"What's the Harm in Halloween?"
Ac.19:8-20 Oct.27/02
A History of Halloween: Britain to Blyth
"Witches will gather on Greenway Trail" announced the headline in The Citizen a couple of weeks ago. "The ghosts and goblins will be lurking" said the article, promoting "The Halloween Witches Walk" Oct.26. Entertainment for young children earlier in the evening would be "spiced up" to "send a few chills down the back of the adventurous" after 8 pm. A few days later, a colourful flyer arrived in people's mail boxes to ensure everyone knew about the event, proceeds of which would benefit the Fire Department's purchase of a thermal imaging camera. No doubt some well-meaning, community-minded volunteers are behind this initiative which some plan to make an "annual event". But ought Christians to welcome and support events featuring witches and goblins, even in fun? What about Halloween as a whole -- is it just a fun time to dress up and get candy, or is there more to it that should make us cautious?
For several hundred years before Christ, the Celts inhabited what is now France, Germany, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Celtic priests were called Druids. Greek and Roman writings about the Druids dwell heavily on their frequent and barbaric human sacrifices. Ancient Irish texts detail Druids' use of magic to raise storms, lay curses on places, kill by the use of spells, and create magical obstacles. Oct.31 was the last day of the ancient Celtic calendar, the day of death - leaves falling, nights shorter, frost setting in. The veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was believed to be at its thinnest point in the year, making communication easier. The Druids celebrated a festival with many human sacrifices honouring their sun god (Muck Olla) who was being overpowered by Samhain, the lord of the dead. They believed on Oct.31 Samhain assembled the spirits of all who had died during the previous year, and had inhabited the bodies of animals as a punishment for their sins. Celts believed these tormented souls would be released only if Samhain was pleased with their sacrifices. Horses, cats, black sheep, oxen, and humans (usually criminals) were stuffed into wicker and thatch cages and burned alive, supposedly to appease Samhain and keep the evil spirits from harming the Celts.
Groups of peasants, wearing masks and led by one wearing a white robe and horse head (sacred symbol of fertility to the sun god), went from house to house begging for money in order to buy luxuries for a feast, and demanding fatted calves and black sheep. Prosperity was assured liberal givers, and threats voiced against those who were stingy. Hence the origin of "trick or treat".
Davies, a 16th century writer and descendant of Druid priests, clearly describes the human sacrifices of his ancestors and the secret sacrifices still performed regularly by the Druids of his time. One website reports, "Today a growing group of people claiming to be of direct Druid descent still practice their religion, including human sacrifice. Those in England still perform ceremonies at Stonehenge...The widespread problem of harmful substances such as razor blades, drugs, poisons, needles, etc being placed in the Halloween treats here in America is no accident. Testimonies of several ex-Satanists show that these children killed and injured by the 'treats' are sacrifices to Satan (or Samhain)."
The Romans conquered Britain in 43 AD, and outlawed human sacrifice in 61 AD. Black cats were sacrificed instead, out of the conviction that they were associated with witches. In Ireland, Catholic monks were fascinated with the powerful Druids, who became important members of their monasteries. In the 7th century, Pope Boniface IV made the festival for the dead a celebration of all the known and unknown saints and martyrs; in the 8th century Pope Gregory III moved the date from May 13 to Nov.1, coinciding with the former pagan festival. Thus the name, "Eve of All Saints'" or "All Hallows'", shortened to "Hallow-e'en".
In America the Biblically-minded founders banned the celebration of the holiday because of its pagan origins. The potato famine of 1845-6 brought thousands of Irish Catholics to the United States, so by 1900 the custom became more widespread. The 20th century was dominated by a liberal modernist mindset which downplayed the supernatural and stressed science and rationalism. Witches and spirits were treated as make-believe. That's changing. Nowadays we're seeing disillusionment with science and technology; postmodern culture is more open to paranormal phenomena, New Age religion, and diverse forms of spirituality. Wicca (or witchcraft) is a recognized, receiptable-for-tax-purposes charity. Satanists draw in those who are disenchanted with traditional religion and seek alternative control and temporary powers from the Dark Side. The entertainment industry, through music, movies, and computer games, offers a strong "feed" to those whose flavour preference tends to the immoral, the destructive, thrillers, horror, and anarchy. Our young folk from birth are groomed to be consumers ever seeking a greater "trip". The increasing importance attached to Halloween as the decades pass fits well with society's turn away from Biblical teaching and meaning.
The tide is changing. Dr Steve Harmon, Baptist pastor in Maineville Ohio, in an article states this: "Anton LeVey, head of the worshippers of Satan, said that he was glad the Christian parents let their children worship the devil at least one night out of the year. This is something to make us think; is it not?"
Witchcraft vs The Way
What does the Bible say about Halloween? Nothing directly, because it wasn't invented back then. But Scripture is definitely opposed to witchcraft (or "sorcery") and occult practices. Ex.22(18) says, "Do not allow a sorceress to live." Deut.18:10-12 warns, "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in 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." Remember God didn't give the Israelites the Promised Land because they were superior people but because the sins of the inhabitants were so bad! And as Israel slipped into occult practices as the centuries passed, prophets began to warn of impending judgment.
