In case you missed it, I was on the Moody Radio program “Up For Debate” with Julie Roys discussing the Christian response to Halloween. Click and take a listen.
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Every year on Halloween many Americans become anxious. Not from the possibility of their houses being “toilet papered” or “egged”, but from sinister evil that lurks on this devilish holiday. It wasn’t long ago that we told kids to be on the lookout for razors in candy.
So much of Halloween’s harrowing tales are ingrained from movies and television, in which malevolent characters on a quest for death and destruction: scary masked men, evil spirits, or a machete yielding murderer runs a muck. Many people enjoy the thrill of a scary movie and see Halloween as benign but others truly believe Halloween to be an evil affair.
Some of the supposed origins of Halloween came from a pre-medieval Celtic pagan festival, Samhain. Those who celebrated this festival on the heels of the summer, believed that the world of the living and the dead were thinly divided on or about October 31. Agricultural duties were carried out to prepare for winter. Some rituals were preformed to placate evil spirits. It is difficult to know what exactly happened during Samhain because we do not have any credible ancient first-hand accounts. Later pagans and Celtic people recaptured the festival in other localized traditions.
The word “Halloween” has nothing to do with Samhain or evil occult practices. Early Christians contextualized European winter celebrations into All Saints Day as a way to remember and honor faithful Christian saints. The day before All Saints was celebrated as “All Hallows Eve” and the phrase morphed into Hallowe’en or just Halloween. Modern celebrations of Christmas, Easter, and Epiphany are all contextualized holidays that honor Christian beliefs. Local pagan practices were replaced with Christian ones, in order to help express Christ in local forms to local peoples. By separating All Hallows Eve from the pre-Christian practices, Christians can take comfort in understanding the historical Christian remembrance that is associated with All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day.
With Halloween upon us all the ghosts, witches, and ghouls come to play… err, trick-or-treat. Poorly made scary movies run non-stop on TV. Millions will give out candy to kids and people will participate in those zombie 5ks. Adults spend about $6.7 billion a year for parties, costumes, and candy. With Americans spending that much money on this festive holiday, is there a sinister evil moving among us, pushing us to celebrate a poorly documented holiday?
There is more to Halloween than we think. Many have made Halloween to be an evil day, which has not always been evil since its inception. What started as a Christian day to prepare for All Saints’ Day (November 1st), Halloween became a spooky, evil, and candy filled observance. The term “Halloween” from its beginnings, had nothing to do with any pagan or evil beliefs. The Christian festival All Hallows Eve morphed into our current word Hallowe’en.
Many believe Halloween is associated with the pagan concept of Samhain, a Gaelic harvest festival in which the beginning of the year and worlds of the living and dead would be thinly divided. It’s true, early Christians converted this practice and aligned it with a Christian observance.
The fact is we don’t really know what happened in the Samhain harvest festival. We have historical records that roughly inform us what the festival was about, but nothing certain. Regardless, the question remains, can Christians celebrate this “evil” holiday?
Professor of philosophy at Biola University (a Christian university), John Mark Reynolds helps us understand how Christians can reject the overtly evil undertones of Halloween:
Christians have the right to reject [the pagan] interpretation. My neighbor’s celebration of Halloween as a pagan festival does not require me to lose All Hallows Eve, because of course in the actual historical memory of the West that is what Halloween is. The day after All Hallows, Christians celebrate the lives of the greatest of the faithful who have died and gone to God. On All Hallows the fact that we will all die is brought home to us. We do fear death, but rejoice in the victory of Christ over death. The costumes and the joy poke fun at the diabolic, they do not embrace it.
Thomas More once said that the Devil cannot stand to be mocked. By spending the night of October 31 filled with fear over what evils might be occurring (and sometimes are), we live in the fear that Satan wants us to live in. By laughing, mocking, and even “cartooning” evil with goofy costumes we can take a posture of triumph with Christ.
We Christians certainly should not take light the power of evil. We do not practice occult activities of the paranormal, but the evils of this world are real. Prostitution, human trafficking, children dying of starvation, murder, and torture are the real evils of this world. We Christians should not fear a kid who wears a Sponge Bob costume and spends a night with his friends enjoying candy. Certainly, there are greater evils than an underwater sponge.
Is Halloween evil? It is, if you want it to be evil. The truth is All Hallows Eve (Halloween, the Christian practice of it) was corrupted. Christians can take comfort in understanding the historical Christian remembrance that is associated with All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day. Teaching our children to remember the “saints” of our lives and the Christian witness encourages us to celebrate All Saints Day. Christians can even make Halloween fun for children by having events in churches or in our communities where children and their parents can dress up, play games, remember our “saints” and share some treats in a safe place.
What is it about the paranormal that Americans find so fascinating? A Gallup poll found that about 75% of Americans believe in the paranormal (ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, etc…) Nearly 50% believe in ghosts and 41% believe in extrasensory perception. And, almost a third believe that ghosts can haunt people. There is an extremely small percentage of Americans (less than 1%) that celebrate Halloween in neo-pagan ways and most see it as a time to dress up. Many in Christianity believe Halloween to be such an evil day that they shun any connection with it. Still, we find so many fixated on the holiday with billions spent on costumes, candy, and parties.
Maybe it goes beyond a fascination and the paranormal has become a love affair. According to Romance Writers of America, paranormal romance books are the fasting growing segment in their industry with such big sellers as the Twilight series selling 1.3 million copies on the first day of release. (Ladies, Edward or Jacob?) In fall of 2005, we saw a rise in shows like Medium, Ghost Whisperer, Night Stalker, Supernatural, A Haunting hitting the TV scene. Ratings for shows like Ghost Hunters and Celebrity Ghost Stories continue to drive ad sales.
