Explainer
Comment
Death & life
6 min read

Dying well: what is neglected needs to be put right

How each of us can prepare ourselves and those we leave behind.

Matthew is the author of Your Last Gift – Getting Your Affairs in Order.

A group of grieving friends with their hands on each others backs.
The Good Funeral Guide on Unsplash.

In their November 2023 Theos report Love, Grief and Hope: Emotional responses to death and dying in the UK, Madeline Pennington and Nathan Mladin produce the surprising finding that, over the past year, one quarter of Brits had thought about their own death at least once a week. They go on to consider related emotional responses, chiefly fear. But, however often we think about death (maybe never), what do we do to prepare for the certainty of it, when we are used to making all sorts of preparations for practically everything else in our lives? 

First, we can, without being morbid, live our lives in broad terms in the consciousness that we are mortal (and, if you will forgive me as a classicist for delving into Latin, living ‘sub specie aeternitatis’ which means ‘from the standpoint of eternity’). Second, there are things we can do in terms of getting our house in order, both for our own peace of mind and for the benefit of our loved ones and those we leave behind. This is both spiritually and materially, though I would want to argue as a Christian that the whole of life (whether in this world or in the next) combines both aspects.  

Having had quite a feisty and competitive brother/sister relationship (with not a little ribbing from her about my own faith), we came to enjoy the warmest possible sibling love for and appreciation of each other. 

My dear sister Debbie died aged just 49 in July 2005. She had telephoned me only eight months before to tell me of the grim diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer, saying that there were two things she needed to sort out: her will and her relationship with God. I replied (as a Christian and as a private client lawyer) that we could sort both those out. I referred Debbie to a vicar I knew in a church round the corner from where she lived. She was a bit hesitant, saying that, having kept God at arm’s length for all her life, wasn’t it a bit presumptuous now to be knocking on the vicar’s door? I suggested that she should think of it from his point of view, in terms of job satisfaction: that after all was precisely what he was there to do, telling people about God and helping them to find a personal faith.   

So that’s just what she did, coming to that faith herself following time with the vicar, with me and with other friends, in the February. And she died as a self-proclaimed Christian five months later. For me, the most precious thing apart from knowing that she would be with Jesus forever was this: having had quite a feisty and competitive brother/sister relationship (with not a little ribbing from her about my own faith), we came to enjoy the warmest possible sibling love for and appreciation of each other. 

Second, my mother, whose ideas of Christianity were never terribly clear, though she was a very faithful listener of my sermons, came to faith (as I saw it) just 12 days before she died in May 2010. It was at a home communion given by one of the local clergy team that, as she received the bread and/or the wine (I forget which), a most powerful voice within my spirit told me that she had received Jesus. And that night, by way of confirmation, my wife Annie had a very clear dream of my mother (it had to be her, wearing her most distinctive pink kaftan) dancing at the foot of the Cross. 

We lived just five minutes from Mum and, again, my early evening visits to see her, to chat, to read from the Bible and to pray were somehow transformed. While I am not sure that she had the same clear consciousness of having moved from darkness to light as had Debbie, I was quite clear that she had – and noted in my prayers at her funeral that at the end she had received Jesus. 

Third is my very close friend Jim who died aged just 67 in November 2020: I had talked to him about the Christian faith on a number of occasions, but he simply didn’t want to know. Then just one month before he died, in a telephone conversation with him in hospital Jim asked me to explain it, from a position of dire physical need and wanting to hear. I didn’t know how ill he was and, having explained the essence of Christian belief in very simple terms, prayed with him over the telephone.   

As it happens, Jim survived another month at home, during which time I was able to visit him four times and (now having been ordained) give him and his Christian wife Judi Home Communion, as well as pointing him to and talking about Mark’s Gospel and praying with him. His new faith led to a new intensity in our friendship. Jim was quite clear about his new relationship with Jesus, seeing himself as the lost sheep, on which I preached at his funeral, before (as a profoundly moving experience) conducting his burial. 

None of us of course knows for sure what happens after death. But Christians are by God’s grace given this ‘sure and certain hope’ of an eternity to be spent with Christ in God’s new creation. And it’s the clear Christian message that that eternity starts now, when we come to faith.  There’s a new relationship with God in Christ and, which is my experience, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially precious when those folk are close to us anyway.   

And then of course, perhaps most importantly, what is broken needs to be put right. 

That’s the spiritual aspect.  What of the material – by which I mean all the practical ‘stuff’: those who are left behind having to sort out our possessions, Inheritance Tax where payable and a whole host of other things?  It is a subject touched on in the Bible, perhaps surprisingly.  Consider Paul writing to Timothy that a person should provide for their relatives and especially close family), which I take it would include post-death as well as lifetime provision.  And then supremely of course Jesus in providing for his dear mother by entrusting her to his beloved disciple John.                        

In this context, I can do no more than make a few pointers, which with other suggestions I develop in my book.   

There are what I call ‘The Three Essentials’: Lasting Powers of Attorney in case of mental incapacity (for both property & financial affairs and health & welfare), Wills (including the all-important choice of executors) and funeral arrangements. Just 44 per cent of UK adults have made a will. 

Then there’s a host of other things, including appointing guardians for any minor children, providing for dependent relatives and making arrangements for pets.   What about access to digital assets, for example?  Let alone dealing with things about the home. 

And then of course, perhaps most importantly, what is broken needs to be put right - relationships, where forgiveness could be sought or given.  And, more widely, are there people you want to spend more time with, things you want to do or places to visit? 

