HALLOWEEN HYSTERIA
by Keith Stump
October is quickly flying by, meaning it’s time for the
traditional Christian hand-wringing over that most “demonic” of holidays,
Halloween! In anticipation of the usual anti-Halloween propaganda, I offer the
following observations about this alleged “satanic festival of evil”:
First, there’s no need to point out that Halloween is not
found in Leviticus 23. (Duh.) Leviticus 23 is obsolete and irrelevant anyway.
Second, forget the lengthy dissertation about how the papacy (the alleged
“image of the beast” and “great whore”) instituted the Roman Catholic
celebrations of “All Hallows Eve” and “All Saints Day”. That, too, is
irrelevant. Today’s Halloween has nothing to do with honoring Christian saints.
For most, Halloween long ago ceased being viewed as a religious observance—and
never was, by Americans.
The Halloween that many of us know today is largely an American phenomenon. And
it’s a purely secular observance.
Yet some of Halloween’s customs do have roots in
pre-Christian (“pagan”) practices. “Pagan” has long been a popular buzz word
among Christians, especially among the COGs. As a Plain Truth and World
Tomorrow writer, and occasional GHOSTwriter (how occult!) for the
Armstrongs, I used the word liberally for decades. If it’s “pagan” in origin,
it MUST be evil (like, I suppose, playing cards, wedding rings, dominoes,
medicine, beer, the theater, the names of the days of the week and months of
the year, and so on—all of which are scrupulously avoided in the COGs, aren’t
they?).
Some of Halloween’s customs can be traced to practices of
the Celtic New Year, particularly among the Druids of ancient Britain. The
Celts worshipped nature deities and practiced a relatively benign type of
witchcraft. (Shame on them for living before the birth of Christ! Why, they
must have been as evil as Cyrus the Great, who worshipped Ishtar, the pagan
goddess of love and war, and Ahura Mazda, god of light and wisdom. [Oh, wait a
minute—God still called Cyrus "that righteous man from the East."
Never mind.])
The Celtic festival of Samhain (which means “summer’s end”
and marked the Celtic New Year, and is properly pronounced SOW-in, not “Sam
Hain”) was considered to be a magical time, when the thin veil between the
worlds was lifted, and the dead walked among the living. It was a night of
ghosts and fairies, in which bonfires were lit and fortunes were told, and the
thoughts of all turned to the afterlife. For some odd reason, the Celts didn’t
think that exposing their children to contemplation of death and the afterlife
was a problem. And, of course, the “witches” of the time were
primarily herbalists and midwives. Witches as evil, devil-worshiping
crones were an invention of the medieval Church, perpetuated by modern
fundamentalists.
Despite fundamentalist assertions, there were no orgies or
human sacrifices or cannibalism or devil-worshipping during Samhain. Anyone who
claims otherwise is an incompetent researcher or an outright liar. And—despite
all those sermonettes you’ve heard—there was never a Celtic “god of death”
named “Samhain”.
The
ancient Samhain festival in no way “glorified” the demonic world, nor—except
for a relatively few “Satanists”—does Samhain today. Modern pagans who
celebrate Samhain regard it as a time to look back on the past year and reflect
on how they can become better people, and a time to honor departed loved ones
and welcome them into their presence. Modern Halloween is even less
focused on “making contact” with the spirit world.
Stop for a moment and consider rationally: Is a six-year-old
girl trick-or-treating in a Cinderella costume “fellowshipping with demons”? Is
a child covered in a sheet with eye-holes “associating with spirits”? Are
employees attending a company costume party “consorting with the devil”? Is
hanging a plastic skeleton in your window “paying homage to Satan”? Is carving
a jack-o’-lantern “fashioning an idol”? Is bobbing for apples a “wicked revel”?
Some who are reading this would reply with a resounding “yes”. And that’s
because of the spiritual myopia that warps their thinking, as I’ll discuss in a
moment. Goofball notions are de rigueur for the fundamentalist.
Others who are reading this have heartwarming memories of
Halloween. It’s a slice of genuine Americana. It was one of the highlights of
their childhood calendar—a time of family crafts and costume-making, a time to
celebrate creativity and imagination. It was a time for children to dress up
and solicit candy from their neighbors. (We were even taught to say “thank
you”, which I’m sure irked Satan no end.) Trick-or-treating allowed the entire
community to share in the Halloween festivities, as costumes were admired and
rewarded with goodies. Halloween reaffirmed social bonds with friends and
neighbors. These are hardly the “unfruitful works of darkness” (Eph. 5:11), unless one is a fanatic who
interprets that phrase like, well, a fanatic.
