Holiday Hysteria (a Christian defense of Halloween)

Catholic Exchange ^ | October 31, 2008 | Rod Bennett

[NYer]

Today is Halloween — and, as you may have noticed, many of our Evangelical friends now shun America’s October spook festival altogether. They tell their children that Halloween is “the devil’s holiday” and that trick-or-treating is little better than dabbling with a Ouija board or consulting an astrologer.

Contemplating the Idea of Death

Though such extremism might seem odd or funny to many of us, it’s really, in one sense, quite admirable. If I thought Halloween was what they think it is, I’d keep my kids away from it, too — no matter how odd it might seem to others. But I’m afraid that if our separated brethren don’t stop for a moment and listen to some good old-fashioned Catholic wisdom on this subject, they’ll all be forced to become Jehovah’s Witnesses before long. And that, I think you’ll agree, would be terrible. Let’s try to spare them that fate, at least.

What exactly is Halloween all about?

Basically Halloween is our local manifestation of one of mankind’s oldest and most basic impulses: the impulse to contemplate — and even to celebrate — the idea of death during the fall of the year.

After all, the natural world itself dies in the autumn, and that death (along with our sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection for it next spring) has always set human beings to contemplating their own impending date with mortality. The pre-Christian world was positively overflowing with these local death festivals. Whether it was the turning of the leaves along the Danube or the first frost on the haystacks of Burgundy, the pagans who lived in Europe before the coming of Christianity found something driving them to tell ghost stories around the end of October, to dress in creepy costumes, and to build bonfires against a new (and not entirely unpleasant) chill in the air. In some places, dances were held to drive away evil spirits; in others, it was believed that the shades of departed loved ones might take a holiday from Hades on this particular night, and could turn up at your doorstep for a spooky reunion.

Inculturation Is an Old Tradition

Before too long however, Catholic missionaries went to Europe from the East and preached the Gospel of Jesus to these cheery, superstitious heathens. Their fiery crusades against pagan idolatry are the stuff of legend: they inspired their converts to chop down the sacred groves, to smash their idols, and to turn instead to the worship of the one true God, Who created heaven and earth. But these missionaries had another quality as well, an attribute that’s often glossed over in hostile secular accounts. That attribute was empathy.

These early missionaries actually liked the people they were converting. They liked their folkways, and their culture. They liked their music, their dances, and even their local death festivals — or liked, at any rate, everything about them that could be liked without compromising the faith. Interestingly enough, we know from history that Pope Gregory sent his missionaries out with explicit instructions that anything in the local culture which was not actually incompatible with Christianity was to be left strictly alone. Today, we call this approach “missionary inculturation,” and most of us have realized that it isn’t really necessary for a Bantu tribesman to put on a three-piece suit before we allow him to come to church. We may feel very enlightened when we take this approach today, but the truth is that the whole evangelization of Western Europe (325-1100 AD) was accomplished under this principle.

This is the real reason why many Christian holy days correspond to older festivals from the pre-existing pagan calendar. The Europeans, for example, had many cherished family traditions surrounding their winter solstice festivals, and so the Church allowed them to incorporate many of these customs (Christmas trees, etc.) into her nativity celebrations. Likewise, Easter was already a spring holy day for the pagans, devoted to the contemplation of rebirth, new life, and resurrection. It was only natural, then, that many of these ancient customs found themselves gaining new and deeper significance under the reign of Christ, the true God of springtime and fertility.

The pagan death festivals were superceded in just this way by two Christian holy days based on a similar theme — All Saints Day (November 1) and All Souls Day (November 2). The pagans found it natural to remember their departed loved ones at this time of the year, and the Church wisely allowed them to maintain continuity with the old ways. To say, however, that the Church merely “Christianized” the existing paganism is to miss the point badly. As St. Paul dramatically points out in his Epistle to the Romans, paganism already had a good deal of inchoate truth in it already. What the Church actually did was to gather up some of these inchoate truths, sift out what was patently unusable, and then point the pagans to the final fulfillment of their ancient longings as revealed in the faith of Christ.

An Echo-Holiday

And yet Halloween isn’t quite All Saints Day, is it? Or All Souls Day. What is it then?