Our preoccupation with the unknown is nothing new. Throughout human history we have always wanted to believe in something greater than ourselves. Religion can give us a sense of divine comfort and direction but for some that is not enough. For those who seek the paranormal it is a way to have a connection with supernatural forces. Paranormal interests are not only for men, but also women. Even housewives are getting in on the act by forming their own paranormal groups.
Lynn Schofield Clark, associate professor of communication at the University of Denver and author of From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural, explains why we love the paranormal:
At its heart, this interest in the paranormal and supernatural is about coming to terms with the fact that we have less control over things than we thought we did,” Clark says. “And with the fact that maybe we know less than we thought we did, too. Stories about the supernatural and paranormal occur right at the intersection of faith and science. They’re titillating, because they ask us to consider questions such as, ‘How do we know what is real?’ and ‘How do we know that what we think is real is actually real?’
Keeping such fascinations are a part of life as long as they do not become obsessions. Obsessions with the communication with the dead, occult practices, and the like are often fill with people searching for meaning but unable to find it. Abuse is common. Fortunetellers are often people making money off of desperate people stuck in grief with the loss of their loved ones. Occult groups are often places of manipulation.
For some, the scare of a movie gives us a sense of “safe adventure”. We sit in a theater with others to be scared only to be reassured with pop corn and soda. For others, the mystery is always there to prove if ghosts are real or not. No matter our level of interest in the paranormal, it is part of our humanness to want to know more. To discover. To try to push the boundaries of the known and unknown.
Let us not push our boundaries too far from curiosity to obsession. I pray that we can separate the desire for a suspenseful thrill and unhealthy fascination with evil this Halloween. Stay safe.
Many Christian families and churches dread the end of October as the days draw closer to Halloween.
I spent a good deal of time in Halloween blog post advocating for Christians to reclaim Halloween as Christian celebration. For those of you who follow a lectionary or liturgical calendar, November 4th is All Saints Sunday. I’m sure that there are Christians trying to make sense of these events for churches. Seeing Halloween through All Saint’s Day, Christians can remember loved ones and thank God for those who labored as saints of Christianity. There are a number of churches that hold fall festivals, trick or trunk events, or other safe trick or treat events.
Instead of drawing attention to Halloween as our culture does, through scary movies, gory displays, and haunted hay rides, we are going to spend some time honoring our loved ones who passed away on this All Saints Sunday. We will have a special time of remembrance for our personal ‘saints’ who have passed away. We did this last year in worship and it provided a very meaningful time of reflection.
Historically, All Saints Day was a way for Christians to remember martyrs and saints. Most protestants are uneasy with using the word “saint” because of Catholic theology and veneration of saints. The New Testament mentions ‘saint’ over 60 times. This Sunday, we will be talking about ‘cheeky saints.’ What is a cheeky saint?
Can there be a Christian Halloween? Can a Christian celebrate Halloween, which honors ghouls, demons, ghosts, and everything that goes bump in the night dangerous or even evil?
Somewhere, in the halls of history, Halloween or All Hallows Eve, got hijacked. What started as a day to prepare for All Saints’ Day (November 1st), Halloween became a spooky, evil, and candy filled observance. The term “Halloween” from its beginnings, had nothing to do with any pagan or evil beliefs. The Christian festival All Hallows Eve morphed into our current term Hallowe’en.
The key in understanding of the origins of the term Halloween comes from the sense of what is “hallowed” or “holy”. In the Lord’s Prayer, Christians pray, “Our Father, in heaven, hallowed be your name…” In the fourth century, John Chrysostom tells us that the Eastern church celebrated a festival in honor of all saints who died. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Christians celebrated “All Saints’ Day” formally.
How did Halloween become associated with evil spirits? When we look at history we discover:
More than a thousand years ago Christians confronted pagan rites appeasing the lord of death and evil spirits… the druids, in what is now Britain and France, observed the end of summer with sacrifices to the gods. It was the beginning of the Celtic year, and they believed Samhain, the lord of death, sent evil spirits abroad to attack humans, who could escape only by assuming disguises and looking like evil spirits themselves. The waning of the sun and the approach of dark winter made the evil spirits rejoice and play nasty tricks.
If the Christian observance of Halloween began with a religious focus, how can we reclaim and celebrate Halloween from its current feared status? Here are 7 ways Christians can take back Halloween:
Some of us may be uncomfortable with the holiday that is upon us: the dreaded Halloween! What an evil holiday! But, wait! Is Halloween really that evil?
The word “Halloween”, as originally indented, was a Christian term. More accurately called, “All Hallows Eve” (hallow meaning “holy”) was a preparation day for All Saints Day, a day that was originally created to remember the Christian martyrs and saints.
Halloween is often associated with the pagan concept of Samhain, the festival where ancient pagans believed that the worlds of the living and dead would been thinly divided. But, we have seen from the other ancient pagan festivals associated with Christmas and Easter, pagan connections do not serve as a reason why we cannot celebrate a Christian holiday. The pre-Christian practices of Samhain have been clearly separated from All Hallows Eve by the historical Church, but many Christians have abandoned this day of remembrance.
However, by understanding Halloween through All Saints Day, rather than evil occult connections, Christians can take comfort in knowing that All Hallows Eve or Halloween be a Christian observance. Here is why:
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