(A parenthetical note to hypocrites: Anyone who condemns
Halloween, yet enjoys an occasional Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff film, or reads
a Stephen King or Anne Rice thriller, or a Harry Potter novel, or who watches
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “The Wizard of Oz” or Disney’s “Snow White” or
“Sleeping Beauty” or the “Lord of the Rings” films or who plays fantasy-based video
games or visits Disneyland’s “Haunted Mansion” or watches a stage magician is a
hypocrite, pure and simple. It’s like a conscientious objector being a fan of
war movies. But hypocrisy is nothing new to the COGs, is it? And, for that
matter, is “glorifying violence” any less “sinful” than “glorifying the
occult”? (Hmm. I must have been imagining those LCG members sitting in the
theater when I saw “Terminator 3″.))
To all COG members out there: Is your children’s
Christianity so feeble as to be endangered by a plastic mask and a few candy
bars? Are your children so inadequately grounded in their religion as to be
tempted into a life of witchcraft by attending a costume party? Are you
yourself so poorly rooted in your faith that you fear your children will ask
questions to which you have no satisfactory answers?
I have seen no evidence of children being psychologically
warped or seduced into a life of witchcraft and perversion as a result of
innocent Halloween activities. I HAVE, however, seen many fearful and
superstitious COG children who have been conditioned to be abnormally
hypersensitive to anything blackened with the feared label “occult”. One child
in particular comes to mind, whom I witnessed shrieking in stark terror at the
mere sight of a jack-o-lantern. Are you raising fearful children who, like
medieval peasants, see Satan lurking behind every tree and demons skulking in
every dark corner? Are you raising children who fear they will “open themselves
up” to “demonic control” at any moment by the slightest misstep? What a
tenuous, precarious and paranoid spirituality! Satan is a defeated enemy! We
need not shrink inanimate mortal remains. Explain that fear of black cats
is an ancient superstition of the ignorant. Talk to them about the fanciful
creations of horror fiction, like werewolves and vampires. It’s healthy to
examine the things that frighten us. Tell them about “ghosts” or disembodied
spirits. (The dead are relatively safe; it’s the living you need to watch out
for!) And talk to them about the subject of life after physical death. Tell
them about the Lord of Life who overcame death. Assuage their fears about those
who can kill the body but not the soul.
Halloween is also a good time to reconsider our own views
about death and the afterlife. The unbiblical doctrine of “soul sleep” would be
a good place to start. The Bible clearly teaches (and centuries of experience
demonstrate) that death does not interrupt self-awareness; personal identity survives
death! By contrast, Herbert Armstrong’s so-called “restored truth” about “What
is Man?” is totally without biblical foundation, though his followers blindly
accept it. Measuring truth by the teachings of a morally unprincipled deviate
who was indisputably unqualified for ministry by biblical standards (i Tim.
3:2-7; Titus 1:6-7) is far scarier than any aspect of Halloween! (A rule of
thumb, which I’ll throw in free of charge: The farther an individual or group
moves away from the teachings of the so-called Philadelphia era of the Church
of God, the closer he moves toward genuine truth and balanced spirituality.)
So here’s my point: Objection to Halloween is a reflection
of something much broader: an obsession with trivialities, a confusion of
priorities, a primitive fear of the unknown, an arrogance that finds
“righteousness” in being odd-ball and out-of-step. Fundamentalists can find
something offensive or objectionable in almost anything. They have a world view
in which virtually everything is “anti-Christian”. They have lost the ability
to filter the important from the inconsequential. The traditional COG
prohibition against Halloween ignores the facts of history, misrepresents the modern
holiday, and demonstrates a woeful lack of spiritual discernment.
So, in a nutshell, my message to Christians about Halloween
is: Lighten up! There is nothing spiritually harmful about this tradition.
Sensibly observed, Halloween can be a day of wholesome fun and merriment.
Believe it or not, not everything in life has to have some deep
spiritual connotation. Halloween is “Satan’s Holiday” only to those who concede
it to him or arbitrarily label it as such. Christians have been redeemed from
the forces of evil. We don’t have to give credence to Satan’s claimed authority
in any area of life. Don’t surrender to the fear, superstition and hypocrisy of
the fundamentalist, who wouldn’t recognize a little harmless fun if he tripped
over it, who is oblivious to the value of fantasy, who has no idea what “magic”
and “witchcraft” really are, to whom everything paranormal is “demonic”
and who trembles before the power of Satan and his demons (whether he admits it
or not). Don’t fall prey to shady “scholarship” and flawed arguments about this
holiday. Don’t let anyone judge you in respect of this or any other
occasion. Safe, fun Halloween activities are NOT “of the “devil”.
To
believe otherwise is just plain silly!
