Do you participate in Halloween activities in your
neighborhood? Is there an opportunity for you to start a dialog with your
neighbors and their kids about what Halloween really represents? Can you
focus on death and use it as a witnessing tool?
No doubt you can answer those questions in several ways. In case
you don't know the history of this "holiday" - here's a brief
overview of the origins of Halloween.
Halloween is a culturally popular holiday observed on October 31st. It was a
Celtic pagan festival, and then became the Christian holiday - All Saints' Day, but today is a secular celebration. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes, carving Jack-o'-lanterns, apple bobbing,
visiting haunted attractions, committing pranks, telling ghost stories or other frightening tales, and watching horror films.
Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, has this to say about
Halloween: “The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a
Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even ("evening"),
that is, the night before All Hallows Day. Although the phrase All
Hallows is found in Old English (ealra hálȝena mæssedæȝ, the feast of all saints), All-Hallows-Even was
not attested until 1556.
In traditional
Celtic Halloween festivals, large turnips were hollowed
out, carved with faces and placed in windows to ward off evil spirits.
The carving of pumpkins is associated with Halloweenin North America where pumpkins are both readily available and
much larger – making them easier to carve than turnips. Many families that
celebrate Halloween carve a pumpkin into a frightening or
comical face and place it on their doorstep after dark. The practice of
dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays, dates
back to the Middle Ages. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval
practice of souling, originating in Ireland and Britain. Poor folk would
go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1st), receiving food in return for
prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2nd).
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| Image - Wikipedia |
The early Christian
church moved a festive celebration called All Saints' Day from May to November
1 and renamed it All Hallows' Eve, from which we get the word Halloween. This was an overt attempt on the part of believers to
infiltrate pagan tradition with the truth of the gospel. It was a bold
evangelistic move designed to demonstrate that only the power of the
resurrected Christ could protect men and women from the destructive ploys of
Satan and his demons.
An article posted on ChristianityToday.com in 2009 cited a Barna Research study which had this to say:
“The majority of
American Christians do not believe that Satan is a real being or that the
Holy Spirit is a living entity, the latest Barna Research survey found.
Nearly six out of ten Christians either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed with
the statement that Satan “is not a living
being but is a symbol of evil,” the survey found. 40 percent strongly
agreed with the statement while 19 percent of American Christians somewhat
agreed. In contrast, about 35 percent of American
Christians believe Satan is real. 20 percent strongly disagreed with the
statement that Satan is merely symbolic and about one-tenth (9 percent) somewhat
disagreed. The remaining 8 percent of American Christians responded they were
unsure what to believe about the existence of Satan.”
What can we as
believers do to counter-balance a society that deems Halloween “harmless?” For starters, we can have an open door for evangelism
and education. The deception of a holiday such as Halloween, with its witches, vampires, demons, skeletons, and overall
theme of evil, can become an opportunity to demonstrate the dynamic power of
Christ to redeem us from death. Halloween distorts
the reality of true spiritual warfare, and glorifies the dark side of the
spiritual world. However, we can tell them about the One who triumphed
over evil, and who came to give us a purpose, and a God-given destiny.
If you allow your
children to trick-or-treat, focus on costumes that are based on Bible
characters, animals, cartoon characters, historical people, and other
“non-horror” themes. We need to be careful not to add to the
“feeding frenzy” of horror movie characters, demons, ghosts, goblins,
the devil, and other evil beings.
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| Credit - Thinkstock |
We often decorate our house with scary “nature things” like spiders &
webs, lizards, snakes, mice, birds, bats - and not “death and demon” related
items most often found in Halloween-themed
stores. We carve real pumpkins or put out the plug-in type. We hand
out candy or tiny Christian toys and witnessing tracts that are
family-friendly. For the past couple of years (as an empty-nester) I take
my two dogs out and walk the neighborhood, visiting with those we meet. You can make October 31st a night to talk about
death, eternity, and how Jesus laid His life down for them.
Dying and decay are eminent; however, evil and the grave has
been defeated by Jesus through His death on the cross.
We are more than conquerors
over the powers of darkness, demonstrated by Jesus’ resurrection (Colossians
2:15), and the Holy
Spirit’s power in us as believers (Ephesians
6:11-17).
Use Halloween as a teaching tool and an opportunity to
witness. Share the good news of Christ.
R. I. P. (Rest in His Presence)
“For if we believe
that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep
in Jesus… For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the
voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in
Christ will rise first.” (I
Thessalonians 4:14; 16)
I AM the Light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. (John 8:12)
