Is Halloween a Holy Day?

   Its name is short for "all hallows evening."  Hallowed means holy.   The "hallows" were the saints ("holy ones"), and the day after Halloween is celebrated as "all saints day" by the Roman Catholic Church.

   So what do all the saints have to do with witches and ghosts and other scary things?   Nothing.  What the Roman Catholic Church often did was replace a popular pagan festival with a holy day of its own in an effort to pull new converts away from pagan worship practices.  The effort was not always completely successful, and in the case of Halloween, it was notably unsuccessful.

   Halloween was originally the New Year's Eve of the Celts.  Their New Year's Day was named Samhain.  As with many pagans, the passage from one year to the next was a magical time.  Before the new came, the old reared its ugly head one last time.   The past haunted the moments before the new arrived.  The spirits of the dead would return to the homes they had once loved.  The magical creatures (that is, the fairies) who lived in the land before man conquered it would roam the land again.   The spirits of the dead felt no love for the living, nor did the Fair Folk feel any love for humans.  They might or might not cause harm, but it was best to ward them off, if possible, or else to appease them somehow.  Huge bonfires were lit on all the heights to keep away the dark things.  Delicious food was offered to the dead ancestors (trick or treat).  The demonic earth spirits were more difficult to deal with, however.  They were only appeased by human sacrifice, so the Druids locked expendable people inside wicker figures (of horses, etc) and burned them alive. 

All in all, it was a frightful night, and we can sympathize with the Christian Church for trying to eliminate the evils of pagan worship.

   But the celebration of Halloween continues even 'til today, and it is now the second favorite holiday for Americans.  It cannot be erased, and it is fun.  Should Christians ignore it?  Or can it be saved? 

   There is a way to see the holiday as actually a kind of holy day.  It is a way of celebrating the disappearance of the past, of celebrating the victory over what once was.   Consider this passage from the Bible:

You were at one time spiritually dead because of your sins....  But God has now brought you to life with Christ!  God forgave us all our sins.  He cancelled the unfavorable record of our debts, with its binding rules, and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross.  And on that cross Christ freed Himself from the power of the spiritual rulers and authorities; He made a public spectacle of them by leading them as captives in his victory procession. (Colossians 2:13-15)

In the days when this was written, a conquering warrior would parade his high-ranking captives down the main street of the capital city, where the citizens of the city would ridicule and show their spite for the losers.  Jesus is the great warrior who won the greatest of all battles, and captured the most powerful of our enemies.  Not demons or devils, or witches or warlocks or shamen, or evil spirits or haunts or so-called gods or goddesses, or even Satan himself can frighten us as they did our ancestors.  Here is our cry:

"Death is destroyed; victory is complete!"
"Where, O Death, is your victory?
Where, O Death, is your power to hurt?"

Now all our enemies are paraded before us beaten and bowed.  Our proper response is to laugh at them and to make fun of them.  That is the proper role of Halloween now.  We can defeat them now as easily as Christ did--by not being afraid, by being willing to sacrifice ourselves, by trusting God to make all things right for us, no matter what our enemies might do.

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