Poem #55: 'Holiday Hypocrisy'

A Frightening Case of Irony

It is fall now. The leaves have begun to don their crisp yellow and orange coats. The air is whispering it’s chilly secrets. The harvest is, um, harvesting. The days run short and the flickering bonfire flames run high.

Fall is hands down my favorite season; The time when sweaters come back out, Vince Guaraldi twinkles from the record player, and the Pumpkin Patches flip their quaint little signs back to OPEN. Heck, you might even catch me stealing a sip or two from my wife’s Pumpkin Spice Latte. (Black coffee guys need a little sweet treat, too.) While Autumn reigns supreme in my seasonal tier-list, it’s about this time each year that I am reminded of a very strange, yet very common phenomenon.

Each year, I am baffled at the drastic aesthetic shift of local neighborhoods between late September and roughly the end of January. This, of course, is due to the American culture’s strangely mingled, alarmingly contradictory yearly observations, otherwise known as “The Holidays”.

Personally, I’m a big tradition guy. I like the simple comforts of renewing yearly activities and gatherings for the sake of a noble, wholesome, or worthy cause. Maybe it’s picking out pumpkins or gathering for a meal, perhaps presenting gifts for a birthday or driving around and looking at Christmas lights. Within healthy, ethical, and spiritually solid bounds, I hold the belief that there is nothing wrong with a tradition.

However, it seems that the average American has a far more extreme relationship to their traditions than what may be deemed as healthy, ethical, and spiritually solid. The most startling example of this lies in the cases of Halloween and Christmas, and more specifically the wildly contrary meanings of the two celebrations. October rolls around and, like clockwork, I begin to see the people of my community, young and old, Christian and Non-Christian, covering their homes, yards, cars, bodies, and places of work with graphic, celebratory images of death and evil.

I could write a whole other essay on why that alone is extremely wrong, especially for Christians. You’d think that since we live in the “information age”, more people would be aware that all that stuff about witchcraft and paganism and human sacrifice is actually, like, 100% real, but somehow we go on celebrating. Because we are so desensitized to the yearly “festivities” of Halloween, we neglect the substantial concern we ought to be having, not only for the evil pagan roots of the “Holiday”, but also the simple fact that we can walk up to a home covered in bones and blood and corpses and nooses and demons, all of which were intentionally placed there by their delighted owner, and not have a single ill-feeling about any of it. Hello? That’s a huge problem.

I’m not necessarily saying you’re worshiping satan by going trick-or-treating or that you can’t enjoy pulling the guts out of a pumpkin and carving a funny face into it. Even if you appreciate a spooky movie here and there, I can’t make an exclusive claim on your heart; That’s between you and the Lord. Everyone has to decide what they are willing to take part in, and while different convictions may lead to slightly different perspectives on certain things, the fact stands that the majority of Halloween festivities delve into a twisted, blatant worship for all things relating to death and wickedness: the very things we are NOT supposed to be associating with. The word Holiday literally means “Holy Day”, which makes it all the more problematic that we associate a death-themed celebration with such a term. You have to ask, what am I really celebrating here? Death? Evil? Murder? If so, you might want to rethink your traditions.

Having established a concern here, we then compound our concern to an even more severe level as the days pass from fall into winter. Before you even realize the haunted season has come to a close, the neighborhoods start to change their tune and the people begin acknowledging more light-hearted subject matter. Where I once saw makeshift graveyards and demonic spirits hovering about the curbs and culdesacs of the suburbs, I now see the gradual appearances of bright twinkling lights, wholesome inflatables, and as-far-as-you-could-possibly-get-from-being-biblical depictions of shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night. How ironic to imagine the homeowner’s garages in which the 8 foot skeleton statue may be cozily stored next to a white, plastic baby Jesus.

You see my point here? We justify the celebration of evil and darkness only to sing of Jesus and His blessed first coming within the very same breath. We garnish our homes with hellish imagery only to take it down and replace it with displays of warm, not-quite-Christian bliss. Not to mention the commercialized corruption that has taken hold of our “holidays” and morphed them into stale, mindless observations of the average American citizen. (Again, that’s an essay for another time). As I drive through neighborhood roads, all riddled with this confusion and moral inconsistency, I grow disheartened at the condition of the culture we bear as our own in this country, and really, all around the world.

We don’t know what we believe, so we just roll with it. We stake no explicit claims on any one way of life or any one set of morals, but rather flow in the middle-grounds of good and evil, changing our subscriptions to either one based on cultural conformity and seasonal mood-swings. Too many of us ride the fence, or the “lukewarm” zone, a very dangerous place to be as Jesus clearly warns us.¹ We pin the badge of our beliefs loosely on our shirts, proclaiming our membership with the Christian faith, or at least some vaguely “moral” ideology, only to drop it for our fleshly indulgences in dark things, and then ironically to pick it right back up again when the Carols and Cocoa come out.

