I was raised in a Mennonite community that did not observe Halloween. From its roots to its current form, we saw nothing compelling or good about it. We gave treats to oddly arrayed children on our doorstep, but we never dressed up, never went out, and did our best not to support the holiday financially or emotionally. I didn’t really care; my mom didn’t let us kids eat much candy anyway.
As a young adult, I learned more about the holiday from people who had done more than dabble in the occult. Whatever you might think
of the legitimacy of their attempts to connect with the dark side, they were pretty serious about what they hoped to accomplish. Halloween was their Christmas and Easter rolled into one. They approached it with a sense of mission and purpose.
I later moved out of that community and for the first time came in contact with a lot of sincere Christians who viewed Halloween as just another holiday. They experienced it as an exercise of imagination, a sort of exorcism of the spirits of fear from which we Christians have been freed. God had not redeemed us so that we would cringe in the face of evil, so they boldly subverted Halloween with a freedom foreign to my upbringing.
These different church communities have given me plenty to ponder over the years. The more I have balanced these two approaches to Halloween, the more I have grown to appreciate the importance of conscientious, purposeful engagement with our culture. In order to do this well, there are several aspects of this discussion that are worth considering.
First, I think we should be careful how much weight we give to the discussion of origins. Every day of the week we give a nod to Greek and Roman gods without flinching. The early church met on Saturn’s day; now we meet on the Day of the Sun, Apollo’s day. Christmas, Easter and Halloween are all holidays which Christians borrowed from pagans and attempted to Christianize. New Year’s celebrations date back to a time when the Romans celebrated Janus, the god of doors, whose two faces allowed him to look forward and backward. That’s why we call the first month January. In the 7th century, Dutch Christians were warned against participating in the pagan New Year celebrations, though this didn’t stop the church from eventually incorporating quite a few Christian commemorations into this holiday.
You are free to reject or enjoy all four of these holidays, but picking and choosing because of the holiday’s origin makes no sense. The fact that Halloween has pagan roots (and has been thoroughly embraced by the occult) is not, I think, sufficient to lead to a particular conclusion about the merits or faults of this holiday.
Second, there is an obvious difference between Halloween and other major holidays.
The classic Christmas movies are Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol, and a Christmas Story. The background soundtrack for December includes Handel’s Messiah, Manheim Steamroller’s Christmas album, and Porky Pig singing “I’ll Have a Blue Christmas Without You.” People go to church, talk about love and peace, and try to do something unusually nice, like watch Land Before Time yet again with the kids. In our culture, people subvert the spirit of this holiday by making movies like Bad Santa and engaging in gross consumerism, which takes the focus away from Advent themes of love, joy, peace, and hope.
The classic Easter movies are The Ten Commandments, The Passion of the Christ, Ben Hur, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Famous songs include “Easter Parade” and “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” People go to church for the second time that year, talk about “new life” and “a new start.” In our culture, people subvert the spirit of this holiday by reducing it to eggs and bunnies, which takes the focus off of the promotion of spiritual renewal.
Halloween’s top viewing choices are Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Omen, The Walking Dead, and maybe truly disturbing entertainment like Jersey Shore. AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” has probably entertained the waiting lines at haunted houses more than any other song. People go to graveyards, dress up like serial killers and tramps, and burn a lot of things in Detroit. In our culture, people subvert the spirit of this holiday by taking the focus off death and celebrating life, light and hope. Clearly, one of these holidays is not like the others.
Due to the origins and current popular observance of Halloween, I believe there are at least two legitimate and very different ways Christians can engage with Halloween.
Option #1: Enter into it as Christians and redeem it.
The Bible says that, because of Christ, death and the grave have lost their sting. We should subvert Halloween by trivializing its claim to power. Though Satan is like a devouring lion, he is nothing in the face of the power of God. To some Christians, Halloween is a time to mock the hollow power of the grave, to laugh in the face of death. Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal; why can’t modern day prophets mock the false idols and gods of our culture too? The only thing the Bible tells us to fear is God. If we can’t laugh in the face of death and the grave, then we don’t understand the power of God.
Martin Luther once said, “”The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” If that’s true, subversive participation in Halloween verges on being a necessary activity in the life of the Christian.
Sure, people dress up in the costumes of the denizens of evil. Why not dress up and trivialize the power of the dark? Evil’s influence is felt most strongly when it controls our emotions. We could enter into one holiday that blatantly celebrates the horror of the world and make fun of its attempt to be so macho and scary. Just like Christians throughout history have entered into non-Christian holidays and redeemed them to the service of Christ, we can dive into Halloween and turn the darkness toward the light. Anderson Rearick III summed it up well in Christianity Today:
The one thing Satan cannot bear is to be a source of laughter. His pride is undermined by his own knowledge that his infernal rebellion against God is in reality an absurd farce. Hating laughter, he demands to be taken seriously. Indeed, I would say that those Christians who spend the night of October 31 filled with concern over what evils might be (and sometimes are) taking place are doing the very thing Lucifer wants them to do. By giving him this respect, such believers are giving his authority credence.
Option #2. Take a stand as Christians and reject it.
The supernatural world is very real, and the the realm of darkness is dangerous and destructive. We should not participate in anything that celebrates all that is wrong with the world. God is a God of creation, order, goodness, life and light; evil promotes chaos, destruction, death and darkness. Halloween trivializes the seriousness of the stakes. It’s one thing to mock evil’s false pretense; it’s quite another to join the celebrations in which we scare ourselves and mimic the things that we know to be wrong with the world. Douglas Wilson has written:
“God calls us to holiness, and this does not mean that we are to meditate on zombies eating brains. I hate to break it to you, but that doesn’t qualify. Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is noble . . . Remember?”
We get upset when the the Easter Bunny and marshmallow peeps distract people at Easter because there is a real message that goes with Easter, an underlying truth of eternal significance. We get upset at the commercialization of Christmas, because it distorts or obscures a message the needs to be heard.
Yet during Halloween we contribute money, creativity, and emotion to the trivialization of a reality that ought not be made silly – and certainly not celebrated. Among other things, it is the holiday that gets the most overtly destructive responses from people (see here, here, here, here, and here, and here.). All major holidays record a spike in crime – probably because of the alcohol – but Halloween still manages to distinguish itself.
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I increasingly believe the observance of Halloween is one of those freedoms Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 9 and Galatians. It’s not in and of itself off limits, but it must be analyzed within the context of both personal conviction and community witness. In addition, celebrating Halloween may be a legitimate way to become all things to all people.
The power of Christ is nothing if not redemptive. Why not use this holiday – as we do with other holidays of ignoble origins or increasingly secular expressions – as an opportunity to point people toward a God who gives us a reason to truly celebrate? Christians are not called to retreat from our culture. We are called to baptize even imaginations cloaked in darkness with the light of truth.
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(This article was originally posted at http://empiresandmangers.blogspot.com/2012/10/christians-and-halloween.html
The Christian community is a diverse one. Blog entries made by individual authors reflect the views of the author and not necessarily the official position of the group at large.
gsr, of course history matters. And one thing it teaches us is that Christians have been very good at going into pagan celebrations and redeeming them, turning them toward the source of true worship and honor. Think of Abraham’s covenant with God, when Abraham passed through a dissected animal to show what would happen to the one who broke the covenant. That was a pagan custom. God used it to make a covenant with man. It seems to me that redeeming cultural expressions of celebration and worship point toward the greater reality of redeeming the individuals who have been deceived by them. Thoughts?
Does history matter any more? The entire tidal calendar is a pagan invention with Christian dressing. All Hallows Evening before All Saints Day. The Mass of Christ before St Valentines Day, St Patrick’s Day and Easter. Ash Wednesday, Advent, , Christmastide, Lent, Eastertide, Epiphany, are all pagan adaptations. Yet the churches in the US have been overtaken by these for too many years. The US culture and the churches have also fallen into the trap of slavery to their children in conduct during these days.
The Hebrew calender best fits the real events which are supposed to be celebrated by the tidal calendar without Roman Catholic influence. For both old and new testament honoring of God and His work in this world, the Hebrew calendar for many events may be directly tied to Scripture. Yet the daughters of Rome persist to follow Roman rule over Scripture. Should not we be celebrating Holy days not holidays?
Sadly, our economy is so tied to this system as in the Acts, that the economy may collapse if Christians were like the apostles freing people from bondage.