Question:

How do other Christians handle Halloween? It seemed like such an innocent thing until I became a Christian . Our small group at church did a websearch on "halloween and christianity", and found many articles like this one: www.jeremiahproject.com/halloween.html

Answer:

Just as I keep "Christ" in Christmas, I keep the "Hallow" in Hallowe'en...

It's the same word, "Hallow", as in "Hallowed be Thy Name", and it means Holy. It's a Christian Holiday. As we have done every year, we will go to church on All Hallows to commemorate the witness of the Faithful departed. We'll undertake some sort of maintenance work at the cemetary -- even if only bringing flowers to some lonely grave. And we'll learn the stories of some of the great Christian witnesses of the past.

Socio-archeologists speculate with some certainty; that Hallowe'en, like Christmas, Lady-day, Michaelmas and Candlemas; was established by early Christian missionaries to Northern Europe, on the date of some previously-existing celebration. That knowledge has allowed modern Pagans to reconstruct some of the probable festivals of the ancient pagan religion. For me that doesn't change the fact that hundreds of generations of faithful Christians have used this day as a special celebration of the fellowship that living Christians share with those who have gone before us into God's nearer presence.

Pumpkins, costumes, and sweets have little more to do with Hallowe'en than Santa Claus, Macy's parade, and turkey dinner have to do with Christmas. A little more, because the costumes recollect for us the passion plays that kept alive the stories of Christian witnesses and martyrs in the days before the printing press when most believers were illiterate. And the squash and winter vegetables (traditional fall-harvest lanterns were made in hollowed-out turnips, not pumpkins: the pumpkin is a new-world vegetable) that were harvested at this time would be the staple food for the impending winter -- a winter that many of the presently celebrating Christians would not survive in those days before nutritional substitutes and indoor heating. In the following year, they would be remembered by those whom the winter vegetables did sustain.

All Hallows became a Christian day of remembrance throughout the "known" world in the first half of the ninth century, and has been celebrated as such every year since, right up to this year. Well over half the world's Christians -- a billion-plus people -- love and honour it as a major holy day.

I believe the actual start of the festival relates to the sun's position being halfway between the autumnal equinox (mid-fall) and the winter solstice (mid-winter), making this date the cross-over (or cross-quarter) from Fall into Winter. Since there is only one Sun, and the whole world has noticed it, there is a tendency for different cultures to establish holidays on the same day.

There is no good archeological evidence for the *reason* that Pope Gregory moved the feast of All Saints from May 13 to Nov 1. His ostensible reason -- the one documented historically -- was to celebrate the dedication on that day of the Chapel of All Saints in the Vatican Basilica. My theory is that northern European Christians were celebrating the end of Harvest on that day anyway, and he wanted to accomodate their culture and tradition within the Church. But the official reason was a chapel dedication far away in south Europe, so my theory may be as much smoke and hot air as the "trying to stamp out Samhain" theory -- but it sound nicer.

History actually tells us very little about pagan rituals at all, let alone rituals associated with Halloween. Modern Wiccans have had to rely on dubious oral tradition and christian literature to reconstruct their religion. Documents like Malleus Maleficarum (written by Christians but far from Christian in their lack of love and compassion)made hideous claims about witches that, according to the hard research of history, were based entirely on medaeivel Christian paranoia. Not only is there no historical evidence supporting the claims made in these documents, there is considerable historical evidence against them.

Ungrounded fear affects the secular aspect of Halloween, too. Do you know that every claim of tainted candy that has been thouroughly investigated, has turned out to be fraudulent? We are scaring ourselves without cause. Wicca *has* become more popular in recent years, -- but the truth about Wicca has actually *helped* a little to clean up some of the fear of secular Halloween -- and thanks to those Wiccans who are vocally discounting the ridiculous legends of our past. And it is rarely the Wiccans who are dressing up as demons and undead -- *they* are at circle that night, or taking their toddlers around the neighbourhood dressed as ballerinas and spiderman, just as the Christians are.

Personally <g>, I think we should blame the horrible costumes on rebellious teenagers and bad mothers -- it's tradition<g>.

There are many such links such as the Jeremiah Project on the world wide web...

They do not constitute scholarly research. However, I am hearing college professors beginning to complain that some students have lost the skill of doing non-Internet-based secondary research, so some clarifications may be in order:

No claims in any field, whether web-published or paper-published, have any validity unless they are backed up by references to other reputable publications, which eventually reference primary research. Primary research means you yourself read the original vellums, or counted the pottery sherds in the midden. Mere publication does not make a paper or page reliable; look for detailed references (footnotes and bibliography) to *primary* sources, publication in peer-adjudicated scholarly journals, and reputable (and attributed) authorship with scholarly redentials.

The site you referenced claims that the Druids stopped sacrificing humans in bonfires in the 1600's!!! Do you know anything else about the 1600's? The claims of human-sacrificing Druids operating freely in the century after the reformation are utterly unbelievable -- this is hardly ancient history. It isn't even medaeivel! The site *does* have more than the usual proportion of verifiable fact mixed in with its less reasonable claims, but I wouldn't call it reliable history. Though you are certainly right that there are many more, just as bad if not worse. And there are plenty of paper publications just as bad.