“Lanterns in the Vineyard”
Halloween, 1980s –
The fog rolled through the rows of vines just after sunset, low and soft like a tide coming in. Orange lights flickered on the porch of the old Sieli farmhouse. Michael leaned against the railing, a cigarette hanging from his lips, and surveyed the scene with the practical satisfaction of a man who liked things to be neat, festive, and uncomplicated.
The haunted barn was his idea. Nothing fancy. Just some plastic skeletons, a fog machine, a few cardboard tombstones, and a stereo hissing out creaky-door sound effects. Halloween, as far as he was concerned, was supposed to be fun — nothing more.
“Remember when it was just candy and pranks?” he muttered to Wayne, who was helping him hang the last string of orange lights. “Now everybody’s got some angle.”
But he wasn’t wrong to notice the crowd at the end of the driveway. Pastor John Hawkins and his church group from New Hope Evangelical stood in a cluster under the streetlight, handing out pamphlets and holding signs. They were polite, but visibly disapproving.
“SAY NO TO HALLOWEEN. SAY YES TO JESUS.”
“OCTOBER 31ST — A NIGHT FOR CHRIST.”
Their voices carried in the crisp air. Michael could already guess what the flyers said: something about Halloween being a “pagan celebration,” a “gateway to the occult,” or “a spiritual threat to Christian homes.”
He’d heard it all week on the radio, too. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family warning parents to keep their kids away from “Satan’s holiday.” Pat Robertson railing on The 700 Club about witches and demons. Jerry Falwell hinting that “America’s moral decay” began with things like costumes and candy.
Michael shook his head. “Jesus Christ, it’s candy corn, not a coven.”
🕯️ Sofia
Sofia’s Datsun rattled up the gravel drive just as the last light was strung. She climbed out with her jean jacket buttoned to the top, her hair tied back, and the faint scent of melted wax clinging to her hands.
“Where’ve you been?” Michael asked.
“Cemetery,” she said simply.
Michael grunted, dragging on his cigarette. “You and your Nonna’s superstitions.”
“It’s not superstition,” she shot back. “It’s All Hallows’ Eve.”
Sofia was twenty-one, born in 1972 — too young to have lived through the era of open prejudice her grandparents had endured, but close enough to have grown up hearing the stories at kitchen tables and family funerals. She still remembered how her grandmother would dress in black, light a candle on Halloween night, and take her to St. Alphonsus Cemetery to whisper prayers over the graves.
She also carried those customs forward in her own way. In her room she kept a small home altar — a lace-covered table with framed photos of her grandparents, a few prayer cards, a rosary, a candle she relit every November, and a little brass crucifix. It wasn’t about ghosts. It was about belonging. Continuity. Faith.
Her uncle didn’t do those things anymore. By the time Michael came of age in the 1950s, the Sielis were busy proving they were “good Americans.” The language had faded. The rosaries stayed in drawers. Halloween became costumes, candy, and eventually Reagan-era conservatism.
“Uncle, lighting candles and saying prayers isn’t pagan,” she said. “It’s Catholic. It’s us.”
He exhaled smoke through his nose. “It’s old. People don’t do that anymore.”
“I do.”
✝️ Two Halloweens
By the time the trick-or-treaters arrived, two very different versions of Halloween unfolded on the Sieli property.
On the porch: Michael handed out candy to kids dressed as vampires, robots, and Freddy Krueger. Teenagers lined up to walk through the “haunted barn” — a fog-filled maze with jump-scares and rubber bats. Laughter carried across the vineyard.
At the end of the driveway: Pastor Hawkins and his congregation from New Hope Evangelical handed out Focus on the Family pamphlets titled “The Truth About Halloween.” One woman, clutching a Bible to her chest, warned a family about “inviting Satan into their home through costumes.” Another man quoted Pat Robertson about “demonic doorways.”
At the base of the fig tree: Sofia set her candle in a glass lantern and whispered the Ave Maria in Italian. A few older women from town — other Italian and Portuguese Catholics — joined her quietly, placing flowers and lighting votives.
For a moment, everything coexisted. Fog, light, prayer, protest.
But it didn’t stay quiet for long.
✉️ “Not American Values”
Pastor Hawkins approached Michael with a pamphlet in hand and that same careful, political smile. “Evening, Mr. Sieli. We’re just trying to keep folks aware. You know what they say — darkness spreads fastest when good men do nothing.”
Michael gave a dry chuckle. “I don’t think darkness is coming out of my barn, Pastor.”
“This holiday has pagan roots,” Hawkins said smoothly. “Our nation was built on Christian values. Real Christian values. And some of the things I’ve seen here tonight—” he nodded toward the fig tree, “—can be… confusing for children.”
Michael caught the word before it left the man’s mouth: Catholic. He’d heard the same tone before — in his father’s stories. How Protestants in town used to mutter about “popery” and “foreign religion.” How his father, Pietro, had to build their vineyard while local banks turned them down for loans because “Italians keep to their own.”
That was a different time, though. By the 1980s, people didn’t say it outright anymore. They said things like “not American values.”
Michael straightened. “They’re lighting candles. Remembering their dead. Not exactly a satanic ritual.”