I don’t intend to say all of this merely to complain or condemn; I couldn’t condemn anyone if I tried, for I’m just as much of a hypocrite as the next guy. Condemnation is not within my jurisdiction. However, bold proclamation most certainly is, and that’s where this poem, “Holiday Hypocrisy”, comes from. I wrote it as a bit of satire from the perspective of someone who is blind to the painful irony of what they are celebrating. While I believe there is a fair level of gray area when it comes to individual convictions from God, I also believe there are certain things that are outright wrong as laid out by scripture and the innate character of God, and I am (and will always be) obliged to speak truth over those things, whether they may be received well or not.

I also must clarify that I am not necessarily writing these sentiments against the humble, Christ-loving homeowner who brandishes an inflatable pumpkin in the fall and a string of red-and-green lights in the winter. While I would still encourage that person, along with anyone else, to truly dive deep into what God may have for them to partake and abstain from in this life, I am ultimately not the decider of their heart and could never pretend to be. I note that such a scenario is not even remotely the same as the giddy child-frightener who takes a deep pleasure in the visuals and rituals of that historically pagan All Hallows Eve, only to follow it up with a hearty abundance of “Christmas Cheer” two months later. I may settle in a place of comfortable difference between me and former, but the latter has very little excuse. (Thus the mildly aggressive tone of the poem.)

We must not go on living in the lukewarm zone. It is a treacherous business to deal with both light and darkness as friends, and though we may not see our thoughtless celebrations as such, the trouble remains unless we offer ourselves, our traditions, and our preconceived notions of “Acceptable” and “Unacceptable” up to the Lord and His divine will. We may even find our more wholesome traditions to be sources of idolatry and previously unrealized sin… and what, then? Would we be okay to give it to God anyways? Ultimately, my encouragement is for the seeking of truth and goodness, and both consistently. I advocate for the bold separation of that which God has declared good and wholesome and that which He has declared unprofitable and wicked. I push you, dear reader, just as I must push myself, to take comfort and stability in those things which we are told to dwell on as laid out in Philippians 4:8:

“Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”

Seek truth. Embrace goodness. Practice consistency. Don’t play into the mindlessness of holiday hypocrisy.

(And hey, you don’t need to worship death to enjoy the amazing fall weather… God’s the One that made it that way in case you forgot!)

— I. S. H.

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‘Holiday Hypocrisy’

By Ian Samuel Helton, 2024

Bright baby Jesus 
And a polar bear band
Replaces the eight-foot 
Skelton man.

Hang up the garland!
And the candy cane poles!
In place of the graveyard
Of tormented souls.

Clean off the webs 
From the trees in the yard,
And take down the bright red 
Pentagram star.

Oh, Kids! Wipe the blood 
'Till it’s sparkling clean
And clear up some room
For the Nativity Scene.

We’ll throw up some green 
With our hellish red lights
And a great glowing sign that reads, 
“Silent Night”.

How I love to partake 
In this glad time of year!
But not ‘till I’m finished 
Praising evil and fear.

With Witches and Werewolves,
On All Hallows Eve,
How I startle the children 
With the frights I conceive!

But now let there be peace
Since the season's begun:
Aren't the holidays
So frightfully fun?

Of course, Christ is King
'Least till Christmas is over;
And I won’t dwell in darkness
(Save the month of October.)

And what separates Joy
From the devil’s dark ways?
About a month 
And 25 days.

But no need for concern 
For my festive expression;
Let us all count the bones
Before counting our blessings.

And before we can sing 
About Christ’s come to Earth,
I must give the devil
Some attention first.

Now, as seasons progress,
With her changing of faces,
Comes the time where satan 
And Santa trade places.

Glad tidings and terrors! 
May your fears be complete!
From the Ho, Ho hypocrite 
That lives on your street.

— I. S. H. 

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I love writing, and I also love coffee (in case you haven’t noticed). I may not pay the bills with my writing at the moment (it’s free!), but if I can turn a few words into a few ounces in my cup, that would be neat. I appreciate your support and, as always, thank you for reading!

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A Few Suggestions Before You Go…

- Change, Big Thief.

- Maybe You Have To, Post Animal.

- Goodbye Road (feat. Drew Holcomb, Penny and Sparrow), Johnnyswim.

1. Revelation 3:15-16 — “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.”