You might say that Halloween is an “echo-holiday.” Halloween is to All Saints & All Souls Days as Mardi Gras is to Ash Wednesday — sort of their outlaw second cousin. Halloween is that part of the ancient death festivals which couldn’t quite be comfortably domesticated. It’s the part that still wants to run wild on the autumn winds, to soap windows and overturn outhouses. And yes, like Mardi Gras, this urge is difficult decently to restrain at times; the sowing of wild oats often produces crops that have to be reaped by the whirlwind. But just because a thing is subject to abuse doesn’t mean the thing itself is evil — a principle that our Evangelical friends have sometimes forgotten when the subject was wine, and we ourselves have often needed to be reminded of when the subject was sex.

Yet it isn’t the puritanical aspect of Evangelicalism that causes me to worry about a possible descent towards the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s the knee-jerk response that Halloween is to be feared solely because it has “pagan origins.” The truth is that a good deal of what all of us do every day has pagan origins. The mathematics we use has pagan origins; our form of government has pagan origins; the very letters with which this sentence is written have pagan origins. In fact, most of the churches from which these anti-paganism sermons issue are, architecturally speaking, Greek revival temples in the “neo-classical style.” So “pagan origins” alone isn’t quite enough to damn Halloween all by itself. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the great glories of Christianity that it does save and redeem and baptize pagan things — ourselves included!

Jehovah’s Witnesses, on the other hand, profess to despise everything associated with our pre-Christian past. They especially despise the practices of the Catholic Church that redeem various elements of that pre-Christian past. They teach their disciples to hate and fear all holy days and holidays alike, and will have nothing to do with either Christmas or Easter for precisely the same reasons that Evangelicals are now despising Halloween.

And this is the reason I have found it worthwhile to mount, from time to time, a Christian defense of Halloween. Because one day — perhaps not too long from now — my own friends and relatives are going to feel forced, by their own careless presuppositions, to drop the other shoe on all holidays, to spend December without Christmas, and springtime without Easter, to go to a ballgame and refuse to sing the National Anthem.

If you find, as I do, that such a prospect makes your skin crawl a little, I hope you’ll join me tonight in soaping a few windows or turning over an outhouse or two. For truth’s sake.

Happy Halloween!

[TheGunny]

BTW...if you are a Christian, your posts kinda indicate that you are trying to justify your participation in H’ween. Like I said, Im not judging you nor is this an indictment on your faith. Im not trying to come off as hyper-spiritual either, its a matter of conscience for me. As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!

[meowmeow]

if anything is excellent or praiseworthy

[NYer]

It’s a shame Catholics haven’t been so historically broad-minded about the celebration of Jewish holidays as they have been the pagan ones.

Through the Hebrew Catholic Year - A Collection of Traditions and Prayers for the Jewish Holidays for Catholics.

[Peter Horry]

I am sure you are right, but every Halloween there are warnings on nearly every TV station with “safety tips”. That is on local news (which I still watch) since I haven’t watched in years. Interesting side note, went to the grocery store yesterday evening (a little past 19:00 hrs.) in a small town of around 6.000 people and saw three houses that appeared to have “trick or treaters” and went by the local high school, heavy traffic and people parking, when “game night” is normally Friday night. Don’t know what was going on but thought I had missed a day for a moment.

[Skooz]

Haven’t read the article yet, but I’ll post my 2 cents anyway.

We have two daughters. One is 17 and the other is 2.

We disallowed any Halloween celebration for our first daughter because we believed it to be the devil’s holiday. No costumes, no candy, no trick-or-treat.

Every year we found something else for her to do, usually the “Harvest Party” at church where she had a good time with other kids.

We were pretty uptight about Halloween.

The past few years, we have changed our view. As long as WE are not celebrating Satan, who gives a rip whether or not we allow any Halloween festivities?

My wife will take my 2 year-old trick or treating tonight. She’s dressed as a fairy tale princess.

[AnAmericanMother]

Of course Christmas as a Major Feast is not the equivalent of All Souls or All Saints . . .

. . . but the underlying message I think is to remember the dead, to remember that we also must die, and to pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Not a popular message for moderns, because death has been largely sanitized and hushed up and locked away in hospitals and nursing homes where most people don't have to confront it. And most moderns don't like to confront the issue of the Four Last Things and what may happen to us after we die.