Hawkins raised his palms. “I’m just saying — we need to be careful what kind of traditions we celebrate in our communities.”
🪔 Between Two Worlds
Sofia stayed on the porch steps, quietly watching. She knew how these conversations went. Her uncle was half on their side anyway. He didn’t believe in the “Satanic Panic” stuff, but he also thought her candle-lighting was a little backward — something you left behind once you became “respectable.”
Michael came over after Hawkins walked away. “Y’know, kid,” he said, lowering his voice, “they do have a point… you gotta admit Halloween has pagan origins. Samhain and all that.”
Sofia frowned. “That’s actually not true. That’s a lie that got repeated so much it became ‘common knowledge.’ Halloween comes straight out of the Catholic calendar — All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day. Just like Christmas has Christmas Eve and Easter has its vigil, All Saints has All Hallows’ Eve. The date wasn’t picked because of some pagan festival. In 609 A.D. Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Roman Pantheon to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs, establishing a feast in May. Later, in the eighth century, Pope Gregory III moved the feast to November 1 — dedicating an oratory in St. Peter’s to all saints. Pope Gregory IV then extended the celebration to the entire Western Church in the 9th century.
Michael raised an eyebrow.
“And trick-or-treating?” she continued. “That came from medieval kids going door to door asking for soul cakes in exchange for praying for the souls in Purgatory. Costumes came from the medieval tradition of mocking the devil — wearing masks and laughing at him because Christ already defeated death. The whole ‘pagan origins’ thing is just a myth that stuck because it sounds spooky and sells well on TV.”
Michael sighed, half amused. “Sofia the historian.”
She smirked. “Someone’s gotta set the record straight.”
A little boy in a pirate costume tugged at her sleeve.
“What’s that candle for?”
Sofia smiled. “For my family. For the ones who came before us.”
He nodded. “Cool.”
A church lady glared at her. She’d grown used to those looks.
📺 Headlines and Sermons
Later that night, Sofia flipped on the TV in the kitchen. The local news station ran a segment on the “Halloween controversy.”
A clean-cut man in a suit — an assistant pastor from Hawkins’ church — spoke into the camera:
“Americans need to remember this holiday’s pagan origins. These traditions don’t reflect the Christian values this country was founded on. We must not let darkness into our neighborhoods.”
James Dobson’s voice played in the background of the anchor’s recap, warning parents to “take back October 31st.” The camera cut to Pat Robertson on The 700 Club, declaring Halloween “a satanic ritual in disguise.”
The language was polished now. No slurs. No signs saying No Catholics Need Apply. But Sofia recognized it for what it was: the same old suspicion, wrapped in modern language.
🌿 Epilogue: All Souls’ Day
Two nights later, on November 2nd, the skeletons were back in storage and the fog machine was unplugged. The pamphlets had blown into the ditch down the road.
Sofia knelt beneath the fig tree at dusk, her lantern burning steadily. A few neighbors stopped by, curious. She explained — softly — about All Souls’ Day, about remembering the dead.
Michael stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, watching her. He wasn’t much for prayers, not anymore. But he remembered his father’s stories. He remembered how Pietro came home bloodied once in 1931 after a group of “good Christian boys” threw rocks at him outside the church on Good Friday.
He’d never faced that kind of hatred himself. By the time he grew up, Italians were in the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce.
But he still heard the echo of it sometimes, in the polite voices of men like Hawkins.
“Guess some things don’t change,” he muttered.
Sofia glanced up. “Then maybe some of us shouldn’t either.”
The church bells of St. Alphonsus rang through the valley. The candle burned steady in the wind — small, stubborn, and very much alive.
🕯️ Author’s Note: Lanterns in the Vineyard
The story you just read is fictional — but the sentiments, politics, and cultural tensions are real.
During the 1980s, evangelical Protestant movements like Focus on the Family (James Dobson), The 700 Club (Pat Robertson), and the Moral Majority (Jerry Falwell) waged cultural campaigns against Halloween, calling it a “pagan” or “satanic” holiday. Their rhetoric reflected broader anxieties of the decade — the so-called Satanic Panic era — and was often laced with old biases that, while softened, never fully disappeared.
For Italian American Catholics, Halloween wasn’t about devil worship. It was entwined with La Vigilia di Tutti i Santi — All Hallows’ Eve — a night tied to All Saints and All Souls’ Day. Families would visit cemeteries, light candles, and whisper prayers for their departed. In some homes, small altars — like Sofia’s — were maintained year-round to honor loved ones who had passed.
By the late 20th century, those customs had begun to fade in many Italian American communities as assimilation deepened and American pop culture reshaped holidays. But pockets of tradition remained — small, stubborn, flickering like the candles at the base of a family fig tree.
This chapter places Sofia in that world — a young woman born in the 1970s, straddling old customs and modern culture, facing not the open bigotry her grandparents did in the 1930s, but its more polished descendants. It’s also about Michael — a man who never personally faced prejudice but grew up with its shadow in his family’s stories — and how generational perspectives shape identity.
🕯️ Halloween is many things in America. For families like the Sielis, it was never pagan, never demonic — just another night when the past quietly knocks on the door of the present.
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