Illustration by Anderson Rearick.  Click on image for full sized cartoon

Halloween Blessings

A few years back WNZR, Mount Vernon Nazarene College's Christian radio
station, ran a poll asking whether Halloween is spiritually harmful or not. The
response from a predominately evangelical listening audience was two to one
against Halloween. This did not surprise me. It is now popular in some Christian
circles to overtly disapprove any celebration of All Hallowed Eve--Halloween.

"We all know what day is coming," said a young woman in the choir of the Rhode
Island church my wife and I attended several years back. "And I think we need to
be in prayer that the evil powers and principalities be held in check over this next
weekend."  Halloween fell on a Sunday that year, making seem all the blacker. On
the MVNC school calendar, Oct. 31 sits in a black square with no acknowledgment
that there is anything special about the date.

"It's Satan's Holiday, Dr. Rearick," affirmed on of my students. "Didn't you
know?"

Well, no, I didn't know. And I am rather reluctant to give up a holiday which was
one of the highlights of my childhood calendar to the great impostor and the chief
of liars for no reason other than some of his servants claim it as his. For me,
Halloween has always been a day to celebrate the imagination, to become for a
short time something wonderful and strange, to wander the streets with the crackle
and odor of swirling golden orange and dark red leaves, smelling of grease paint,
and tasting sweets that were permissible only once a year.

How wonderful to be with other children dressed up as what they might grow up to
be, what they wish they could be, or even what they secretly feared. All of us,
dreams and nightmares, brought together on equal footing, going from door to door
to be given treats and to be admired for our creativity. How delightful to go to
parties with doughnuts, apples, brown cider and pumpkin cakes, to later have our
spines tingled by ghost stories and our hearts made to skip a beat when the teller
grabs for us. And now we are being pressured by some to give this all up, and they
use what is for some of us the most difficult argument to answer--it's the
"Christian" thing to do.

There are, of course, some Christians who shun make-believe. Such believers feel
that a young Christian's mind should never long to be in lands where little men have
fuzzy feet, dragons breath fire, and horses have wings. Instead, they maintain that a
Christian should be caught up in the here and now of the "real" world. Defending
the reality of fiction and fantasy to such critics requires a whole different essay
, which I hope to get around to another day--maybe Christmas.

However, to some others who have fears about Halloween, I should also admit that
I understand some of their concerns. When individuals who have returned to pagan
idolatry or have gotten involved in Satanism claim Halloween as theirs, Christians
may be a little leery of sharing anything with them. But who, may I ask, gave these
individuals the right to claim the holiday? If they are Druids, they are celebrating
Samhain, and that is not Halloween; it is an earlier holiday. As for Satanists, their
whole calendar is a perversion of Christians seasons--there would be no Satanists if
there were no Christians--and so they can claim all they want to: I give them
nothing.

"But look at the roots of Halloween" some may say. "Don't you see how evil it
once was?" I do, but the operative word in that sentence is "was." Samhain was
once a time of fear and dread. But so, at one time was Yule or as it was called in
Sweden "Midvinterblot." Towards the time of the winter solstice the days became
shorter and colder. The land was laid waist. In pagan times to keep the fire of the
life-giving sun alight, sacrifices were often made before a great oak tree. St.
Bernard is supposed to have stopped one such sacrifice and instituted the indoor
Christmas tree at the same time. Today the burning of such logs in the midst of
sacrifice has come down to us as the traditions of burning Yule logs and enjoying
Christmas Trees.

I point this out not to suggest that fir trees and Yule logs be banned from
Christmas, but to demonstrate what has happened time and time again in human
history. For our pagan ancestors the holidays, which mark the great seasonal
changes of life, were often fearful, terrible and dark. But with the coming of Christ
came a great light and through that light not only were individuals reclaimed, but so
were the holidays they celebrated. In the case of Midvinterblot and Yule, the
holidays that marked the terrible price required to bring light into the world
became, instead, the avenue through which the joyful message of the coming of
God's true light might be expressed.

And Halloween? What does a reclaimed Halloween express? Halloween has
traditionally in our culture fulfilled the need to look at what frightens us, experience
it, laugh at it and come through it. So at the end of October we are visited by cute
Caspers, laughing pumpkin heads, and goofy ghouls. Should the forces of evil be
mocked?  Should Satan be laughed at?  He most certainly should.

At the beginning of his Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis includes two telling quotes:

  "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yeild to
                    texts  of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear
                    scorn"
                                             - Martin Luther

and (pardon the archaic spelling):

          "The devil. . .the prowde spirite: cannot endure to be
                    mocked."
                                             -Thomas More.

The one thing Satan cannot bear is to be a source of laughter. His pride is
undermined by his own knowledge that his infernal rebellion against God is in
reality an absurd farce. Hating laughter he demands to be taken seriously. Indeed, I
would go so far as to say that those Christians who spend the night of Oct. 31 filled
with concern over what evils might be (and sometimes are) taking place are doing
the very thing Lucifer wants them to do. Such believers are giving his authority
credence with their respect.

I will concede here that not all believers should celebrate Halloween. For those who
have been redeemed from the occult, Halloween in its foolishness may contain
what was for them deadly seriousness. Let me state, however, that while their souls
were in deadly peril, what they experienced and saw were lies and illusions.
Christians do not believe in magic. Again, however, I have been disturbed in the
way evangelicals have responded to these individuals. We have them come to our
prayer meetings and youth groups to warn us (while at the same time tingling us
with ghost-like stories) against the evils of Halloween. Such individuals are often set
up as authorities. Again that is a mistake. A brother or sister who has been
redeemed from the occult is still scared--that's what sin does. They will naturally
look upon anything which reminds them of what once enslaved them with horror.
Such hyper-sensitivity may be appropriate for them, but it is not appropriate for the
majority of Christians. Holding their opinions as generally appropriate for most
believers is like having a former bulimic lecture our groups on what is the
Christian's attitude towards Church Hot-Plate Socials.

Christians should celebrate Halloween with gusto. When we--the carriers of
light--see Oct. 31 as dark and sinister, we help the great fraud turn back the clock
to the days of Samhain. However, if we follow the traditional formula of having a
good time at his expense, he flees.

Finally, I have real doubts that Christian refusing to acknowledge a holiday so
immersed in the archetypal change of seasons as Halloween, will in the end prevail.
This tactic was tried before-- with Christmas. In the 17th century, many Christians,
because of its pagan ancestry and because (and this is so sad) it was a Roman
Catholic holiday (Christ-mass!) decided that true believers should not recognize it.
In 1620, our pilgrim forefathers purposely started unloading the Mayflower on
Christmas Day to make the point to the crew that they were not going to observe
such an evil day. I can just imagine the charitable thoughts that filled those sailors.
Personally, I'm glad those believers--however well intended--failed. How bleak and
desolate would a winter's December be without Christmas! We could have lost our
chance to celebrate Christ's first coming and a chance to witness to the world (as I
fear those pilgrims lost a chance to witness to those sailors). If Christians give up
All Hallow Eve, they lose the delight of God's gift of imagination, and they
condemn the rest of society to a darker Halloween because their laughter won't be
there to make the Devil run.

By Anderson M. Rearick III, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in English
Mount Vernon Nazarene College

A slightly edited version of this article was published under the title "Hallowing Halloween" in the Oct. 2, 2000 issue of Christianity Today.