An Intersection in American Culture: Halloween and a Front Lawn Communion of Saints

Marine Park is a residential, suburban-esque neighborhood in South Brooklyn, New York. Historically, its population has been predominantly Irish and Italian Catholic. Although this demographic is in the process of changing, however, outward commitment to one’s faith in declaring it for all others to see still remains in 2017.

This monument devoted to Catholic saints in the front yard of a house on Gerritsen Avenue, one of the main roads of the area, is a particularly unique example. The home’s owners have built (or inherited) a shrine to various Church figures. Of these figures include Jesus Christ- both in childhood and on the cross, Mary of Nazareth- featured both with and without her Son, Saint Michael the sword-wielding Archangel, Saint Anthony of Padua, a pope, and more.

From right to left: Jesus extending his hands at Crucifixion, two statues of Mary of Nazareth holding the infant Jesus,
Saint Anthony of Padua with the infant Jesus (center, large), Jesus' body on a wooden cross also during Crucifixion (center),
Saint Michael the Archangel with sword, two indiscernible figures, a Pope, Mary of Nazareth.

Given the statues’ differing sizes, textures/mediums, colors, and specificity, it would appear that the display is not store-bought; rather, it seems to be a hand-picked, hand-placed arrangement of holy persons that may have a special resonance with its creator, as often times Catholics select a smaller set of saints to pray to in addition to their God. With that, one derives a great sense of protection from the memorial. Jesus saves humankind from sin, Saint Michael wards off Satan with his blade, and the Virgin Mary sees that God’s children are looked after, according to Christian belief.

The statues encapsulated in a brick column.

As a whole, its personalized pieces surrounded by flowers survey the yard from within their glass encasing. The clear seal secures them within a larger brick pillar, quite literally constructed upon the property’s foundations, out of which a tree also grows and produces a covering of the monument with its leaves. Even despite being shaded by the plant, the shrine is anything but hidden; it is designed to be known in sun, rain, snow, and night (as an LED bulb is installed inside the alcove). To ensure that the commemoration will be preserved and that every person who passes by may be drawn to its presence is in many ways a bold statement to make. In conversation with Protestant nativism and anti-Catholicism of America’s past, the statues’ exhibition becomes all the more bold and interesting.  

Many like those of the 1850s Know Nothing political party condemned the Catholic creed as a threat to the moral code of the United States. Citing it as a realm of darkness re-introduced to the country by immigrants who put democracy at risk, 19th century Protestants wanted Catholicism’s spread to be contained in light of the debate over Manifest Destiny expansion. Criticisms of Catholic idolatry were rampant at the time as well. Protestants interpreted physical representations of God or other religious models as worship of material items that violated the worth of those represented. Thus, to openly pay homage to Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the saints, and angels in the form of a shrine would be quite fearless.

By now, yes, it is safe to say that for the most part we have surpassed that intense Protestant and Catholic standoff in contemporary America. But considering the roots of anti-Catholicism in our “providential” nation, we can understand better why individuals might feel so strongly and lovingly towards their faith, once denounced, that they would erect a pillar dedicated to honor the doctrine’s key teachers on their lawn right next to the sidewalk where all pedestrians may examine it. After all, counters to Protestant disapproval of Catholics from other Christians were persistent even when anti-Catholicism was at its peak.

As early as 1851, Catholic Texan natives of Mexican descent were still taking to the streets to celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe in Santa Rita after the region was apprehended by Protestant-majority America. Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the best-selling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, acknowledged that Catholicism had a rich spirituality that brought a warmth and uplifting nature to the air; with its idols and commemorative rituals, it connected  the earthly world to the invisible world in a communion of saints that was more sympathetic in affirming life after death than Protestantism. Her brother, a preacher and fellow Brooklynite, Henry Ward Beecher, explained “Art is aiming at the household,” in his 1864 work “Religion and the Beautiful” in order to defend the indulgence of art as a conception of the “divine” element of beauty that “refine[s] and elevate[s].” The memorial is a testament to the embedded nature of religion in the lives and the household of the family that dwells in this Gerritsen Avenue home, and it is itself a living memorial in some regards.

I call the pillar a “living memorial” because it is adorned differently with decorations from season to season. Every day for at least three years I have been walking past it on my route to the bus stop. I have noticed it before and thought it was one of a kind, and it is, especially when compared to the rest of the graceful sculptures of the Blessed Mother that frequently dot the gardens of Marine Park’s residents, but one day in October it struck me as particularly different than usual.

Hanging from the tree and sitting on the shrine were Halloween decorations- one fake skull and a plastic skeleton wrapped in tattered burial shrouds. As they blew in the wind, the hands wrapped perfectly around the cross that topped the bricks (or perhaps the homeowners decided that positioning them that way would look cool).

On the day of Halloween.

While skeleton hands are wrapped around the cross.

After a rainy night, the statues are in the sunshine.

At first I found it to be a very odd and contradictory combination. Coming from a Catholic background myself, although my birthday is on Halloween and I am partial towards observing it, I thought of how often priests and other officials would complain about American Christians who spend money on and dress up for Halloween because it is a “pagan” holiday. Yet, as I paused to analyze more closely, I realized that overlapping of the statues and the spooky festivities- both in actuality and figuratively- were not all that contradictory. It demonstrates the intersection of two distinct aspects of American culture firmly fixed in society and the individual life as well: an annual day of fun and pretending that the majority of Americans like to partake in, and a religious artifact ingrained in the very hominess of home for the family on Gerritsen Avenue.

Halloween, from its genesis, has largely been concerned with warding off evil. The fiesta, even before it was officially known as Halloween, was always held on the eve of All Saint’s Day- saints that this front yard display depicts and venerates. In fact, the holiday we know currently evolved from age-old Celtic festivals of Samhain developed to repel ghosts and other demons. Halloween only became popular in America in the 1800s with the explosion of immigration from Europe- specifically Ireland during the Great Potato Famine- coinciding with the surge of Catholicism that these immigrants, too, helped disseminate.

It is pretty ironic, then, to consider how everything in this exhibit of faith and decoration in Marine Park relates; in a historically Irish and Italian Catholic area, a religious shrine of saints takes on a whole new meaning when American Halloween decorations, emanated from Celtic customs of driving evil away, are added. The enclosed statues are no longer just personalized respect or admiration for God, Jesus, Mother Mary, or the most glorified souls of saints (though that is still of much weight). The Halloween skulls and skeletons’ attachment to the tribute symbolize individualism customary of the United States’ values. One can choose to directly and outwardly declare their religious orientation with freedom of religion, and one can select which holidays they want to involve themselves in (or not) through our emphases on freedom of expression. One may be invited into the community of the Church, yet still decide that in one’s own private practice, they may act in such manners that they do not find wrong and may truly not be wrong, regardless of whether the Church may agree or disagree with Halloween’s prevalent existence. In that, there is great power.