One particularly evil king was named Manasseh. In 2Kings 21(6,11f) we read, "He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced sorcery and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger...[so a prophet warned] 'Manasseh king of Judah has committed these detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols. Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle.'" Witchcraft and occult practices signalled to God that the culture had slid to the point that severe correction, in the form of exile, was warranted.
Later the conquering nation by which God disciplined Israel was itself punished for such practices. Isaiah 47(9,12) warns Babylon, "Both of these will overtake you in a moment, on a single day: loss of children and widowhood.They will come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and all your potent spells...Keep on, then, with your magic spells and with your many sorceries, which you have labored at since childhood. Perhaps you will succeed, perhaps you will cause terror."
The Old Testament closes with a reminder that the Messiah will refine God's people. Malachi 3(5) maintains that God will judge the following: "sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers...those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me, says the LORD Almighty." From witchcraft to unfairness, God views it all as a rejection of Him, a rebellion against His ways.
Many times in Jesus' healing ministry He sent away evil spirits. He tried to get people to understand there was an unseen spiritual battle going on. When accused of driving out demons by the prince of demons in Matthew 12(27-29), he replied, "And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges.But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house." Jesus was in "attack mode" against spiritual sources of evil and commissioned his followers to "drive out evil spirits" as well (Mt.10:1). He stated, "He who is not with me is against me" (Mt.12:30) - that's confrontational language, there's no fence to sit on!
The apostles did not back away from challenging evil influences during the spread of the Good News. Paul ("filled with the Holy Spirit" as Luke puts it) told a Jewish sorcerer who was trying to sway a potential convert in Acts 13(10), "You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery.Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?" During Paul's ministry in Ephesus in Acts 19, God did extraordinary miracles. There were some Jews, 7 sons of Sceva, who had a little exorcism enterprise going. Over those who were demon-possessed they would say, "In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out." One evil spirit answered, "Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?" then jumped on them, overpowered them, and soundly trounced them so they ran out bleeding and with clothes torn to shreds.
I can imagine them regrouping a little bit up the road, catching their breath, and trying to figure out what went wrong back there. "There's gotta be another way to earn a living!" "Maybe we shouldn't have thrown in that bit about Paul." "I told you we should have dressed like Men In Black." "Next time I go back in there, I'm gonna take along a seven-branched candlestick to protect myself!"
What was their real mistake? Their spiritual power was only nominal, thus counterfeit. They were pretending to claim the name of Christ but didn't have a relationship. Their religion was second-hand, riding along on the coat-tails of Paul's success. Being "Christian" in name only just wasn't going to cut it in the real spiritual world; they were trying to use Jesus' name for selfish ends, twisting it to suit their purpose without submitting to His Lordship in the first place. So the evil spirit's question becomes a heart-searcher for us too if we would engage in spiritual battle: "Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but WHO are YOU?" Where do we fit in the spiritual spectrum? Have we really entrusted all areas of our life to Christ, or are we just going through the motions, doing lip-service? No power without the Person.
Notice the effect on the believers in Ephesus: "...they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor.Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds.A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly.When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas." Spiritual reality and heightened awareness led to Jesus being honoured; then evil was confessed, and occult practices abandoned (at considerable cost: a drachma or denarius was a day's wages, so 50,000 was quite a sum!). Their witchcraft and potion books were burned PUBLICLY; the community took notice. And the upshot of it all? (v.20) "In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power." When the Ephesian Christians dumped their Ouija boards, quit reading their horoscopes, abandoned their zodiac charms, started going to MAG Wheels instead of lodge...THAT's when the Kingdom took off in their town. They had come out clearly on the side of Jesus being Number One in their lives, nothing else. Fearing God, they held the name of the Lord Jesus "in high honour": and God responded by giving His message power and reality they hadn't known before.
The New Testament, like the Old, is clearly anti-occult. Galatians 5(20) lists witchcraft amongst the "deeds of the flesh" and warns, "those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." The end of the Bible, Rev.21(8) and 22(15) puts sorcerers in the lake of fire and outside the walls of the heavenly city, along with everyone who loves and practices falsehood. That's the essence of Satan's work - the lie, the un-reality, the counterfeit.
"Freedom in Christ" Makes the Questionable OK?
Two out of the three Christian websites I checked came down against celebrating Halloween. The other, "Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry" with an article by Matthew J Slick, was not so clear-cut. He says, "Can the Christian celebrate Halloween? The answer is simple: Yes and No. Let's look at the negative side first. The Christian is not to be involved with or support the occult, witchcraft, demonism, or any other thing that uplifts the occult. To do so is to contradict God's word, dabble in demonic spirits, and invite judgment from God. If a Halloween celebration is centered on demons, devils, spirits, etc I would say don't have anything to do with it. On the other hand, it isn't wrong to dress up in a costume and go door-to-door saying, 'Trick or Treat'. Provided that the costume isn't demonic, I can't see anything wrong with this. It's just fun for the kids."
