Ray Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree”: A Chilling Delight

A look at one of Bradbury's neglected novels for young readers which is especially appropriate for this particular time of the year.

From The Imaginative Conservative

By Michal De Sapio

Fear and fun mingle in a dark embrace in these days of late October and early November. All these magical feelings are at the historical heart of Halloween, and Ray Bradbury has the children in “The Halloween Tree” unravel this mystic chain that unites us with our ancestors of long ago.

Among Ray Bradbury’s many valuable science fiction and fantasy works are some designed specifically for younger readers. One of these is the delightful and strangely neglected The Halloween Tree (1972), which by rights should be as much a part of this season as spiced cider and jack-o’-lanterns.

The short and sweet novel concerns a group of small-town boys who gather on Halloween night for a spree of trick-or-treating. When one of their number, the fun-loving Joe Pipkin, fails to appear, they embark on a search for him that takes them across space and time and to the heart of the origins of Halloween itself. Their spirit guide on this quest is the extravagantly named Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, a kindly personification of death and the holiday that memorializes it.

The Halloween Tree comes especially recommended to readers aged 11 to 16. Yet it has more than enough meat on its bones (pardon the metaphor) to satisfy thoughtful adults: through his juvenile characters, Bradbury explores serious spiritual and anthropological topics amid plenty of delicious, evocative description, centering on the delights of autumn, a season for which the author clearly had a special relish. Bradbury’s trademark blend of nostalgia and fantasy creates a uniquely cathartic experience as the eight friends are whisked back in time to witness the death and burial customs of ancient Egypt, Britain of Druid times, medieval France (with a stop at Notre Dame, which they help build), and modern Mexico, and see how they contribute to the symbols and traditions of the modern Halloween. Along the way, they pursue their lost friend, Pipkin, who has been “borrowed” by Death and is being held ransom.

The historical scenes make The Halloween Tree a uniquely educational as well as diverting experience for young readers. Bradbury also mines subtle but unmistakable Christian themes of sacrifice as the boys must each give up a year of their lives in order to ransom Pipkin and save him from the clutches of Death. In an obvious allusion to the Eucharist, the boys gather to consume a skull-shaped candy imprinted with their friend’s name to seal their sacrificial pact. Pipkin himself comes to symbolize the spirit of childhood and joy, whose disappearance threatens the good order of boyhood life in the Rockwellian Midwest town.

Bradbury suggests how Halloween, as the festival of death, is the dark counterpart to the joy expressed in Christmas and Easter and that its themes and concerns reach deep into the human psyche. For all of human history, people have wondered where their loved ones go after they die. Physical death is closely connected in our imaginations with the “death” of the year and the completion of the harvest, a crucial event in traditional agrarian societies. As the days get shorter and darkness seems to descend on nature, ancient man (who lacked scientific explanations of reality) worried about whether the sun and the spring would ever return. The return of light and hope could only be secured by performing rites to appease the gods. Perhaps such rites could also allow one to commune with the souls of dead loved ones, welcoming them back into the family circle for a short time. Thus, fear and fun mingle in a dark embrace in these days of late October and early November. All these magical feelings are at the historical heart of Halloween, and Bradbury has the children in The Halloween Tree unravel this mystic chain that unites us with our ancestors of long ago.

Along the way, Moundshroud makes sage observations about how beliefs and religions evolve throughout the history of civilization, helping build beacons of light for humanity in the midst of life’s darkness and providing points of continuity amid change and mortality. Most surprising is the hidden connection between Halloween and Easter, suggesting the powerful antithesis of death and resurrection. The “Halloween tree” itself functions as a darker sibling to the Christmas tree, with Bradbury once again hinting that things we take to be total opposites are in fact closely intertwined.

The experiences of Halloween explored in the novel culminate in modern Mexico, where the holiday lives most vividly. As the boys descend upon a Mexican village, they are impressed by the solemn grandeur of the candlelight ceremonies of El dia de los Muertos, where families gather in cemeteries to honor their departed loved ones. Familial devotion and respect mix with satire and laughter, with toys and games that mock human pretensions and convey the truth that we are all made equal by the great leveler, death. Far from leading to moods of gloom and despair, the inevitability of death allows us joyfully to embrace our humanity and surrender to a beneficent higher power. Tom Skelton, the boy who functions as the book’s protagonist (his name an obvious play on “skeleton”) exclaims, “Oh, this is the best Halloween of all!” as he and his friends gleefully consume the bone-shaped candies that give a sweet taste to mortality. The use of humor and laughter to neutralize and soften death is part of what Halloween is about.

Bradbury suggests, gently and without moralizing, that modern society has lost a feeling for its roots. By leading the boys on their Halloween journey, Moundshroud helps them restore this lost link to the past and teaches them the power of remembrance to connect our individual selves to humanity as a whole. While at the beginning of the book the boys are tongue-tied when trying to give Moundshroud an explanation of what their Halloween costumes signify, by story’s end they understand both who they are and where they are going.

Toward the book’s end Moundshroud sums up the lessons of Halloween night: “Night and day. Summer and winter, boys. Seedtime and harvest. Life and death. That’s what Halloween is, all rolled up in one.” Standing at the threshold of light and darkness, this liminal holiday speaks to mankind’s deepest anxieties about decay and death and its most fervent hopes for future life.

The adventure story winds up back home on Tom’s porch, where he reflects on the night’s experiences and communes in thought with his new friend Moundshroud, who sits on his own perch atop the Haunted House at the edge of town, beside the titular Halloween Tree—a tree festooned with blazing jack-o’-lanterns depicting the varied faces of humanity. We learn at last what Moundshroud’s role in the world really is, and we also learn the realistic reason why Pipkin was absent (no spoilers here!). The book ends with Moundshroud’s final, reassuring message to Tom that “When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.”

Yes, death is the enemy, yet with a shift in perspective it can be embraced as a friend. Bradbury taps into traditions of representing death in human form from the ancient Greek Thanatos to the Grim Reaper of medieval and modern imagination, of which Moundshroud is close kin.

And Bradbury conjures a panoply of Halloween imagery including ashes, smoke, coffins, tombs, mummies, gargoyles, witches, cobwebs, and leaves blown in the chill October wind—suggestive of human souls being carried away to eternity. He fosters empathy for all his characters, and the chiaroscuro mixture of excitement, fear, merriment, and strange comfort is perfect and unforgettable.

Although there is occasionally some awkward gear-shifting between the story’s two goals—learning the spirituality of Halloween and saving Pipkin—it ultimately doesn’t matter because Bradbury, a master storyteller, keeps things flying right along (just like the boys on their magical kite) with plenty of sensory detail and intellectual food for thought. At 145 pages, there is not a wasted moment and The Halloween Tree ought to become a favorite with families and schools in this bewitching time of year. Who knew Halloween had so much on its mind?