From Sampler to Sower

Weekend Teaching Series: You Decide

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 of 10, A fairly typical week for us.

Message Summary: Our You Decide series was in it’s fifth week Tuesday night.  That’s encouraging.  When we started asking students to send in questions they might have about the Bible, I wasn’t sure just how well it would go or how long it would last.  But questions are still coming in to our Poll Everywhere poll and now I’m beginning to wonder how many good quesitions we’re going to have to leave unanswered.

As has been our custom in the series, I answered a few of the frivolous questions like “What’s Pastor Brad’s favorite Harrison Ford movie?” just for the fun of it.  (BTW, it’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, my favorite movie of all time.)  Another good one this week was “Is there anything Chuck Norris can’t do?”  (And as everyone knows, Chuck Norris cannot sit through an entire Taylor Swift concert, because even he knows that Beyonce made the best video of all time.)  This has become a fun part of the series as every week students try to get their goofy question into the queue.

Then we moved on to the one question I chose to deal with this week: Should a Christian celebrate Halloween?

Given the fact that I had come in my best impression of Allan Quartermain from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I figured by looking at me they could figure out my answer to that question.  (My family’s Halloween theme this year is Superheroes…)

But we set out to talk about it anyway.

First we talked about what Halloween really is.

Halloween derives it’s name from the phrase “All Hallow’s Eve” or, like Christmas eve, the evening before All Hallows’ (or All Saints) Day.  All Saints Day, November 1st, is a Christian Holiday on which we remember the saints who have died before us.  It is a part of Hallowtide, a three day celebration that along with All Souls’ Day on November 2nd remembers and celebrates our heritage.

As part of the celebration of the feast of All Saints, the party overflowed to the evening before.  Many of our Halloween customs can be traced back to similar celebrations surrounding the Christian holiday of All Saints Day.  Granted, in modern times Halloween has been separated from an observance of All Saints and has become a largely secular holiday, but its roots are in Christianity.

So why would anyone be opposed to Christians celebrating Halloween?

To answer that question, we looked at the final pages of “Boo!” a tract from Jack T. Chick Publishing.  It starts with the sensational story about a mass murderer who kills 19 teens at a Halloween party in a woodland cabin.  It turns out the murderer is none other than the devil himself, who eventually meets his match in a young boy and faithful pastor who know the truth about Halloween.  The final pages claim to reveal the Satanic foundations of Halloween.

After reading all that, one wonders how any Christian COULD celebrate Halloween.  But are those claims really true?

Is Halloween Satanism’s most solemn holiday of the year?

It does appear to be true that Satanists are trying to claim Halloween as one of their major celebrations.  Likewise Neo-Pagans, are attempting to resurrect the celebration of Samhain (more on that later).   But that doesn’t mean that Halloween is a Satanistic holiday.  Just because someone else tries to take over a holiday doesn’t mean it belongs to them.  The fact remains that Halloween was orginally part of Hallowtide, and Hallowtide is a Christian celebration.

Was Halloween started in the British Isles with the Druids?

First, Mr. Chick would do well to work on his terminology.   The Druids weren’t from England, they were from Gaul, now France. The term Druid (used for a pagan priest) was adopted into English to describe pagan priests in there as well, but they weren’t Druids, they were Celts.

However, neither the Druids or Celts started Halloween. Halloween started with All Saints Day, and All Saints day was started by the Christian Church and has its origins in Rome.

However, the Celtic priests who were called Druids were at times pretty spooky dudes.

Was Samhein (pronounced Sow-ain) a night of terror celebrated on October 31?

Simply put, No.

First, Samhein was a month, not a night.  The Celts had their own calendar – no October for them.  And Samhein (which means “Summer’s End”) was the name of the month which fell about the same time as the Roman October-November.

At the beginning of that month they had a three day festival also called Samhein to celebrate the end of summer and the end of the harvest.  This feast of Samhein did fall close to Oct 31 – Nov 1 every year.

But it was a festival of celebration, hardly a night of terror.  There is limited archeological evidence of human sacrifices carried out by the Celts and their priests.  Some bodies have been found that appear to have been slain ritualistically, but many scholars are divided over whether or not such deaths were intended as sacrifices or whether these were punitive executions.

