Fear and Great Joy: What the Costumes Know

Posted on October 13, 2026 in Blog, Ministry Leadership Articles
Authored by Carla Jones Brown

As some of our churches plan Harvest Parties for the children as an alternative to Halloween, the children are already planning their costumes. There will be tiny vampires, witches with pointy black hats, fairy princesses with magic wands, and little pumpkins in strollers who are too young for candy but too cute to ignore. Regardless of how we rebrand the day, the children continue to have fun inside their costumes. They have chosen the thing they aspire to be (doctors, firefighters, superheroes) or the thing that should frighten them (ghosts, witches, vampires) and have fun ringing doorbells and exchanging “Trick or Treat” for handfuls of candy.

These costumed children seem to know something that we adults have forgotten. Pixar understood it and showed us in Monsters, Inc. The city of Monstropolis runs on children’s fearful screams. The city’s economy depends on fear. Fear is harvested at night, stored in canisters and piped into every home. The supply is getting scarce because children are getting harder to scare. Worse yet, the monsters are afraid of the children. Then, the story turns. A little girl aptly named Boo laughs and it turns out that laughter is more powerful than the terrified screams of children. An economy built on fear discovers a new source of energy…joy!

As I listen to my congregants and colleagues, it sounds like many of us are living in some suburb of Monstropolis. Fear has become our energy source. It powers the news and our social media feeds. In our churches, it rarely shows up as raw fear. It arrives in costume. Bad behavior in committee meetings; sermons that avoid saying the hard thing; the lament over our good old days when the sanctuary was full (capacity accuracy notwithstanding); and pastors who walk to our cars smiling and waving and holding a non-anxious presence for as long as we can.

The church has an answer for this, and it sits on the calendar right next to the call to don a costume. All Hallows’ Eve is the night before All Saints, the feast when the church remembers those who have died in the faith. What a beautiful opportunity to live into this juxtaposition! This is our opportunity to poke fun at death on the eve of celebrating the ones death could not keep.

The costume is not the last word.

It is the setup for what is to come.

In Matthew’s resurrection account, the women gather at the tomb, the earth shakes, an angel rolls away the stone and the guards are terrified. Then, an angel says, “Do not be afraid.” When they meet Jesus on the road later, he says the same, “Do not be afraid.” Matthew reports that the women left with fear and great joy. Not fear replaced by joy but fear AND joy.. The resurrection does not ask them to pretend to be unafraid. It gives them something stronger to carry alongside the fear. The resurrection gives the women a word to share with all who will listen.

Perhaps this is what the children in their costumes can teach us. They don’t dress as monsters because they are fearless. They do it because they have found a way to hold fear with laughter. The saints who have ‘gone before’ were not fearless either. They walked and lived with both fear and great joy. Fear is real but fear does not get the last word and we can live faithfully in the presence of fear.

Whether our communities celebrate Halloween or hold Harvest celebrations, let’s see the parable in the parade of costumes. Let us name our fears and walk around in community until we can laugh a little or until we laugh a lot. Then we can take off our costumes and come to worship and read the names of those who went ahead of us. As we remember them, maybe we will remember that we don’t live in a world where fear is the only power source. Maybe we will remember that the resurrection offers us a place powered by something far greater.

Reflection Questions: