Halloween.....Part 1

What I am going to discuss today is a subject that brings a fair amount of controversy within the church. The topic, is of course, Halloween. Now, before I even begin, I would like to go on the record as stating that I have been rather reluctant in the past to get involved in this discussion. As a child, I remember going “trick-or-treating” once or twice. My family once took a ride on the haunted hayride in Radom, and at least once I carved a “Jack-o-Lantern.” Generally speaking, I celebrated the holiday much the same way as most Americans children.

That changed a little when someone gave our family a sermon tape on the subject. On the tape, the preacher exposed the history of the Halloween. I was very surprised to find that this holiday was once known as Samhain, and marked the Celtic New Year’s eve (The Celts were a nature worshiping group of people who lived in Ireland and present day United Kingdom about 2000 years ago). These pagan people believed this to be a time when evil spirits ruled the night, and lit “bonfires” (originally called “bone fires” from sacrifices), and went from house to house wearing masks (likely made from animal heads) carrying hollowed out gourds with candles inside and demanding food. A “trick” was played out if the requests were not met. According to the preacher, they would likely burn your house down, or something worse.

After hearing this sermon, my family thought it appropriate to do our best to at least lighten up on the celebration. It just didn’t seem like a good Christian family should have anything to do with this type of tradition. Besides that, we had always felt a little weird about the abundance of witches, demons, gosts, etc. that seemed to inundate the television, candy isles, and stores during this time. Nothing about the holiday seemed good, and for us it was just something that we chose not to celebrate for several years. I didn’t think much about it from that point on, and simply did my best to ignore the holiday and try not to pass judgment on those who simply didn’t know.

Flash forward about 18 years to Circa 2003.

After having our first child, my wife and I began to find it progressively more difficult to simply ignore the holiday known as Halloween. Once Cassidy was born, we knew we were going to have to make a decision as to whether or not we were going to let her dress up and partake in the childhood events that enshrine this holiday. Even before she was walking very well we had people encouraging us to dress her up to celebrate the event. We tried our best to get by with simple phrases like, “Well, we are not big into Halloween.” These comments often incited a dirty look from friends and even some family members. Postponing the event seemed like the best idea for us. But for how long???