Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?
Many protestant American Christians claim Halloween is an evil holiday that Christians shouldn't celebrate. Jamie Morgan, of Charisma News, is one such person. She wrote:
"God is a God of life, but Halloween focuses on death. Should I celebrate a holiday where people decorate their front yards with tombstones? The Scriptures tell us to put away deeds of darkness (Romans 13:12) and that light has nothing in common with darkness (2 Corinthians 6:14). Is celebrating a dark holiday something a child of the light should be doing? ... Witchcraft is clearly detestable to the Lord. Halloween is a sacred, high holiday for Wiccans (the official religion of witchcraft). Is this a holiday Christians should celebrate alongside Wiccans? Is it cute when we dress our kids like the devil (or witches, ghouls, scary characters, etc.)? Isn't it, well, demonic? Does Halloween bring glory to God? No! It glorifies the devil! Nuff said."
I should confess that Halloween has always been among my favorite holidays. I was a huge fan of RL Stein's Goosebumps series, and I've always felt something magical in the air around Halloween season. I have a personal stake in this question. So, is Halloween truly as evil as Morgan suggests? Should Christians celebrate it?
PAGANISM?
The most common accusation leveled against Halloween is that it's a disguised form of the old pagan holiday Samhain. Witches allegedly gain power on October 31, and the barrier between Hades and our own world becomes thinner allowing greater contact with the spiritual dimension. The spirits of the dead gain access to our lives.
However, Samhain is a modern neo pagan hodgepodge, and the connection between modern Samhain and any of its possible ancient derivations is highly dubious. Like Wicca, its creator, Samhain is an attempt to reconstruct pre Christian European paganism from the sparse surviving sources. Ancient paganism in the British Isles was so totally eradicated by Christianity that reconstructionists primarily rely on the accounts of Christian monks reporting on the dead religion they helped annihilate. Wicca and neo paganism are new phenomenon. There was almost zero interest in reviving ancient dead holidays prior to the twentieth century, and Halloween certainly pre dates that era. We have no reason to believe Halloween somehow traces itself back to devil worship. The fact that anyone is able to believe this is more a testament to their historical ignorance than to anything inherent in Halloween.
This is not to say there aren't symbols or practices in Halloween that may have been connected to paganism in the distant past. We can dig up elements of paganism in every traditional festival we now celebrate, and people with an agenda can invent dubious connections if they so desire. Even Easter, the most Christian of all holidays, has been ruthlessly tied to paganism in the past decades. Rumors of the Easter Bunny being an undercover pagan deity have been circulating since my childhood. The problem with these speculations, however, is that they're difficult to prove and have alternative explanations.
The Easter Bunny, for example, might be an ancient fertility god or just a rabbit who lays eggs because baby rabbits and birds are born in springtime. Even if the Easter Bunny was once a fertility god how do we know the fertility god wasn't created because baby animals arrive in springtime? I've heard numerous people claim Christmas trees are demonic because the yule log originated from the pagan solstice. Maybe there's some truth in that, maybe there isn't, the problem is no one can prove it and nearly no one thinks of Christmas trees as pagan rituals in the current year. The Christmas tree's survival as a holiday symbol is correlated with the evergreen trees' ability to retain green foliage in the winter. Evergreens have always been signs of life during the cold dark months, and both pagans and Christians have recognized this independently of gods and demons.
HISTORY
History is incredibly important in understanding our present society, and that understanding should be extended to our understanding of holidays. Our modern Halloween comes from the three day Christian celebration Allhallowtide (October 31 to November 2). Halloween is specifically the vigil, a time of sleepless watch, held the night of October 31 before the celebration of All Saints Day. Wikipedia summarizes its meaning and history.
"Allhallowtide is a 'time to remember the dead, including martyrs, saints, and all faithful departed Christians.' The present date of Hallowmas (All Saints' Day) and thus also of its vigil (Hallowe'en) was established for Rome perhaps by Pope Gregory III (731–741) and was made an obligation throughout the Frankish Empire by Louis the Pious in 835."
If Halloween was formulated in the Latin European South how can it be said to have originated in the Celtic Irish festival of Samhain? Furthermore, Ireland had been mostly Christian for over three centuries by the time Allhallowtide became widely celebrated in Europe. Samhain, however, was recorded in the tenth century by Christian monks seeking to preserve Irish folklore.
Again, this is not to say that the way we celebrate modern Halloween hasn't been influenced by the cultural customs of the people who once observed Samhain, but after looking at the holiday's historical timeline it's difficult to imagine it was heavily synthesized with paganism when the population that adopted it hadn't been pagan for centuries. Why would Irish Christians corrupt a Christian holiday with a paganism that even their great grandparents couldn't remember? Even if some elements of paganism had managed to survive during the intervening centuries it should be characterized as marginal and accidental, and whatever was pagan about it was definitely forgotten over the course of the following millennium.
CUSTOMS & SYMBOLS
Let's explore some common Halloween customs for a deeper understanding of the holiday. Many people have recently speculated their pagan origins, but most of them have traditionally been associated with Christian spirituality. Let's start with trick or treating.
"In England, from the medieval period, up until the nineteen thirties, people practiced the Christian custom of souling on Halloween, which involved groups of soulers, both Protestant and Catholic, going from parish to parish, begging the rich for soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the souls of the givers and their friends."Jack o lanterns have a mysterious history dating back to pre Christian times, and many interpretations of them have been suggested. Jack o lanterns can be representations of souls in purgatory or a kind of scarecrow to frighten off evil spirits. The following is an Irish folk tale about the jack o lantern that demonstrates its ties to Christian spirituality.
"On route home after a night's drinking, Jack encounters the Devil and tricks him into climbing a tree. A quick-thinking Jack etches the sign of the cross into the bark, thus trapping the Devil. Jack strikes a bargain that Satan can never claim his soul. After a life of sin, drink, and mendacity, Jack is refused entry to heaven when he dies. Keeping his promise, the Devil refuses to let Jack into hell and throws a live coal straight from the fires of hell at him. It was a cold night, so Jack places the coal in a hollowed out turnip to stop it from going out, since which time Jack and his lantern have been roaming looking for a place to rest."
Witches have recently come to play a large part in Halloween symbolism, but it's important to note that until very recently, probably around the nineteen nineties, they were portrayed as evil forces to be overcome, and from a Christian perspective it's healthy to think of them in this context. If we're going to battle witches on Halloween then we're being good Christians.
CONCLUSION
Halloween is no more pagan than many of the other holidays we celebrate. Christmas, Easter, and Valentine's Day have all been tied to paganism in various ways, and yet we have no problem celebrating them. Halloween literally means "eve of the saints," and most of its common practices have direct Christian contexts. In recent years, Halloween has been somewhat hijacked by modern witches and turned into their high holiday, but this is a very recent phenomenon, and we shouldn't let them get away with stealing our special day. Halloween was intended as a commemoration of our fellow saints who've passed from this life, and I propose we utilize it for it's original purpose instead of virtue signaling against it every year.