For years we ran from Halloween.  We went to the movies or out to eat or sat in the back of the house and ignored the doorbell.  We believed that all sorts of evil was associated with children going around asking for candy.  Back in the 70’s we started the now ubiquitous “Harvest Festival” to keep our kids safe from the “demonic” holiday of Halloween.  The group I hung around with in college was very serious about our religion.  Jesus was coming back any minute and we were afraid that we were going to be caught having fun instead of praying or reading our Bibles or some other spiritual activity.  One of my friends had a poster of a sour looking woman with a hatchet and the caption “If it’s fun, forget it.”  I was never sure if it was a jest or he was serious.

My brand of Christianity sought to spiritualize every single aspect of life.  Everything we did had to “give glory to God”.  Everyone who wasn’t as “free” as we were was just going to hell and burn baby burn.  We were so ignorant of life and God that we didn’t know what we didn’t know.  Anything that didn’t fit into our box was neatly declared either demonic or satanic or worse, secular and thus not fit for us to engage in.  Oh the fun we probably missed.  No beer, no wine, although we had lots of colas and potato chips and pot luck dinners and “prayer requests” and denouncing every type of evil abomination under the sun.  No wonder no one wanted to associate with us.  Oh and by the way, we were all the ones studying “religion” so we could be pastors.

The point of all this is that I saw a post where someone was agreeing with Pat Roberson that Halloween was demonic.  Having been on both sides of the fence on this position, I want to present a more reasonable opinion.  Halloween began as All Hallow’s Eve (like Christmas Eve) the day preceding All Hallow’s Day (or All Saint’s Day).  In fact you may still see some calendars with those designations on them.  As has happened many times, Pagan and Christian practices began to get muddled and intertwined.  What began as a time of Christian worship got sorta usurped by the more fun Pagan practices of dressing up and going around and playing pranks and trying to score treats.  I think the Candy companies have something to do with the modern practices, but that’s just me.  I remember going around the big subdivisions where I grew up and getting grocery bags (the old paper kind) full of candy.  Did I worship Satan?  No, we just wanted sugar!

How many 8 year old children know anything about Satan other than what we hear in our houses of Worship?  I would’ve gotten a real beating if I’d ever even hinted that I was involved with anything remotely like Satanism (not that I knew what Satanism was when I was 8).  We were just having fun and not really scaring anyone and with our parents in the car 15 feet away, what were we gonna do anyway?  Then in my 20’s we started the “Harvest Festival” at our church.  We still dressed up, but as Bible Characters (someone came as Mount Ararat once) so it would be “Godly”.  We even gave some mother grief because she took her daughter out trick-or-treating before coming to our “Harvest Festival”.  None of us were farmers, none of us had a harvest, we just wanted an excuse to have a party without seeming to condone Halloween.  But we were trying to take a fun secular practice and “Christianize” it, much like Constantine did with Christmas.

I don’t condone hooliganism, but I did participate in some once, until my Dad gave me a “talking to”.  I would rather have had the beating, but you don’t spank 16 year olds.  Yeah, there are some non-Christian roots in our modern practice of Halloween, but how about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?  We do not rant against the totally non-Christian practice of giving gifts at Christmas or eating chocolate Easter bunnies, but we sure rail away at Halloween.  I want to give some big corporations grief about the commercialism of certain times of the year (Valentine’s Day anyone?) but we (consumers) buy their stuff.  The Church carries on about certain hot-button issues and tries to Christianize others, but why not just ignore the things you don’t agree with?  By the way, don’t give me grief about dangling participles.  I have a degree in English and it is an arcane rule about ending a sentence with a preposition.  As long as I make sense, leave my grammar alone.

Now, where was I before my rant. . . oh yes, the war on fun. The Old Testament history books are filled with stories about festivals celebrating New Moons and Sabbaths and Tabernacles, but no one calls them out for perpetuating pagan rituals.  Jesus didn’t give the “Samaritan woman” grief about her sect of Judaism.  I digress again.  I have seen so much legalism built into the Church that it stuns me.  My grandfather and his brand of Christianity had a list of rules and regulations to which they adhered.  No long hair on men, women didn’t cut their hair or wear dresses that showed their calves.  I even got in trouble in a church I pastored because I grew a beard.  My Sunday School Superintendent actually left after Sunday School and went to another church for worship for weeks because of it.

Our behavior does matter and the Apostle Paul did warn against causing weaker people around us to stumble. I can’t really blame some of or our leaders for wanting to protect our children from certain influences, but why can’t we let some reason in?  If you don’t want your kids to have Halloween, then don’t.  If you don’t want to give out candy and dress up on Halloween, then don’t.  But don’t try to mask what you think to be a pagan practice in the wrappings of an event you contort until it’s “Christian”.  To me, and this is just my opinion, that gives credence to the pagan practices rather than just saying “we choose to not participate”.  No judgement, no hyperbole, no giving ammunition to the church’s enemies.  Why not claim All Hallow’s Eve as a celebration of what makes the Church great, the celebration of All Hallows Day; a day in which we celebrate the Saints?  An old proverb says that it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.  Don’t fight something that you don’t believe in by copying it–innovate and do something entirely new.  I don’t have any ideas, but there you go.