There are some accounts of such sacrifices from Roman historians.  Minicus Felix writes:

“As for the initiation of new members, the details are as disgusting as they are well known. The novice himself, deceived by the coating of dough (covering a sacrificial infant), thinks the stabs are harmless. Then, it’s horrible! They hungrily drink the blood and compete with one another as they divide his limbs. And the fact they all share knowledge of the crime pledges them all to silence. On the feast-day they foregather with all their children, sisters, mothers, people of either sex and all ages. Now, in the dark, so favorable to shameless behavior, they twine the bonds of unnamable passion, as chance decides. Precisely the secrecy of this evil religion proves that all these things, or practically all, are true.”

But that wasn’t about Celts or Druids it was about Christians.  Now we know the Christian eucharistic meal did not involve baking babies into loaves of bread and drinking their blood, nor was the Christian love feast a sexual orgy.  The Romans had a tendency to make up all sorts of bad things about there enemies to justify their wars.  So one wonders if the rumors they made up about Celtic human sacrifice were made up, or at least greatly exaggerated, as well.

Anyway, there is limited and ambiguous evidence of Celtic human sacrifices, there no evidence that human sacrifice was especially associated with Samhein.

Did they leave a Jack-O-Lantern in exchange for a human victim?

Given the fact that there’s no evidence they went around on Samhain kidnapping victims for human sacrifices from Celtic homes, this is especially dubious.

Second, there were no pumpkins in mideval England.  Pumpkins are a New World Vegetable and hadn’t been taken to Europe at that time.

Third, the term Jack O’Lantern was not coined until the 1800’s and it came from America, not the British Isles.

So where did this idea come from.

There is some history of the carving of turnips into lanterns in the British Isles to ward off evil spirits, but this was not uniquely Celtic, nor was it associated especially with Samhain or human sacrifice.

Now, here are some things that are true.

While Samhain and Halloween did occur at about the same time every year, they are not the same holiday.  People celebrating Halloween today are not unwittingly celebrating Samhain, any more than those celebrating Hanukkah are unwittingly celebrating Christmas because they both occur in December.

It may be true that the church celebrates All Saints Day when it does because of the holiday of Samhain with it’s emphasis on celebrating one’s ancestors.  This probablility is only increased when one considers that it wasn’t originally celebrated in November.  Originally All Saints Day was in May to replace the Eurpopean pagan holiday of the Feast of the Lemures, which also honored one’s dead ancestors.  It appears that it was moved to November because of the similarity between Lemuria and Samhain.  The church appears to have instituted Hallowtide to replace the pagan festivals of Lemuria and Samhain.  If people are going to celebrate, why not celebrate something worth celebrating?

However, to say we shouldn’t celebrate a holiday because it is a Christian replacement for a pagan holiday would mean we can’t celebrate Christmas (which is in December because it replaces the pagan winter solstice celebrations).

But what does all that mean.  Should we stop celebrating Halloween?

What does the Bible say?

Deuteronomy 18:9-12
When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in [a] the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.  Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the LORD your God.

First, it is obvious that God stands opposed to witchcraft and sorcery.  They are just another form of idolatry.  They represent the idea that we can magically become our own gods and replace the one true God with powers of our own.  We try to replace Him with our own secret knowledge of rituals and incantations by which we attempt to manipulate the supernatural world.  Such a mindset is a rebellion against God, and we should not celebrate Halloween in such a way that glorifies the occult.

1 Corinthians 8:4-6
So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

In this passage, the Apostle Paul addresses those who have concerns about eating meat that had been sacrificed to an idol for fear doing so would imply support for that idol’s divinity.  He points out that just because some people think that little statue is a god, that doesn’t mean that statue is a god.  It’s just a statue and those who think otherwise are confused. The supernatural world is not populated by a pantheon of divinities competing for our allegiance.  There is only one God.  The idol is really “nothing in this world.”

I think that applies to Halloween celebrations as well.  Just because a child dresses up like a witch or a ghost or a mummy does not mean it is a celebration of the occult.  They are fantasy creatures and we know such things are nothing at all in this world.  There are real world witches and sorcerers who assume they have some sort of arcaine powers.  But the Halloween representations of witches and ghosts aren’t them.  They are imaginary.  And Paul says we don’t need to tip-toe around the imaginary for fear of offending God.

