HALLOWEEN?
Why Christians should
embrace the devilish holiday with gusto and laughter.
A few years back, our
local Christian radio station ran a poll asking whether Halloween is
spiritually harmful. The response from a predominantly evangelical audience
here in Alberta was two-to-one against Halloween. This did not surprise me. It
is now popular in some Christian circles to repudiate any celebration of All
Hallows Eve = Halloween.
"We all know
what day is coming," said a young woman who sang in the choir of the
Church my wife and I attended. "For I think we need to be in prayer that
the evil powers and principalities be held in check over this next
weekend." Halloween fell on a Sunday that year, making the event seem all
the more sinister. On the calendar October 31 sits in a dark square with no
acknowledgment that there is anything special about the date.
"It's Satan's
Holiday," affirmed one of my Christian Brethren. "Didn't you
know?"
Well, no, I didn't
know. And I am reluctant to give up what was one of the highlights of my
childhood calendar to the Great Impostor and Chief of Liars for no reason
except that some of his servants claim that it is his.
Give up nothing!
I have always
considered Halloween a day to celebrate the imagination, to become for a short
time something wonderful and strange, smelling of grease paint, to taste sweets
that are permissible only once a year. How wonderful to be with other children
dressed up as what they might grow up to be, what they wished they could be, or
even what they secretly feared. All of us, dreams and nightmares, were brought
together on equal footing, going from door to door to be given treats and
admired for our creativity. How delightful to go to parties with doughnuts,
apples, brown cider, and pumpkin cakes—and to hear spine-tingling ghost stories
and feel our hearts skip a beat when the teller grabbed for us.
Now some are
pressuring us to give this all up, and they use what is for some of us the most
difficult argument to answer: it's the "Christian" thing to do.
Some Christians shun
make-believe. Such believers feel that a young Christian's mind should never
long to be in lands where little men have fuzzy feet, dragons breathe fire, and
horses have wings. Instead, they maintain that a Christian should be caught up
in the here and now of the "real" world. Defending the reality of
fiction and the value of fantasy requires an entirely different essay.
Christians certainly
may be leery of sharing anything with modern pagans and Satanists who claim
Halloween as theirs. But who gave these individuals the right to claim the
holiday? If they are Druids, they are celebrating Samhain, which is not
Halloween but an even older holiday. As for Satanists, their calendar is a
perversion of Christian seasons—there would be no Satanists if there were no
Christians. Let them claim all they want.
I give them nothing!!
"But look at the
roots of Halloween," some may say. "Don't you see how evil it once
was?" I do, but the operative word in that sentence is was. Samhain was
once a time of fear and dread, but at one time so was Yule or Midvinterblot, as
it was called in Sweden. Toward the time of the winter solstice, the days
became shorter and colder. The land was laid waste. In pagan times, to keep the
fire of the life-giving sun alight, people often made sacrifices before a great
oak tree. Boniface is supposed to have stopped one such sacrifice and
instituted the indoor Christmas tree at the same time. The burning of such logs
in the midst of sacrifice has come down to us as the traditions of burning Yule
logs and enjoying Christmas trees.
I'm not suggesting
fir trees and Yule logs be banned from Christmas; I'm only demonstrating what
has happened time and again in history. For our pagan ancestors, the holidays
that marked the great seasonal changes were often fearful, terrible, and dark.
But with the coming of JESUS CHRIST came a great light that reclaimed not only
individuals but also the holidays they celebrated. In the case of Midvinterblot
and Yule, the holidays that once marked the terrible price required to provide
light instead began to express the joyous arrival of GOD's true light.
Laughing away our
fears and foes...
What would a
reclaimed Halloween express? In our culture, Halloween traditionally has
allowed us to look at what frightens us to experience it, to laugh at it, and
to come through it. So at the end of October, we are visited by cute Caspers,
laughing pumpkin heads, and goofy ghouls, even Klingons.
Should the forces of
evil be mocked? Should Satan be laughed at? He most certainly should be! At the
beginning of The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis includes two telling quotations,
the first from Martin Luther: "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."
The second comes from
Thomas More: "The devil, the proud spirit cannot endure to be mocked."
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.
Warning: “not all
believers should celebrate Halloween.” For those who have been redeemed from
the occult, Halloween in its foolishness may contain what was for them deadly
seriousness. While their souls were in deadly peril, however, what they
experienced were lies and illusions.
It is understandable
that they look with horror upon what once enslaved them. Such sensitivity may
be appropriate for them, but it is not appropriate for the majority of
Christians. Holding their opinions as appropriate for most believers is like
having a former bulimic dictate how Christians should regard church hot-plate
socials.
Christians should
instead celebrate Halloween with gusto. If we follow the traditional formula of
having a good time at his expense, Satan flees.
In any event, I doubt
the anti-Halloween party will prevail. This tactic was tried before—with
Christmas. In the 17th century, because of its pagan ancestry and because it
was a Roman Catholic holiday (Christ-mass!), many Protestants decided that true
believers should not recognize Christmas. In 1620 our pilgrim forefathers
purposely started unloading the Mayflower on Christmas Day to make the point to
the crew that they were not going to observe such an evil day.
I'm glad those
believers—however well-intended—failed. How bleak and desolate would a winter's
December be without Christmas! We could have lost our chance to celebrate
Christ's first coming and a chance to witness to the world, as I fear those
pilgrims lost a chance to witness to those sailors.
If we give up All
Hallows Eve, we lose the delight of GOD's gift of imagination and we condemn
the rest of society to a darker Halloween because our laughter will not be
there to make the devil run! So “Boo!”- in the name of JESUS CHRIST ;)
Posted by Sir Richard,
A Christian Klingon...
Qapla!'
