Halloween–Clarifying Yesterday’s Post
As I read through the comments of yesterday’s post, I felt like someone (either readers or myself) had some misunderstandings about the article. It may very well be that I thought the article interesting and thought-provoking, but don’t necessarily view Halloween exactly as the author does, or that some of you weren’t clear about the author’s message.
For whatever reason, I guess I wanted to clarify my personal stance, since someone else wrote the posted article. We don’t celebrate anything on October 31, unless our church has a Reformation party, in which we simply get together and have a big meal and reminisce about Martin Luther’s bravery in calling out the error of the Catholic church and “fathering” what is now known as the Protestants. (Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the Catholic church on October 31st.)
I think it is good and right for the church to honor, remember and celebrate such historical events. And I don’t think doing so is in any way connected to Halloween, as we know it, they just happen to be on the same day. And since “All Saints Day” is November 1, it was rather fitting that the message in church this morning (given my Joel McDurmon of American Vision) gave us pause to remember the many, many Christians whose faith took them to the stake for Christ and encouraged us to reflect on the blessing of our freedom to worship.
So, we don’t celebrate “Halloween”, as our culture knows it. I’ve never personally liked any attempt by churches (not to condemn) to try to “Christianize” the holiday. I think it is normal for children of light to be repulsed by darkness and evil. I think we are all really in agreement. The article did cause me to wonder if we should be trying to “right” what is now wrong. I don’t know how that is done, practically speaking.
I guess as a visionary I think it would be neat to see an explosion of resurrected history blast across every Protestant church in America and everyone start celebrating the Reformation or something related to All Saints Day in a way that makes what we now know as Halloween a forgotten memory. I’m talking about a totally separate event, not a Christianized version of a haunted house. That’s the kind of reclaiming I think the author was referring to…or maybe not 
but it’s my interpretation.
Post Script:
Based on a comment from the last post, I think it is prudent to mention that perhaps the current day celebrations of Halloween are quite innocent in that they are at least honest; it’s easy to see darkness and so the Christian rightfully cautions himself. What we should really be more concerned with, I think, is that Satan is “an angel of light”. There are SO many “evils” prevalent among us, but undetected because they are disguised. We are not given to fear–over anything. But if we are to be cautious about influences, we had better be watching for the ones that slip through, as Scripture puts it, “unawares”.
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November 1, 2009 2:19 pm
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I must say, I was surprised at some of the comments – to see you of all people accused of cowtowing to what ‘the world’ thinks! That’s the furthest thing from my mind when I think of what is Kelly.
Oops! *kowtow, not cowtow!
What I understood you and the article to say was that since the holiday started as a way to mock satan because we no longer need to be afraid of him, that we can celebrate the holiday in the traditional way, with jack o lanterns and trick or treat (not in the recent gruesome ways, however, with the blood and gore), because they were never meant to be demonic. That is what I have always believed, although I have to admit that in the last several years things have gotten out of hand with the disgusting stuff. I was surprised to see you say, then, that your children did not know that it was a holiday of any sort. I was really confused. Thanks for clarifying. How do you keep your children from knowing? Maybe not take them into stores once the decorations are out for sale?
Well, we don’t do Halloween, we don’t do Reformation Day. Really, why do any of it? Just follow Christ. Christ never commanded you follow either. Keep it simple.
Well, we don’t do Halloween, we don’t do Reformation Day. ust follow Christ. Christ never commanded, nor died for either. Keep it completely to scripture. No one keeps it to scripture, it’s all about adding to doctrine.
I also was pretty shocked by the comments! You were quite clear that, in your opinion (which I share), we should celebrate “Halloween” in a totally different way than the way in which the world celebrates it. I really enjoyed your post and found myself agreeing with so much of it that I forwarded it on to a bunch of friends
My fiance also really appreciated it!
Dee,
In defense of celebration, it is not “following” to celebrate or remember, etc. We have an unspoken mantra at our church: “God’s people should be the most celebratory of all.”
If you’ll look back at Scripture, God established all sorts of points of remembrance and celebrations to help remind His people of certain historical things. I think it should be no different now. How easily we forget our spiritual heritage if we don’t establish “Ebenezers” to do so.
I’m glad you clarified.
On a tangent…
It reminds me of the holier-than-thou attitudes of Jehovah’s Witnesses I ran into as a child. “We’re the *real* Christians. We don’t *need* birthdays or Christmas. We’re doing things God’s way, and you’re not!”
I must say, I’ve been a little surprised and saddened to see some very haughty attitudes going around about any sort of celebration at all.
Let us read Romans 14 again, be convinced in our own minds, and do what we do with the purpose of honoring the Lord, without spending time fussing over whether or not our neighbor is doing things our way.
