POINT COUNTERPOINT
Trick or Treat?
This month, little ghosts and goblins will come knocking on your door. Is Halloween a bad influence on our children?
NO. Halloween is harmless fun. Just because some have chosen it as their “helliday” doesn’t make it evil. The Church can redeem this event without succumbing to its dark side. hen I was young, I loved dressing up in elaborate costumes each Halloween, smelling the crisp, earthy air from the fallen leaves, running from house to house … and, oh yes, the candy! But Halloween is hard for some Christians—they just don’t know what to do with it. Is it sinful and evil? Is it all about Satan worship and pagan gods? Or is it just fun and games? Years ago, when I got serious about my relationship with God I wanted to make sure that if I participated in Halloween I wasn’t breaking some kind of spiritual law. So I did some research. Here’s what I found. Halloween can be traced back to the ancient Celtic feast of Samhain (pronounced sah-ween). Although it’s all about the candy now, it had some eerie beginnings. Originally it was a night for the druids to lead the people in a celebration of Samhain, whom they believed to be the Lord of the Dead. His festival fell on November 1. Most pagan nations had a belief that at death the souls of good people were taken by good spirits and carried off to paradise, but the souls of wicked people were left to wander the space between the earth and the moon or consigned to inhabit animals. On Samhain, the veil between the physical world and the spirit world was pierced, releasing evil spirits that would then harass the living. These wicked souls would return to their homes, so people would attempt to ward them off by wearing scary costumes. They would draw gargoyles on their houses and carve out gourds and pumpkins and put lights in them. They even tried to placate the evil spirits by offering them food. However, if the spirits weren’t satisfied, they would play a trick on them. Hence, trick or treat! When Christianity spread through Europe and the British Isles, many pagans and druids converted to Christianity. However, they were still very superstitious. Many of the people were illiter18 I October 2011 I Salvationist
Photo: © istockphoto.com/Sean Locke
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BY MAJOR KATHIE CHIU
ate and uneducated and so their understanding of many things was very primitive. In order to combat superstition, the Roman Catholic Church established All Saints Day, a rival celebration on November 1. All Saints Day honoured all the martyrs who had died that year. On October 31, the Church held a mass called All Hallows, and the evening became known as All Hallows E’en, which means “holy evening.” Halloween is the Church’s attempt to redeem a pagan celebration. This is nothing new for the Church. Christmas and Easter were also timed to replace pagan celebrations. Some of the old symbols remain—the Easter egg is a sign of fertility as is the Christmas tree. So what is so evil about Halloween? Some simply practise it as a cultural festival—a night to dress up and have some fun. Others have embraced a pagan-like religious belief and have resurrected some of what they think are ancient Celtic practices. Still others have embraced evil and declared Halloween their special night. The Bible tells us that we are not to have anything to do with