Laura Elly Hudson.jpg

Every year in mid-October, two events nudge me to contemplate the mystery of identity. The first is the birthday of my oldest son, Lucas. Always a big day for him, this year he’s old enough to get a learner’s permit and start learning to drive. He’s eager to take this next step in putting on a self-sufficient, adult identity.

Lucas’ birthday also marks an important milestone for me, the day I put on a new identity myself — with a lot of fear and trembling. I barely thought of myself as an adult at the time, but bringing my baby boy home from the hospital and taking on the responsibility for his well-being, I had to learn to see myself as a mother. To my mind, “mother” is one of the most significant adult identities I could have.

After Lucas’ birthday, our family prepares for the second event: Halloween. “What do you want to be?” I ask my youngest son, Ben. “Scary or funny? Animal, superhero or monster?” Perusing racks of costumes, Ben considers which identity he wants to try out on the one night each year when people of all ages publicly play with identity-transformation.

As we grow into adulthood, certain traits in our personalities seem to become fixed. We establish careers and relationships, living situations and habits, and we begin to define ourselves and others accordingly. Wife and mother, pastor and writer: These are identities I have claimed.

But at Halloween, for a few hours, we put away our everyday selves and try on identities we would otherwise reject. We come out into the streets experimenting with possible selves we would never otherwise bring out of the shadows. My son gets to try being a terrifying ghoul or a powerful overlord. I get to try being an evil queen, a black cat or a magical elf.

The shapeshifting of Halloween is both a delight and a danger. Some religious traditions see only the danger. Understandably, humans fear chaos, and we want to be able to rely on things or people to remain fixed and recognizable. Traditions in general function to create stability and continuity in the midst of changing conditions.

Yet Halloween delights us because it reminds us how much more there is to our personhood than our everyday identities. “Do I contradict myself?” writes Walt Whitman in “Song of Myself.” “Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” Every human being is a sacred, fathomless mystery, layered with light and shadow, and a changing identity is part of that mystery. As we grow from childhood to adulthood, new personality facets are revealed and old ones fade.

Ultimately, as my Christian spiritual tradition affirms, there is one identity that never changes. It is given to human beings when we come into this life, and nothing can add to it or take it away, though we are always growing into it. Each one of us is a beloved child of God, wondrous to behold.