Halloween is the devil's holiday! That's what we were told by the Christian church we attended when our son, Nic, was three years old. At that point in my life I didn't question the pronouncement, I simply stopped enjoying Halloween and did harvest themes instead.
I remember my father making a face and shaking his head in disgust when we told him we wouldn't be doing the Halloween thing because the church said it was wrong. He clearly disagreed with our decision not to allow Nic to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating.
It was a hard decision to make. I had always loved Halloween. In fact, back in my high school days, Youth for Christ/Campus Life used to do a big fund raising project called "Scream in the Dark" that was a haunted house par excellence! I loved dressing up in spooky or gruesome costumes and working different rooms in the house. It was so much fun!
That said, I didn't want to be doing "the Devil's work" or celebrating something unholy and neither did my husband. The church said it was wrong and we had both been taught to be obey our church leadership.
We floated in and out of Halloween celebrations over the years, depending upon the teaching of our church leadership. Some taught that Halloween glorified Satan and eschewed any form of harvest festival as "pagan." Others didn't officially celebrate Halloween but held harvest festivals instead. Some felt that Halloween was "wrong." Others felt it was simply too frightening for children.
The funny thing is, when it comes to gruesome costumes and all of that, we say that we don't want to frighten our children with it, but we think nothing of bringing them into church where there are pictures of a bloody and broken Jesus, hanging on a cross. I remember crying as a child, looking through stained glass windows at pictures of Jesus in anguish, wearing a crown of thorns with blood dripping down his face, side pierced by a sword. It frightened me far more than any Halloween costume or haunted house ever did; I know those things were PRETEND.
We also teach songs to children in church about being "washed in the blood of Jesus" and we tell them that their wrongdoing will lead them to lakes of eternal fire and pain. "Frightening" is an understatement. Are we contradictory or what?
But back to Halloween: Is it the Devil's holiday? Why is it promoted as such amongst certain religious groups? Let's take a look at the history of Halloween and see if it sheds any light on the subject.
Halloween is rooted in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. According to History.com (2008), "Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter."
In celebration, the ancient Celts, like the people of the Old Testament, burnt crops and animals as sacrifices to their gods. The Old Testament and Celtic rituals appear to be fairly parallel, albeit Celts reserved these sacrifices for a specific holiday of Samhain.
When the Romans conquered the Celts in 43 A.D.they blended their celebrations of Feralia and Pomona, honoring the dead and the goddess of fruit and trees, with the Celtic celebration of Samhain.
According to History.com (2008), "In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas."
Modern Halloween was born from the evolution and blend of culture. I see nothing evil about it. In fact, I love Halloween. It's one of my favorite holidays. I love the celebration of harvest, the mourning of the loss of summer, the surrender to falling leaves and crisp nights turned freezing cold, the promise of Thanksgiving and Christmas to come.
I'm no longer willing to blindly follow the church or any other institution or person. Far too many of us hold hard and fast beliefs without even comprehending WHY we believe as we do. We base our convictions on what we've been told is good or bad, right or wrong. Like most of the holidays we celebrate in America, Halloween is a blend of pagan and religious history. We can make it mean whatever we want!
Halloween has no religious significance in our family; it's a celebration of the change of seasons and an excuse to have fun. Today, we will celebrate Halloween by visiting a pumpkin patch and watching the kids tumble through hay and corn mazes. Later, we'll carve pumpkins, eat pizza, then watch Harry Potter movies with the kids. When they go to bed, hubby and I will watch a scary movie! I look forward to it!
Happy Halloween! Happy Harvest!
References:
History.com. (2008). Ancient Origins of Halloween. Retrieved October 31, 2009 from, http://www.history.com/content/halloween/real-story-of-halloween
©Just Kate, 2009
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Happy Haunting!
I grew up hearing about celebrating our ancestors and sirits that return to "visit." blah blah blah. Why would they wait for a certain day? ;)
My favorite explaination came from my Grandmother. She said that to her Halloween was a celebration by farmers that the harvesting was over and they could relax a bit now. I used to picture Ma and Pa Ingalls dancing in the fields. LoL
BOO!!!
Happy Haunting to you too, my friend! ;)
The rules are always a bit fuzzy when it comes to deciding what's holy and what's not when all of our holidays are rooted in the pagan and religious.
Before my mom was consumed by Multiple Sclerosis, my parents used to throw amazing adult Halloween parties. They'd turn our garage into a spooky maze and decorate our basement with coffins and cobwebs. I remember when an elderly neighbor man came dressed as a hula dancer in a grass skirt and coconut bra. Another neighbor came as a Planter's Peanut and got stuck in the stairwell! They're awesome memories. I would hide under the pool table and watch it all long past the time my mom had tucked me. :0)
We're not doing the trick-or-treat thing this year because we're afraid of catching H1N1. (JUST KIDDING) ;D Actually, it's suppose to be really cold, wet and windy tonight.
Happy Halloweenie, Chickee!
We actually didn't let our children read Harry Potter for YEARS, nor did we let them watch the movies when they came out. We were very tied into our church and the books were seen as having a "demonic influence." My husband and I didn't have a strong personal conviction, but we did feel a great deal of peer pressure.
We eventually realized that we were just being "sheeple." My kids now enjoy the Harry Potter books (I even read them - TORTURE!) and they've seen the first Twilight movie. I read and watch everything before I allow my children to because I feel it's my parental responsibility to do so, but I don't dismiss anything out of hand simply because someone else tells us it's right or wrong.
I don't understand why mysticism, magic, and fantasy are anathema to the church when church history has deep roots there. It's a part of HUMAN history; there's no evil in imagination.
I think your mention of the man who was having an affair while preaching right and wrong to others is very apropos here. We should worry more about things like KINDNESS and less about things like whether or not trick-or-treating is a "sin."
