Sybilla Hart dreaded Halloween as a child and later found herself wanting to protect her own children from its darker imagery and growing dangers. But rather than simply saying no to Halloween, Sybilla and her village church decided to create something positive – and Luminous has been bringing the community together for nearly a decade.
When my children were very young, we lived in a tight-knit urban community where lots of people attended church and eschewed Halloween. Some of my neighbours’ children dressed up as witches and goblins, but as they were all under seven years old, it was fairly Disney-esque, with lots of Rapunzel costumes and superheroes. Many of their parents were American and seemed intent on celebrating the party that Halloween had become – I, on the other hand, ran a mile and always dreaded 31 October.
As a child growing up in a Christian home, Halloween never sat right with me. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to celebrate the occult in any way. It was only when I was much older that I understood the significance of Halloween. All Hallows’ Eve is essentially a Christian feast when we pray for departed souls. How had it turned into this celebration of demonic, terrifying imagery, with people wearing hooded Grim Reaper images or the scary mask from Scary Movie?
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As a child, I had bad nightmares and I always wanted to protect my children from any dark content. Oddly, the witch in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves gave my siblings and me disturbed sleep well into our teens, and my own fear of scary imagery continued into my late 30s.
In the summer of 2012, we were staying in a hotel in France and I felt very scared of a dark presence in our hotel room at the top of a very old château. We left at 2am in the middle of the night with our three children and our Swedish au pair, Hannah, as my husband sensed it too. Thankfully, Hannah didn’t mind too much, as she was the daughter of missionaries and was accustomed to leaving places in the middle of the night!
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A week later, on the way home, I felt God showed me an image of a scary mask crumpling and falling to the floor.
A week later, on the way home, I felt God showed me an image of a scary mask crumpling and falling to the floor. I think the Lord was telling me that evil has no power, and since that day I have felt much more peaceful and less scared in general.
In 2013, we moved out of London to North Essex, and a year later Claudia Winkleman’s daughter suffered awful burns from a Halloween costume when she was out trick-or-treating, when her costume brushed against a candle. This travesty was a wake-up call to me, and I felt that as a community we had to provide an alternative to Halloween. Not only was it dark, it was now becoming dangerous too.
We live in a remote farmhouse and had stayed at home for our first two All Hallows’ Eves, but I wanted to do something constructive for our children and for those in the community, and come up with a fun and original alternative.
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We became quite friendly with our village vicar, Revd Pete, who would conduct all the village primary school services and assemblies.
We became quite friendly with our village vicar, Revd Pete, who would conduct all the village primary school services and assemblies. One afternoon over a coffee at our house (he and his wife were also newcomers to the village), we had this lightbulb moment to start “Luminous”.
Luminous was born in 2016 and was to be an alternative to Halloween at one of our local churches, St Andrew’s at Earls Colne. I was in charge of T-shirt painting, another member of the church community made hot chocolate and tea, another person arranged the apple bobbing, we had a giant Jenga toy and there were lots of crafts too. We had a whale of a time and everyone chipped in.
As St Andrew’s is in a town, we had lots of visiting dressed-up young witches and goblins who joined in on the fun, and I am really happy to report that a decade on, Luminous is still going strong. I took my youngest child, Benny, last year and all the same people are still there, serving the community.
Some of the best moments for me have been when I can see how much innocent pleasure the children are getting out of painting lighthouses instead of thinking about ghosts. Or when an elderly person from the community chats to someone seventy years younger, or when people drop into the cafe for a cup of tea who are having a hard time. In Luminous, we seem to have found a solution to a number of needs and requirements. To think that it came about from a festival that has lost the thread of what it once was is nothing short of wondrous.
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