To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here
If you assess the national landscape of outdoor Halloween decorations, Skelly is hard to miss.
Skelly the Skeleton, who debuted at Home Depot in 2020, is a whopping 12 feet tall, “big enough to look down on a basketball hoop,” as his creators put it. The team that brought him to life, so to speak, originally cherished only modest sales expectations – perhaps a one or two-year run.
But Home Depot has since realized they have a cultural phenomenon on their hands.
Skelly has become the Tickle-Me-Elmo of yard decorations – the must-have holiday purchase that the home improvement store has been unable to keep on the shelves.
Part of the monstrosity’s spooky charm is reflected in the creativity of those who put him on display.
Someone not far from where we live has dressed one Skelly as Taylor Swift and another as Travis Kelce – presumably the wealthiest, most influential un-dead couple on the planet.
Others leave their skeletons up year-round, rotating Skelly’s identity from that of a pilgrim to Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or a summer beach bum. You can even enhance your front-yard drama with Skelly’s official skeletal pet dog or cat.
For those who simply must outdo their neighbors, now there’s Ultra Skelly, who is app-controlled and fully animated. This latest and greatest skeleton is equipped with a glowing interior, Bluetooth-enabled voice effects, and eyes that can track the movements of five-year-olds who want nothing more than a Snickers bars. Not that any of those children will end up in therapy 25 years from now.
When asked how his team decided to create Skelly, Lance Allen, Home Depot’s senior merchant of holiday decorations, insists, “Everybody loves a skeleton.”
That is such an interesting statement.
Skeletons, when you think about it, are a dramatic reminder that (apart from the inbreaking of the Apocalypse) not one of us is going to get out of this world alive.
What is the meaning of life? One answer is that the meaning of life is that life comes to an end. If you have a healthy heart, it will beat about 100,000 times over the next 24 hours. But one day your heart will stop. One day you, too, will be nothing but a skeleton – although presumably not standing in your neighbor’s yard dressed like Peyton Manning.
We all live under the tyranny of an approaching expiration date.
Historically, some cultures (medieval Europe comes to mind) have been obsessively focused on the reality of death. Skeletons were front and center in the art of the Middle Ages. Paintings provided vivid depictions of the conditions that might be awaiting us in the grave.
So, what do we need to know right now?
We need to know if God is real. And if God actually cares. And if God can do something about this intractable, inevitable, overwhelming enemy called death.
At the very heart of Christianity, of course, is the claim that Jesus did something about death on the first Easter morning. His resurrection is like a supernatural down payment guaranteeing the ultimate resurrection of his followers.
Centuries ago, churches began to make an interesting public statement in support of that idea. They began to bury their dead right next to the church. Gone were scary cemeteries down the road or in the woods.
Some churches (such as St. Peter’s in Rome and Westminster Abbey in London) have even buried the faithful in vaults under the floor.
Day by day, worshippers might walk past the graves of those who used to sit alongside them. Or they may literally stand on those who have gone before.
Isn’t that kind of creepy?
Many would suggest it’s just the opposite. Followers of Jesus are actually making a statement:
We’re not afraid of death any more. We can meet with confidence in the presence of the deceased.
The apostle Paul declares: “’Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’…Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 15:54-57).
There is a God whose love transcends the worst thing that can ever happen to us.
In response to which we can only say:
Take that, Ultra Skelly.