Happy Halloween, Calvin! Thank you so much for reading and commenting. ♥
Halloween on Oak Street Monday, November, 03, 2008
by John Fischer
Last Friday night, Halloween night, we gave out over 1,600 pieces of candy and ran out a little after eight o'clock. Our neighbor, Anne, who had four of her friends helping her out, was monitoring trick-or-treaters with a clicker, and at 8:30 with mostly only teenagers left her official count was at 936. That's children only. Throw in their parents and you have two to three thousand people on our street. Bets were on as to whether or not Anne's trick-or-treater count would reach a thousand. This is obviously unusual for Halloween, but that's because our street has a history.
We bought our house on Oak Street in October 1999. Our new neighbors warned us about being prepared for a deluge on Halloween. We actually hadn't moved in yet, but we left a big bowl of candy out anyway. Based on what we now know about Halloween on Oak Street, that bowl was probably empty by 5:30.
We're not sure exactly how this got started, but it seems to grow bigger every year. Everybody gets into the front yard decorating game. Sometimes I wonder if they bus kids in for this. Three years ago, the Police Department started blocking off traffic on the 2-block stretch that is our Halloween gauntlet, and that has increased the crowds even more, now that parents can let their children move around freely without worrying about cars in the street. Actually, a car couldn't make it up our street anyway, because it is teeming with people. It's like Main Street, Disneyland at closing time.
If I were to ask anybody in those thousands of people if what we were all doing out there had anything remotely to do with Satan, they would have looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. Now, am I being naïve? Am I being sucked into a dark plot? Are all those little princesses and batmen really being drawn into an evil net over this? Is this the devil's clandestine victory?
Actually, I think the devil's victory was in convincing a nation of Christians that Halloween was his day, and getting them to abandon their homes for safer alternative celebrations on the one night of the year it's a lock that all the kids in the neighborhood are coming over. That's a lot of lights (both physical and spiritual) in a lot of neighborhoods effectively extinguished.
"He who seeks good, finds goodwill, but evil comes to him who searches for it" (Proverbs 11:27). If you're looking for Satan, don't be surprised when you find him. Focus on evil and it will find you. On the other hand, you can focus on good and find it everywhere. How do you want to live, in celebration of the light or in fear of the darkness?
One good way to make sure this doesn't happen again would be to check what is the main motivation driving the action of Christians as to their non-participation in a cultural event. If fear is any part of it, it's not from God.
Halloween on Oak Street Monday, November, 03, 2008
by John Fischer
Last Friday night, Halloween night, we gave out over 1,600 pieces of candy and ran out a little after eight o'clock. Our neighbor, Anne, who had four of her friends helping her out, was monitoring trick-or-treaters with a clicker, and at 8:30 with mostly only teenagers left her official count was at 936. That's children only. Throw in their parents and you have two to three thousand people on our street. Bets were on as to whether or not Anne's trick-or-treater count would reach a thousand. This is obviously unusual for Halloween, but that's because our street has a history.
We bought our house on Oak Street in October 1999. Our new neighbors warned us about being prepared for a deluge on Halloween. We actually hadn't moved in yet, but we left a big bowl of candy out anyway. Based on what we now know about Halloween on Oak Street, that bowl was probably empty by 5:30.
We're not sure exactly how this got started, but it seems to grow bigger every year. Everybody gets into the front yard decorating game. Sometimes I wonder if they bus kids in for this. Three years ago, the Police Department started blocking off traffic on the 2-block stretch that is our Halloween gauntlet, and that has increased the crowds even more, now that parents can let their children move around freely without worrying about cars in the street. Actually, a car couldn't make it up our street anyway, because it is teeming with people. It's like Main Street, Disneyland at closing time.
If I were to ask anybody in those thousands of people if what we were all doing out there had anything remotely to do with Satan, they would have looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. Now, am I being naïve? Am I being sucked into a dark plot? Are all those little princesses and batmen really being drawn into an evil net over this? Is this the devil's clandestine victory?
Actually, I think the devil's victory was in convincing a nation of Christians that Halloween was his day, and getting them to abandon their homes for safer alternative celebrations on the one night of the year it's a lock that all the kids in the neighborhood are coming over. That's a lot of lights (both physical and spiritual) in a lot of neighborhoods effectively extinguished.
"He who seeks good, finds goodwill, but evil comes to him who searches for it" (Proverbs 11:27). If you're looking for Satan, don't be surprised when you find him. Focus on evil and it will find you. On the other hand, you can focus on good and find it everywhere. How do you want to live, in celebration of the light or in fear of the darkness?
One good way to make sure this doesn't happen again would be to check what is the main motivation driving the action of Christians as to their non-participation in a cultural event. If fear is any part of it, it's not from God.
It was the best.fun.ever. :) A bunch of us went bar-hopping, and we drank enough to wobble but not fall down. Like Weebles.
There are customs and cultures in the world which seriously invite demonic participation (thinking of places like Haiti here). North American plastic-masked little witches and pink princesses and Batman garbed boys and girls just don't lend themselves to it. They just don't.
It is - as you said - an excuse to have fun. Another part of living life with deliberation, as it were.
P.S. My intent wasn't to dress as a pimp. I wore a bright red zoot suit and was aiming for Jim Carrey in The Mask. Evidently, I failed - person after person suggested I was a pimp. So....a pimp I was. (And a damned righteously good one at that!) :)
I used to believe in demonic influences and the like but now I tend to think that people create energy with their intent; and unholy manifestations, if you will, are nothing more than a manifestation of human evil which, unfortunately, doesn't need a special custom or culture from which to be conjured.
That said I'm open to the probability that I may be wrong. :0)
As for YOUR intent with the bright red zoot suit, I love the idea that the pimp moniker was assumed rather than intended.
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