Slick then proceeds to justify this by using 1Cor.10(23-33), where Paul concludes a Christian can eat meat sacrificed to idols then put up for sale in the meat market. Unless another person makes a point of saying it was sacrificed to idols, in which case you should refrain from eating it because it might lead a brother or sister weaker in faith to stumble. But generally eating the meat as meat is permissible.
Slick concludes, "Is it any different with Halloween? No.Even though Halloween has pagan origins, because of your freedom in Christ, you and/or your kids can dress up in costumes and go door-to-door and just have fun.However, if you are not comfortable with doing this, then you should not.If you know of a person who would be stumbled by doing it, then you shouldn't either."
You may agree with Matthew Slick; our salvation does not depend on whether we do or don't observe Halloween. But there are quite a few Bible passages that hint it might be better not to be part of it at all. For example, in the verses just before that passage, Paul reminds the Corinthians (20-22), "the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?" God is jealous of our relationship with Him; that's damaged if we participate in anything spiritually off-base. Other scriptures tell us, "Test everything.Hold on to the good.Avoid every kind of evil."(1 Thess.5:21f) "Resist the devil."(Jas.4:7) "Do not give the devil a foothold."(Ephesians 4:27) (If we dress up our kids for Halloween now, are we inoculating them to say yes to experimenting in a seance 10 years from now?) And there's a wonderful section in Ephesians 5(3,7-11) calling us to light and purity: "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people...Therefore do not be partners with them.For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them." The fundamental question to ask is, "Lord Jesus, what's going to please you most? How can I best reflect Your light, goodness, and truth?"
Positive Alternatives
So what's a God-fearing, neighbour-loving family supposed to do? Here are some suggestions on how to cope with the Halloween holiday, four serious and one not (time for some humour!).
1) Let's put our community on the map by recapturing the true origins of the Jack-O-Lantern! Have you ever heard the story behind the carved pumpkin with a light inside? Turns out it wasn't a pumpkin after all, but something near and dear to the hearts of Blythians.
An Irish man named Jack, so the story goes, was notorious for drunkenness and being stingy. One evening at the local pub he found himself face to face with the Devil, who had come to claim his soul. Jack convinced the devil to have a drink with him, then when time came to pay he asked the devil to turn into a gold coin for the price; later he could turn back and the drinks would have cost nothing. Jack took the coin and placed it in his pocket with a silver cross which kept the Devil from turning back into himself. When the Devil promised to leave Jack for a year, Jack released him.
At the end of the year, the devil returned. Jack tricked him into climbing an apple tree for an apple. He quickly carved a cross in the tree so the devil couldn't climb down. Jack finally let the devil down after promising never to return for Jack's soul.
Jack's body finally wore out and he went to the gates of heaven, where he was refused entrance because of his stingy and drunken life. Jack proceeded then to go to hell where he was again refused entrance. Jack was then forced to walk the earth until judgment day with his only light a burning ember from hell's fire caught in (are you ready for it?) a turnip! After the Irish brought Halloween and this story to the Americas, the use of pumpkins replaced their use of turnips and beets. So, why not form a citizen's group to convince the continent to use turnips in their jack-o-lanterns instead of pumpkins, and make Blyth a household name and prosper one of its main industries? This village used to be renowned for its rutabagas; let's get back to the jack-o-lantern's true roots!
2) OK, you can stop laughing now. Back to some more sincere matters. A real alternative to Halloween might be to make it a family night you enjoy at home together. Have some board games; do charades; hunker down in your family room with the curtains drawn and curl up with a bowl of popcorn and a good wholesome movie like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Mary Poppins. Make a memory as a family, and see if your youngsters don't want to do it again next year!
3) Some churches have begun to organize family-oriented events at the church that present an alternative to what's going on out in the streets. One church in Sault Ste Marie each year had a "harvest festival" that night where people dressed up as hillbillies and enjoyed a potbless and games together.
4) Or you can counter-attack! Some people love kids dearly and really enjoy seeing the tikes come around in their pumpkin (oughta be turnip) outfits. If you're going to hand out candy at the door, get ahold of some good Christian tracts designed especially for kids. Chick.com has one called "The Little Ghost" that presents the gospel in kid-friendly terms in a Halloween-style context, at 14 cents each online. Have the tracts there on the same tray as the goodies and see if the gospel doesn't get into some new homes as a result! Paul wrote, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom.12:21).
5) Perhaps you feel it's almost a ministry to open your door on Halloween night. Another way to counter-attack is to be friendly your visitors that night, but not stop there: get involved in one of your church's children's ministries as a helper or leader - Sunday School, Youth Groups, or individually through volunteer tutoring, Big Brothers/Sisters, or other community youth programs. Don't just open your door to kids one night a year: open your heart to let Christ's love and teaching touch them at an impressionable age.
Ghosts and goblins may lurk, and Witches Walks pop up; yet Christ's forces have hope, caring, and purpose to offer, His Holy Spirit's light and life. The fuss about Halloween presents a golden opportunity for us to shine for Him in the darkness! Let's pray.