacred calendar with the highest religious credentials. They tell the story of our faiths. They are decorated with rituals that both inform and inspire. They are perfect holidays. No problem.

Then there are the holidays that, while still valuable, have had their spiritual core somewhat diluted by a flood of commercial practices that have nothing to do with spiritual values. Christmas and Hanukkah are both legitimate religious holidays, but the tsunami of gift giving has unfortunately given a materialistic veneer to these holidays. It is hard to access the meaning for the human spirit through a credit card. Both Christmas and Hanukkah, of course, deserve their place in the upper levels of sacred times but they are in desperate need of protection from the corrosive elements of our material and secular culture.

Next stop going down the list of holidays are those that are deeply spiritual but not sectarian. There is only one on the list here and that is Thanksgiving. It is not a religious holiday, but it is filled with religious values: gratitude, family and harvest. I love Thanksgiving precisely because it fits every faith and no faith. I would add certain secular holidays that are nowhere close to the grandeur of Thanksgiving but do offer us secular holidays with a defensible core. Independence Day and all the veterans holidays are worthy secular moments in the yearly calendar. I am not including Super Bowl Sunday even though it may well be the most celebrated secular holiday in our land.

Descending further into the list of holidays we encounter holidays whose spiritual core is so thin they barely survive. In fact, they include rituals and beliefs that can flat-out contradict religious values. Some are thin but heartwarming holidays like Valentine’s Day. Its origins are obscure, but it is all about love and chocolate and it is hard for me to condemn anything that brings us into contact with love and chocolate. Valentine’s Day survives my list of spiritually acceptable holidays but only barely.

And then there is this week’s holiday of Halloween. I am afraid that after years of making excuses for All Hallows’ Eve, the night before the Christian holidays of All Saints’ Day, I am giving up my previous year’s defense of Halloween. It is time to cut loose Halloween from my calendar of sacred days. It is time to snuff out the candle in my jack-‘o-lantern. Halloween celebrates the dead (not the saints and martyrs of its original mandate) and that ought to be enough to send it into exile.

Specifically, Halloween celebrates those poor souls trapped between Heaven and Hell. Scaring them and protecting oneself from them was the original purpose of the jack-o-lantern. I do believe that there are things that go bump in the night, but I do not believe that they are sent running by a carved gourd and I do not think they deserve their own holiday or costume party. Also, is it not way past time for us to acknowledge the obesity epidemic and the way it is fueled every Halloween by poisoning our kids with a national candy-fueled sugar high? And I may have become a bit grumpy in my old age, but I no longer find amusing the toilet paper festooned trees and other assorted mischief that accompanies this sacred time. For those who have graduated from trick-or-treating and egg tossing there are Halloween parties that increasingly feature risqué costumes that are often degrading to women – and loads of alcohol.

I do admire the social cohesion that Halloween brings to our divided culture, but in sum I have concluded that Halloween has lost its claim on the sacred calendar. I know that I sound like the Halloween Grinch, and I welcome any defense of Halloween from you, my dear readers. However, I think that holidays are meant to offer us sacred times where we can lift our highest hopes and give voice to the better angels of our nature, none of which involves dressing up like goolies and honoring the goat god.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

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