NoelHeikkinen.com

Five years ago, I posted this article on my site and I figured since it was Halloween week, I’d throw it back up here for y’all.  Enjoy.

So, I was reading a friend’s site, and came across this post:

Halloween. The holiday that celebrates witches, warlocks, magic, etc… When I was a kid, I was taught that Halloween was evil. Even in my days away from the church, I could never allow myself to celebrate Halloween. As a kid, I sat in the library while all the other kids made a haunted house. The most I’ve ever participated is by handing out treats and toys to kids. Last year, I contemplated becoming a “cowboy” for the AA dance, but I couldn’t even do that.

This is not the first time I’ve heard Christians talking about their “holiday plans” for Halloween. Am I missing something? Are we now saying that Halloween is OK? I think if I hear anyone talk about how disgusting it is when people say “Happy Holidays” for Christmas, I’ll ask them if they remembered to celebrate the “reason for the season” at Halloween, too.

None of it makes sense to me, and it all seems quite hypocritical. All of this is also easy for me to say. I don’t have kids bugging me to allow them to trick or treat. I can sit back and judge everyone else with little to no consequence to me.

Each year, my kids get dressed up in their little costumes and wander around our neighborhood in a sugar and consumer-driven haze. In fact, last year Halloween was on a Sunday and they wanted to wear their costumes to church, so we let them. Actually, Dan (the jerk) tricked me into wearing a costume that day too. And for the record, my wife was in on it too (dang her). I’m not bitter. (Yes I am).

Anyhoo, my kids head out on Halloween and they load up their bags with candy, come home and proceed to eat half of it on the first day. The rest of the candy stays in a jar until we dump it out a year later so we have room for another load.

Why do I let my kids trick or treat? Isn’t that anti-Christian?

I don’t think so.

Halloween is basically a cultural holiday in our society, as is Christmas. Both have pagan roots (as does Easter…but I’ll save that post) and have been adapted to have a different meaning in our culture. Let’s start with the latter:

Christmas

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, as well as a lot of other cultures had mid-winter celebrations. By the 300s, that season had a ton of different cultures celebrating in their own ways. Common expressions were flowers, gifts, feasts, etc. In fact one pagan god (whose name escapes me) had his birthday celebrated on December 25.

When Constantine became Emperor and then began to follow Christ, he did one of the stupidest things ever done in the history of the church (although it has been tried again…ahem). He tried to create a “Christian Country.” He made Christianity the state religion. That began the stamping out of other religions and their traditions and festivals. One of the ways that was done was moving the celebration of Jesus’ birth from mid-January to December 25. That way, they could infuse these cultural celebrations with the message of Jesus.

The Christians began to incorporate local traditions into their celebration of Jesus’ birth and that has been ongoing since then. This is an OK thing. Each culture has their own celebrations, and can have unique expressions of the Christian faith by using them.

The Irish celebrated in the winter with mistletoe and holly (these were symbols of fertility). They hung evergreen in their homes in the winter to ward off demons.

Pagans in the Middle Ages celebrated the winter by burning the “Yule Log.” It symbolized the magical powers of vegetation.

Pine trees have been brought indoors in many cultures (for a variety of reasons…almost all mystical) and in the 16th Century, this tradition was added to Christmas.

Bottom line: the Bible never tells us to celebrate Christmas (or Easter for that matter), but we do. And it order to do so, we have taken on a lot of pagan and cultic baggage. And that is totally fine. Because we are celebrating a cultural holiday. Yes, it has been given a Christian message, but it is ultimately a cultural holiday.

Halloween

A lot of pagan cultures celebrated fall festivals, the same as they did winter festivals. And just like there was an attempt to “Christianize” the winter celebrations, the church attempted to do the same with the fall ones. In the 7th century or so, the Catholic Church established “All-Saints Day” on November 1. Ironically (or intentionally), Martin Luther chose the same day to post his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

The costumes are a throw back to the early pagan days, but the pumpkins, masks, parties, black cats, etc were all Irish-American adaptations of this old holiday in the late 1800s.

Now, Halloween is an entirely cultural holiday. Surely, there are those who worship Satan on this day, but they most likely worship him on others too, so no big whoop.

Conscience

With all of this said, we need to read (and heed) Paul’s warning to the church in Corinth:

1 Corinthians 8:4   So now, what about it? Should we eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols? Well, we all know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God and no other. 5 According to some people, there are many so-called gods and many lords, both in heaven and on earth. 6 But we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we exist for him. And there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been given life.

1 Corinthians 8:7   However, not all Christians realize this. Some are accustomed to thinking of idols as being real, so when they eat food that has been offered to idols, they think of it as the worship of real gods, and their weak consciences are violated. 8 It’s true that we can’t win God’s approval by what we eat. We don’t miss out on anything if we don’t eat it, and we don’t gain anything if we do. 9 But you must be careful with this freedom of yours. Do not cause a brother or sister with a weaker conscience to stumble.

There are those that can celebrate Halloween with a clear conscience, because they know that “there is only one God and no other.”

“However, not all Christians realize this…”

There are also those who can not celebrate Halloween with a clear conscience. These people should by no means celebrate it against their conscience, or they would be in sin. We don’t miss out on anything if we don’t celebrate Halloween/Christmas and we don’t gain anything if we do.

Now pass the candy corn.