I’m glad you clarified your thoughts/feelings/opinions/whatevah;)
And I loved what Margaret said so much, I think I’ll let it be said again: “Let us read Romans 14 again, be convinced in our own minds, and do what we do with the purpose of honoring the Lord, without spending time fussing over whether or not our neighbor is doing things our way.
”
Kelly, you are so great! in my mind, i didn’t think you were actually condoning or encouraging everyone to follow the author of the article’s advice necessarily just bringing up some food for thought. JFTR my comments were more responses to particular comments made and what i got from the article. I so appreciate your heart to encourage us to think about what we as Christians do and why we do it! Solo deo gloria! Blessings, jen in al
I don’t know if this will even get read as you have gone on to another post, but…
I was one of the ones who took issue with your post. I had suggested watching the documentary about halloween.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that you are celebrating or embracing halloween. My suggestion of the movie was to dispute the “myth” idea of origin and to ask the other commenters who do embrace halloween specific practices to think twice about what they are doing. I was truly trying to generate genuine discussion.
We do not “hide” at halloween. Our neighbors, Christian and non, know that we don’t celebrate halloween and still love us
We have still been able to have quite a bit of impact in our neighborhood for Christ.
We also didn’t celebrate Christmas (although we did many service projects around that time of year)for about 13 years, so we are not ones of “silly inconsistencies”. We started celebrating Christmas about six years ago because “currently” it is a Christian holiday. We keep it pretty simple. I could write a much longer paper on all our Christmas journey and other things that have pagan origins.
The point is that there are unspeakable things that “currently” go on during halloween and that we should be sure to avoid things that are decidedly halloween practices.
Not sure where your author came up with his facts in the article. There are clear sources and origins for most of the practices of halloween. For instance, the jack o lantern wasn’t a “mockery” of anything. When the pagans put the jack o lantern on their front threshhold, they were in essence saying “We sympathize with your cause, Satan so don’t bother us”. This was from another documentary that of course I can’t remember the name. John Piper, Chuck Colson and others have written articles about the origins of halloween as well.
Also not sure how Romans 14 comes in since it is talking about choosing whether to venerate a day to the Lord or not…seems to me that most of the people who were taking issue were just taking issue with participating in activities that actually represent something evil.
Again as I said in my original post, I don’t have any problem with people celebrating Reformation Day or something at Halloween! What a great idea!
Thank you, Andrea. Yes, I knew what you were bringing up, I just wanted to make it clear if anyone was misunderstanding me!
We don’t participate in Halloween either. It doesn’t really matter to me where the celebration came from or what different symbols mean. Modern day Halloween is full of darkness and fear and evil, and that is enough to want to keep my children from having anything to do with the typical celebration. We do celebrate All Saints though (we are Catholic). Basically, we just get together with friends and learn about the lives of the saints and eat food
I have never heard about “Reformation Day” celebrations. That’s a new one to me. So few protesants agree with Luther’s beliefs on many issues (Marian doctrine, for one), it would surprise me to see them celebrate his life. As for celebrating the action of breaking from the Catholic Church, I am not sure what victory is being celebrating. As a result of Luther’s break, thousands of new religions have been formed, resulting in a very broken body. Some of Luther’s objections were probably vaild, but the way he went about things was wrong. Scraping 1500 years of teaching and venturing off to start your own thing is not exactly commendable. I would argue that the resulting brokeness of the body, evident in the thousands of different sects, was perhaps a victory for Satan. United we stand, divided we fall. Because of Luther’s revolt, christians are divided, and that dividedness has led to a failure to brings souls to Christ in the way only a united church could do.
These are just some thoughts I have had after reading this blog entry.
Corrie,
I would submit that the number of different religions may or may not be linked to Luther’s objections. And, being only a Christ and Bible follower (not man made religion), I would agree with many of his objections. In the times of Luther, dissenters were faced with persecution and loss of lively hood/home at the least, and, at the most, torture and death.
The source of all the different religions is, at its base, Satan. However, the self exalting mind of humanity caused murderous division whose sin root is still evident in present day. This division and false doctrine did not originate with Luther, Paul warned of it in the Bible. To lay the blame at one man’s feet is far stretching to say the least. The blame lies within all of us who turn our nose at other doctrine and elevate what man has taught above what the Bible has taught with Holy Spirit. We have not, in past generations, nor sadly now, recognized that the world will not recognize Christ as the Son of God until the body is one. (See Jesus’ prayer for His followers) Until the body gets past the meaningless divisions in doctrine which do not interfere with salvation, and turns towards our similarities and love of God/Christ/Holy Spirit, we cannot be one. And WE are preventing the world from knowing the One True God.
I really enjoyed reading your article, keep on writing such exciting stuff!