My suggestion is that dying well embraces first of all the peace which comes from the belief that Jesus has died the death my sins deserve and consequently a restored relationship with God our Heavenly Father; and second, making what practical arrangements we can in advance, to ease the stress of those we leave behind in sorting out our affairs.  

 

Matthew Hutton is the author of Your Last Gift – Getting Your Affairs in Order.

Explainer
Creed
Death & life
Monsters
Paganism
5 min read

Will the owner of ‘Halloween’ please come and collect it?

A mutant festival of saints, spirits, and supermarket costumes resists belonging to anyone
A witch, a priest and a druid stand in a store and look quizzically towards a halloween pumpkin
Nick Jones, Midjourney.ai

The trouble with modern Halloween is that it’s hard to say who it really belongs to. Our contemporary public holiday – 31 October, when people dress up as skeletons, light jack-o-lanterns, and go ‘trick-or-treating’ – has a few prospective owners.  

Perhaps Christians could claim it. The term “Halloween” is a shortening of ‘All Hallow’s Eve’, which is the day before All Saint’s Day (1 November) in the Church calendar.  

But this doesn’t fit with a few things. Don’t Christians dislike all that dressing up as evil spirits, and summoning up misrule and revelry? Instead, the case is made for a pagan ownership of Halloween: it was all due to a Celtic festival called Samhain (pronounced ‘sow-in’). This was a day for appeasing evil spirits, contacting the dead, and acts of mischief – all better fits for modern Halloween, surely? 

Sadly, we just don’t know enough about Samhain to say. We only have evidence about it from centuries after the Christian era, and in limited scraps like: “Samhain, when the summer goes to its rest”. It is unlikely the Christians invented this, to be sure – but none of the data tells us how it was celebrated.  

In fact, there is no evidence at all that All Saints Day was a churchy attempt to ‘take over’ a pre-existing pagan festival. From the get-go, Christians commemorated their dead on the basis that they were still alive in heaven, and able to bring prayers to God. A quick peek at the Book of Revelation (the final book of the Bible) gives a behind-the-curtain look: “and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel”.  

Over time, it became more official which ‘holy ones’, or saints, should be honoured at which times. This was not about making dead Christians into gods, though. A famous theologian called St Augustine explains the proper view of the early Christians as they kept hold of bones and clothing from their dead: “We do not build temples, and ordain priests, rites, and sacrifices for these same martyrs; for they are not our gods, but their God is our God”.  

Gradually, a date was set to celebrate all those great men and women in heaven – from this came All Saints, or All Hallows Day. A tradition in northern Europe set this on the 1 November: “As a jewel worn on the brow sparkles time and again, so November at its beginning is resplendent with the praise given to all the saints” reports an English calendar from around 800AD.  

It is all well and good celebrating those who have made it to heaven. But what about the majority of Christians? Those who had died unrepentant and lukewarm – what on earth could be done for them? Here came another separate development: offering prayers and worship on behalf of those who had died as forgiven sinners, but who were still, if you like, serving their time for their bad choices.  

It gradually became the norm to tack that practice onto the pre-existing All Saints Day, so that the souls of regular Joes could have powerful heavenly intercessors close by. And so, All Souls Day became an established part of the Church’s year too, falling on 2 November.  

 

But here’s the twist. This season of ‘Hallowtide’ (All Saints and All Souls together) carried on for centuries, until England suddenly and violently abandoned it all in the sixteenth century. Seemingly overnight, the Reformations of the Tudor monarchs ended All Souls Day by scrapping all mention of a purgatory for the dead, and attempts to pray for them there. All Saints Day limped on in the new Established Religion as a remembrance of Christian exemplars – but they were not to be thought of as in radio contact from heaven anymore.  

Some people tried to carry on as usual, in illicit gatherings on hilltops, where they would burn straw, and gather to ask for help from great saints and pray for loved ones. But the majority followed the new religious settlement and tried to forge new communal rituals as best they could. The night still had a ‘supernatural’ afterglow thanks to centuries of the now-absent All Saints and All Souls. 

Then, in the nineteenth century, there was a comeback. Irish immigration to the USA and Great Britain plonked a fully formed Hallowtide into English-speaking culture again. It took like a duck to water. Perhaps this was to be expected. Here was a civilisation which had been rapidly deprived of its ordinary way of expressing connection to their deceased loved ones, as well as a sense of protection from heavenly guardians. They were clearly starving for some way to communicate feelings about ‘the beyond’, and to find hope in the darkening, colder days.  

‘Halloween’, really a modern döppleganger of All Hallow’s Eve, quickly became a popular national custom – a world custom, indeed, due to US influence. It took from Christianity that otherwordly atmosphere – but it did not jettison any of the customs that had arisen since the Reformation, and which were themselves continuations of folky responses to the coming of Winter; Samhain is almost certainly a part of that background here, even if it is not a direct connection, as we have seen. 

This Halloween mystery has a twist, then. Here is really a mutant of a festival that belongs to no one in particular - and that is the point. One could really call it one of modern pluralistic society’s great achievements. It has taken over management of this eerie season from the church, and arguably made a successful shared custom out of it. On the other hand, it is arguably consumeristic, tacky and frequently immoral: it was only a few years ago that supermarket costumes allowing people to dress as ‘mentally ill’ showcased this shallowness. 

So, as a Christian, I have some regrets that Christianity does not really ‘own’ modern Halloween, anymore. Because the original All Hallows, as well as All Souls, seem to me to be a historic high point of confidence about our human fate. Here was a whole civilisation that seemed to announce to itself, every November, that death, human wickedness, and the Devil, were not in charge here – those who had died in Christ were now more fully alive; that no one is so beyond hope that they are not worth praying for. The darkening nights and colder air must have seemed less daunting to them.  

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