Replies

"What do you mean by “strictly on our own terms.”

We have to engage the world in debate where we find it. An festival originally celebrated by pagans has been reinterpreted in the context of Christianity, and is now being transformed into a deracinated fancy-dress party with occult overtones. Christians need to confront this head-on, which means remembering from where the occult overtones came, which was a perfectly understandable and pro-Christian association of fall with the death of nature into winter, prefiguring Christ's death and rebirth in the Spring. This is the first problem with "Harvest festival" substitutes some evangelicals offer--the point of the holiday is not to congratulate ourselves on our good farming, it's to note that growth is ending, which in the past meant, for instance, the slaughter of all the yearlings not considered to be good breedstock. Fall is shot through with intimations of death, and the Christian needs to speak directly to that. Trying to change the subject is a dodge. Hallowe'en is associated with death, and with our fears about things which bring death. It is a common folkway for tribes to act out their fears, which in northern Europe involve either surrogate demons or counter-demons, dressed to frighten away the evil spirits. Now, most Christians are prepared to conceded the real existence of evil spirits, so, perhaps some might object under the principle of "speak of the devil and he will appear," but this isn't strictly scriptural is it? Once we understand why the costumes exist--to protect the village from those things represented by the costumes, we have to be much more sympathetic to the folk drama being acted out. Trick-or-treating is not really understood then as a sacrifice to evil spirits, but rather a gift made to those who dare to confront the evil spirits. Hallowe'en is too important to be left to children and materialists who want to sell them candy and costumes.