So no, it's not on a level with Christmas. But it is important.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Through the Hebrew Catholic Year - A Collection of Traditions and Prayers for the Jewish Holidays for Catholics.

As I said, historically. Historically the Catholic Church has "superseded" and abolished Jewish holidays while adapting and "baptizing" pagan ones.

For most of Catholic history such a group as you reference would have been forced underground or else condemned as "Judaizers."

[AnAmericanMother]

No, not trying to justify because we don't really participate.

Kids are almost grown and don't trick or treat. We have candy in case neighborhood kids come by trick or treating, but few do (not that many young kids in the neighborhood, some years we may get as many as 10-15, others none). Some years I'll carve a pumpkin to put on the porch, too busy this year.

Just trying to take a clear-eyed view of the situation.

[demshateGod]

I agree that candy corn is praiseworthy. Just eat it and skip the Satan worship.

[DouglasKC]

It's interesting than an entire religious defense of Halloween was mounted in this article without one piece of scripture. Man centered reasoning and logic can make a compelling case absent a bible based teaching.

See:

Is Halloween Harmless?

[TheGunny]

. . . but the underlying message I think is to remember the dead, to remember that we also must die, and to pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory...

Purgatory? You're kidding right?

(Death) Not a popular message for moderns, because death has been largely sanitized and hushed up and locked away in hospitals and nursing homes where most people don't have to confront it.

Ignorant and narrow. H’ween is going to bridge this? The fact that not all Christians minister in the slums of India, Dar fur or in Hospice facilities here shouldnt be taken to mean that they are ignorant of death or the effect it has on the observers of it.

Com’on now. In the interest of full disclosure, I am no longer a Catholic and dont really desire to split doctrinal hairs with you. I will say however that I veiw the doctrine of “Purgatory” to be reprehensible and destructive to people. One of the most heretical teachings in Christendom.

[TheGunny]

Ok...you got me there:o) Dont forget the little pumkin ones..

[Luke21]

I have a tub of candy for the children that visit my house tonight. I will be glad to see them. It’s the same candy we serve in our addictions ministry to people trying to get off booze and drugs.

My year old grandson is going to be dressed as a pirate tonight. His mother is a Christian, fully versed in spiritual warfare. She will take him to relatives’ houses including mine. I’ll be glad to see the little man. He’s my joy in life.

Halloween impacts me with local children and parents coming to my door. I impact them by giving them candy. That’s the extent of it.

I get a lot more ticked off every December when the word “holiday” takes the place of Christmas in twenty bazillion ads.

[Citizen Blade]

What exactly is Halloween all about?

Candy and kids dressing up like Dora the Explorer or whatever other character is popular on TV that year.

Some killjoys want to project more onto the Halloween than that, but kids don't care.

[Philo-Junius]

Someone who claims to be an ex-Catholic is surprised that someone still Catholic believes in purgatory?

The reality and inevitability of physical death must be socially recognised for death to be properly digested and understood by the culture. Holidays are part of that process of cultural orientation.

Halloween does need to be reformed, and materialist excesses rejected, but it does serve a social AND religious purpose by serving as a cultural theatre of mortality.

[Titanites]

Halloween is “the devil’s holiday”

[Just another Joe]

Here is what I have determined about Halloween.

Halloween is based on the fact that it is the night before All Saints Day.
In prior times it was believed that the forces of darkness were allowed, semi-free, rein on this night.
Goblins, witches, zombies, vampires, etc were allowed to roam freely throughout the countryside.

The practice of costumes was to disguise who was, and was not, one of the evil ones.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, etc.

The treats were to appease the evil ones with a, sort of, sacrifice.

We are today, sort of, too literate and sensible to believe that evil flies on the wings of the wind on All Saints Eve, but the tradition lives on.

[Richard Kimball]

You photoshopped the original picture:

[TheGunny]

another world heard from....

beg to differ, H’ween doesnt serve my faith or “religion” what so ever. Thank you.

[Skooz]

I get a lot more ticked off every December when the word “holiday” takes the place of Christmas in twenty bazillion ads.

You and me both, brother. That's my number one pet peeve on earth. Don't get me started.