But Paul doesn’t stop there…

1 Corinthians 8:7-9
But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak

Not everyone knows what we know, and not everyone has the same views of Halloween that we do.  We should be careful not to act in ways that causes others to stumble.  It’s not our place to criticize others for their convictions or pressure them to abandon them.

1 Corinthians 10:23-26, 31
“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it….”

…So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

Finally the guiding principle for the follower of Christ should not be what am I allowed to do, but what is the most helpful thing for me to do.  Can I do this in a way that builds up and doesn’t destroy?  And can I do it in a way that glorifies God.

There are ways to celebrate Halloween that are beneficial and constructive.

But first we can’t let the secularization of Hallowtide ruin the true meaning of the Holy Day, any more than you let the secularization of Christmas and Easter to strip them of their meaning for the Christian.

This is what has always confused me about Halloween.  Every spring when Easter rolls around, we Christians get all defensive about the secularization of our holiday to the point that some of us won’t even let our kids have Easter Baskets or get treats from the Easter Bunny, for fear it distracts from the real meaning of Easter.  And every December, we will boycott stores if the cashier wishes us a “Happy Holidays” because somehow by doing so they are trying to take Christ out of Christmas.

But when the world tries to secularize Halloween, we all retreat and leave them to it, even criticizing other believers who still celebrate what started out at our holiday!

Instead of abandoning Halloween, or worse yet neutering Hallowtide into just another “Harvest Festival,” celebrate!   We serve a God who loves celebrations.  We serve a God who has even COMMANDED his people to celebrate.  So do it.  Reflect the joy-giving God you claim by having a feast.  Have fun!  Celebrate!

But Celebrate what’s worth celebrating.

Celebrate community. One of the things that I love about Halloween is getting out with the kids and going from door to door visiting people in our community.  There’s something about knowing your neighbors that is worth celebrating, and something tells me that God smiles when we do.

Celebrate faithfulness. Don’t let your Hallowtide celebration end when you get home with your bags of candy on Halloween night.  Remember why we celebrate!  All Saints’ Day is a celebration of the people who have lived lives of faithfulness to God.  Spend some time thinking about those whose example we can follow, as they follow Christ.  Choose a saint and learn some more about them.  Maybe it’s one of the Biblical saints, maybe it’s someone from history whose life we can learn from like St. Francis or Mother Teresa.  Maybe it’s someone from our own theological tradition like John Wesley or Phineas Bresee.  But whomever you choose, don’t let the focus on candy and costumes distract you from the celebration of  faithfulness to God this Hallowtide.

Celebrate heritage. Few people these days remember All Saints’ Day.  Even fewer remember All Souls’ Day on November 2nd.  Originally All Saints’ was a celebration of the poeple we know are in heaven.  All Souls’ was a celebration for those good people who may still be in Purgatory.  But we don’t hold to a doctrine of Purgatory because we don’t find any warrant in Scripture for such a belief.  Instead, All Souls’ has become a celebration of our personal heritage in Christ.  All Saints’ is a celebration of the people throughout history who have shown us the way to follow Christ.  All Souls’ is a celebration of the people in our family who have lit the way for us.  Do you have a family member who has exemplified what it means to be a Christian?  Celebrate them on All Souls’ Day.  Maybe you’re the first in your family to ever follow Christ.  But who are the people you know that showed you the way and have become your spiritual parents in Christ?

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: One of my teens sent me a text Tuesday morning.  “You should text everyone and tell them to wear a costume tonight.  Even if no one else does, I will!”  And I said “Why not?”  After school sent out text messages promising we’d have a costume contest, complete with prizes for the best costume if anyone wanted to come in costume.  Because it was a last minute thing, we didn’t have a whole lot of takers, but we made a big deal out of those who did.  Then, in celebration of Hallowtide, we sent everyone home with a bag of candy, because what says “Celebrate your heritage” more than free candy!

Worship Set: Trading my Sorrows, Sing Sing Sing, I am Free, Marvelous Light

Favorite Moment: I love the creativity of my students!  Here’s a picture of some of the costumes from Tuesday night: