Halloween: Pagan, Catholic, or Just Fun?
Add comment October 23rd, 2009
| Halloween and paganism are, for some reason, irrevocably linked in some Christians’ minds. However, this should not be so, for modern secular Halloween and paganism actually have very little to do with each other. |  |
The Halloween that is celebrated today in the United States is a day when children and adults alike dress up and collect candy. Some people create “haunted houses” to thrill teenagers. People dress as princesses, insects, “witches”, zombies and aliens. Some teens play pranks, throw rotten eggs at one another, etc. Its one of the larger commercial holidays with sales of candy, costumes, decorations, etc. So, what does that have to do with paganism? Very little, really. Actually, pagans don’t even celebrate Halloween as a spiritual holiday.
The reality is that “Christianity” or more properly, Roman Catholicism, actually created Halloween! Well before the year 1,000AD, as true, Biblical Christianity as well as Roman Catholicism was spreading throughout Europe, the Roman Catholic clergy had difficulties convincing the general populace to stop celebrating all of their pagan holidays. In most cases, the Church made up holidays that occurred around the same time of year as the old pagan festivals in attempt to seduce away and force outward compliance with Catholic rituals. This failure to get people to stop pagan celebrations on their own came from the Clergy’s ignorance of the Scriptures and subsequent failure to communicate the Word of God to the people in their own tongue. To the people who participated, the pomp and rituals of the Church were just another “holy” set of spiritual activities and they added them to their pagan “holy” rituals to cover all the spiritual bases. True Christians, though more rare, indwelt by the Spirit and informed by the Word of God walked a more moderate and thoughtful path.
The earlier pagan holiday that was celebrated in the Fall was called by the Celtic and Brythonic cultures, Samhain (Celtic, pronounced “so-wain” or “saywin”), and it meant “Summers End” – Sam - summer, fain-end, and was celebrated on the first three days of November. Some scholars think this is when their new year began.
Samhain was a holy time when pagans thankfully celebrated the bounty of the harvest and gave their thanks to the goddess of the harvest, Mongfind. (Much like our Thanksgiving). It was also a holy time when it was thought that the veil between this world and then next was thinnest and that their beloved deceased relatives and ancestors could come back and visit for a brief time, giving their advice and guidance to the living. They would hollow out turnips and put candles in them so the spirits of their loved ones could find the way home. It was also a time to contemplate the brevity of life and life on the “other side”.
I should point out that the Apostle Paul was a lot easier on people that did this in his time than he was on the Jews/Pharisees of his day who believed all the right things about God, and who would never participate in such pagan rituals. He commended the pagans for their thankfulness for the harvest, and pointed them to the one True and living God. See Acts 14 for one example. Certainly Scripture condemns communication with the dead, but right thinking on this comes about by fellowship with the living Christ through the Spirit in the Word, not by making up rules and alternate Church celebrations.
In any case, in typical reactionary fashion, the Clergy told the people to dress up with scary costumes in an alternative holiday to scare away the spirits of the dead relatives, and thus was born, “All Hallows Eve”…Halloween.
Neopagans (renewed modern paganism) are baffled by the fear by many Christians of Halloween as a pagan festival. Halloween is not a pagan festival historically, it was a long time ago a Catholic holiday. Pagans are of two minds toward it. Some put on the costumes along with the rest of America and go out and have fun collecting candy, then they go home, change and go to celebrate their own pagan Samhain. Other pagans are deeply offended at what they see as a total perversion of their high holy days by the commercialism and sacrilege of the scary costumes, etc, just as we are offended by the Easter bunny on Resurrection Day. But in most cases pagans do not celebrate Samhain on October 31st in any case.
In America, Halloween is generally not connected in people’s minds (and that’s the key: intention) to “All Hallows Eve” the Catholic holiday, and it certainly is not a pagan holiday. It is a secular holiday with many different expressions. Is it wise for Christian children to dress up like ghosts, or monsters? I’d think not simply because they can frighten even younger kids, but we shouldn’t make the argument it is pagan and therefore “evil,” or even a celebration of the Catholic holiday. Is it ok to dress up like prince or princess or an apple or other fun thing? I think its great. Can adults dress up as a monster and go to a scary party? That’s a matter of personal conviction. For me it’s not a problem, but I’d rather hang out with my kids anyway.
I don’t know of a single person who got sucked into paganism by celebrating Halloween. I don’t know of a single person who got sucked into Roman Catholicism by wearing a scary mask. I do know many people who got sucked into self centered materialism by being told that getting a college degree was wonderful and the key to succeed in their careers, just to give just one example of things we take as morally good but may not always be. (I’m not against college, but I’m challenging the knee-jerk reaction of: Halloween is evil and college is good.) Which is really worse: To acknowledge that there are real spiritual realities that affect our everyday life, and an afterlife, but be mistaken about its source and “Who” is out there, or to be a functional naturalist/materialst, effectively denying by one’s daily life that there is a personal, intrusive God who actively sustains all things and who judges the thoughts and intents of the heart? I would submit that many kids raised in Christian homes actually possess the latter worldview.
To the vast majority in our culture Halloween is a secular holiday with no spiritual significance. As Christians we can enjoy the bounty of the true and living Lord of the Harvest, carve up His pumpkins and have some fun too, with age appropriate wisdom.
If Paul could tell his gentile readers (former idolators) to eat meat that was offered to a real idol (and Paul said a real demon was receiving such worship) 5 minutes ago, “without raising questions of conscience”, then we should be able to carve a pumpkin that is separated from pagan harvest festival practices by a thousand years. As Paul says,
Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” 1 Corinthians 10:25-26
Christians should be winsome, not fearful. We need to take our security and salvation with great seriousness, and ourselves not so seriously. There are hills to die on and hills just to light a fun bonfire and roast marshmallows on, and we ought to have the wisdom and good humor to know the difference.
