We are at that time of the year again for the holiday known as Halloween. It is not possible to write an article on this subject without offending someone, so please before I am condemned as a heretic, Satan worshiper, or (not this) Right-wing radical conservative killjoy Christian, please here me out on this one.
Without any doubt at all, Halloween is the absolute most charged, controversial, and even convoluted holiday that we have in America. The only holiday with matching convolution is actually Christmas with the accusations to Pagan celebrations masked with the birth of Christ placed by the medieval church “because people will celebrate anyway.” I will say hands down that the study of Halloween is even harder to untangle. So for this study, I will give the origins as I understand them, some interesting Halloween facts that can actually be verified, and even, yes, my opinions!
Origins
A simple Google of Halloween or even a trip to the local Christian bookstore to get armed to battle the devils of Halloween will tell you of the this holiday starting as a day to celebrate Samhain (often pronounced SOW-ween according to Ankerberg), the Celtic (or druid) god of death. According to these sources, the Druids believed in reincarnation and a worship of this god would save your loved ones from being reincarnated into some lesser life form. There is more to this story, but I am going to actually discount this as an origin to our modern day Halloween. I am not a dedicated historian, but those historians that I have studied universally discount much of this because the Druid culture is not something that was even written, and we only have pieces of information from varied conquerors and archeologists. I will point out that even Ankerbergs book gets most of the Druid conversation from Encyclopedia Brittanica Macropedia. If you are going to discount a holiday for faith, though, the human sacrificing Druids worshiping a god of death is definitely a great angle!! There is a second reason that I discount this as a specific origin to Halloween, and that being that no matter the culture or the religion functions, you will find traces of a worship day in any old religion, because ancient peoples had a inborn search for God, which they expressed in times of great importance to their culture, and what better time of importance than the end of harvest time when all of that culture’s food was harvested and stored, and they celebrated the end of the work year (think youth and the last day of school!).
So on to some more verifiable information for the next part of the origins. The name Halloween actually comes from a Christian root. In 607 Bishop of Rome Bontiface IV dedicates the Pantheon to “the service of God in the name of the ever-Virgin Mary and all martyrs” (Schaff, Mediaeval Christianity). The commemoration became known as All Saints Day, a day that in the eastern church was actually already being celebrated around Pentecost. It is unclear exactly when the date was transferred to November 1, but in 835. Gregory the IV influenced that All Saints Day was to be celebrated empire-wide on November 1 (and a related holiday All Souls Day later became celebrated on November 2). The term Halloween comes from the night before all saints day, and literally means the night before the celebration of All Saints Day. Sadly, this holiday did become a day to spend praying people out of purgatory, which is actually one of the main initial reasons for the protestant church to disdain Halloween. I will through in here, that is was actually at midnight on Halloween in 1517 that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door in Wittenberg, but contrary to some opinion, he did to in protest to selling indulgences on this day get the most people seeing it for the purpose of a public debate (there were going to be most people at Wittenberg on this day than any other).
So by now, you are saying, ‘this has nothing to do with Halloween’ and you are correct. That is because the puritans being very anti-catholic and in desire to set up a state religion in America modeling it after Calvin’s state of church in Geneva, they banned Halloween. Our modern Halloween actually comes from a cross between a merging of Celtic (Yes, Druid) custom, and the Catholic holiday of All Saints Evening from Ireland. Our modern Halloween was actually brought to us from Irish Catholics during a potato famine immigration to the United States. As for all of the interesting customs in Halloween, I will leave that to writers on the internet and other people, as my interest in this article is to provide some Christian insight.
First, I will address the issue of Witchcraft and Satan worship. There have been people who discount Halloween as evil citing that Satan is even evoked for his power on Halloween more than any other night. MacArthur correctly commented that Satan is not any more active on Halloween than he is any other day. Even according to self-professed (and actually studied Satanists), Halloween is a day enjoyed by them, but not one of any particular importance. The day that is considered the most important to the Satanist crowd is actually the Satanist’s own birthday because Satanism is at its root the worship of yourself. Witchcraft, being more of an ancient and pagan holiday does in fact celebrate Halloween as a holy day for them for reasons that I mention above. But that does make Halloween specifically Wiccan? Not any more than Christmas is Jewish because they celebrate Hanukkah at the same time. So here is the bottom line: If Halloween for you is Wicca, than it is Wicca, if it is a day to pray souls out of purgatory, than that is what it is, if it is a day to dress up in a costume and get free candy, than that is what it is for you.
Should Christians Engage in Halloween?
This is the most controversial of all. I was interested in various ministry opinions as I was researching this article. It is interesting to me that several ministries are very neutral, even ones that I thought would take an anti-Halloween stance. Indeed, there are three Christian responses, and I witnessed all three last year in my town. On Halloween, Rock Springs businesses in the old part of town open up in the afternoon and hand out candy to the kids. I went to watch the church responses. One church on the corner we dressed in Bible costumes, were handing out healthy snacks and Bible tracks. That church also had members walking through the crowds having conversations with people. Many of the churches down town were simply closed and chose not to participate, and one church set up a freaky haunted house (which I paid my two dollars to go through of course!) So which of these responses is correct? Lets examine each in detail.
Well, the last shall be first, so I will go right out and say that the last church with the haunted house was in the wrong. I base this on Scripture which tells us to be the Salt and the Light. Salt is preserving the culture, preventing it from slipping into apostasy. The church was active, and people knew their name after the haunted house, but it was not a place of holy worship, and it showed that participating in the evil that can be present in Halloween is OK in light of the fact that it is just a fun American Holiday. The second part of that verse had to do with light, which is a reference to Christians showing the way to light (that is God and salvation). This church did not talk about the Gospel, had to reverence for God, and was not at all helping people see their sins. I do not think that this church represented Christ well.
The next response that I will examine is the church that participated. This church was in the community, participating, but doing so appropriately. They were handing out tracks, which was their attempt to give the Gospel. They preserved the culture by showing a harvest type display devoid of evil images. I believe that this church was most in the right.
The last response was to do nothing. I think that in light of the controversy surrounding this holiday, this can be a correct response, but please do so with reverence and understanding, not just condemning the whole thing that Satanism.
When you boil it all down, Halloween in America is an American holiday, devoid of devotion and God. If you use it as a way to have clean fun, there is no reason to condemn it as evil. I definitely see some hairy roots in Halloween, and I do believe that some people go way to far down the wrong path. Just this year, I have heard about very small children dressing as “hookers”, people who forget that children are scared of lunatics with chainsaws running around, and some people dress as sexually provocative or down right sick and evil things. The pagans will be pagans, and if you are a pagan reading this, I would ask you to simply remember that other people will see you, and please remember them. But for the Christian, called to a higher standard, do not engage in the evil of the day, but have good clean fun, and remember whom you belong. You do not want to ruin your Christian testimony for a party or an evening even if your intent is simply to have fun.
