Category Archives: Evil and Ugliness

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Why Christmas is for Tragedy

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This past Friday was heart-crushing for anyone who heard about the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school shooting that took the lives of 20 six and seven year-olds and six adults. Less well-publicized was the stabbing of 22 children ages six to twelve and one 85 year-old woman outside a primary school in China the very same day. The news was almost too much to bear and puts a cloud of darkness over this often joyous time of year. One shop owner in Newtown commented to a reporter, “Christmas is cancelled this year.” However, as today we light three candles for Advent: hope, peace, and joy, if there is anytime we need this church season in our lives, it is now. Continue reading →

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The Gospel, The Cathedral, and the Dracula Blu-Ray

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A few days ago a received a package containing the Blu-Ray box set of the Universal Classic Monsters films of the 1930s through 1950s, specifically the eight films considered essential to film audiences. The entire series excited me, being digitally remastered and rendered in high-definition for the first time, however what excited me most was that Dracula, Frankenstein, and Bride of Frankenstein have had brand-new, painstaking restorations to their picture and sound. As soon as I got the package, I opened the set and placed the Dracula disc into the Blu-Ray player. The next thing that happened was a bit overwhelming. Continue reading →

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Review: The Woman in Black

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Hammer Films produced many of the very best gothic horror films in the 1950s and 1960s. After its resurrection just a few years ago, Hammer now seems set to continue its tradition onward if The Woman in Black is any indicator. Hammer returns to its glory days of supernatural storytelling, invoking the Victorian-type ghost story in superb style. Easily one of the most stylish, most chilling horror films of the last couple of decades, this one also has a heart (as the best always do).The story plays on both the cards of the heartbroken young widower in grief over his wife’s death as well as the both sad and frightening vengeful ghost whose mystery plays out and creating a truly terrifying build-up. Continue reading →

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Musings While Writing on Horror

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I’ve almost considered writing a book about my experiences and thoughts while writing my book on Christianity and horror. I know that’s very Don Miller-esque of me, but I can’t help thinking of the stories that have happened in my life in the roughly seven months since I first penned my rough-rough-rough draft of the book’s introduction. In that time, I have had many conversations with many diverse people dealing with art, literature, and a surprising amount of spiritual warfare. Continue reading →

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On Halloween

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(I recently have had a series of discussions about Christianity, Halloween, and horror including publishing several posts and featured quotes here on the topic of horror in light of Christianity and giving a podcast interview on the topic of Halloween. As the frequency of conversations has picked up, I thought I might consolidate some of my thoughts on this issue.)

The month or so approaching Halloween has always been my favorite time of year. I love walking the Halloween aisles of the stores, looking at the masks, costumes, and decorations, and particularly indulging in watching my favorite horror movie classics from the 1920s through ’60s in my spare time with way too much sugar sitting in a giant bowl beside me. I love walking down the street beside mine, famous for its Halloween decor, and seeing the elaborate display of ghosts and ghouls of every shape and size littering the lawns of my otherwise typical neighborhood. The questions often have come up, though: isn’t it wrong for a Christian to celebrate Halloween? Doesn’t this most macabre of holidays make much of evil and not God? With its Pagan origins, can I and my family celebrate Halloween in good conscience? I grew up with Halloween, but as I neared adulthood and returned to the church after several years of disconnect, I was actually shocked to encounter the hostility many Christians and churches had to the holiday. Accusations that the holiday glorified evil and represented everything Christianity should be against actually seemed like they might have some reasonable grounding. After pondering these issues for years, however, I have come to the conclusion that Halloween is not only a permissible but helpful and instructive holiday that Christians can and should be a part of. Continue reading →

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Bela Lugosi’s Dead

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A friend showed me a newspaper cartoon earlier today that featured a kid pasting a poster of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula over a poster from one of the recent Twilight films. I was amused. How I wish it were that easy to get a classic like Dracula shown instead of its current far-removed progeny. However, Twilight is sadly a vampire series for our times, a reflection of the worldview of the society we live in. The evil, fatally seductive Dracula of Bela Lugosi, and even the original of Bram Stoker, has been largely staked by the cultural abandonment of Christianity on which the legend of the vampire truly depends. Continue reading →

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What Fairy Tales Give

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“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
– G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

HT: JG

(Illustration: Hans Acker, Saint George)