The Writings of Eric E. Jenkins

What was Halloween Intended to Be?

As a child, Halloween was always a holiday where children dressed up in various costumes, maybe had a parade or some sort of party at school, and then when the sun went down, the children would go house to house playing “Trick-or-Treat”, where they would either get candy or some kind of treat or they would play a joke on the resident of the house. This would be followed by another party or an all night candy-eating fest. In general, a fun time was had by all involved. However, as I grew older and became more spiritual, my religious studying would introduce me to information that Halloween was not intended to be a fun holiday. I would read reports that discussed the celebration of Halloween as pagan or even satanic in nature. I have also read dissenting opinions from different religious groups, some saying that Halloween is satanic and should not be celebrated and others saying that there is nothing wrong with it. Therefore, I need to know what Halloween is and what is was intended to be.

When I was a young child, I learned that the actual name of Halloween was All Hallow’s Eve, with the word hallow meaning, according to dictionary (dot) com, to honor as holy. Since I know that November 1 is All Saint’s Day, and I knew that October 31 was referred to as All Hallow’s Eve, and hallow means to honor as holy, it would be a safe to assume that October 31, the day known as Halloween would be revered the same way that New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve were. This has not been the case, as the celebrations of these other “Eves” are seen as extensions of the holidays that they precede. However, since All Saint’s Day is not a holiday that is widely celebrated, Halloween has taken on its own identity, and that has become one of dressing up as ghosts and monsters and trick-or-treating.

According to the Columbia University Electronic Encyclopedia, as posted on Reference (dot) com, All Hallows Eve, in accordance with Celtic practices, was a commemoration signaling the beginning of winter as well as the beginning of the Celtic New Year, both of which took place on November 1. The encyclopedia states that “witches and other evil spirits were believed to roam the earth on this evening, playing tricks on human beings to mark the season of diminishing sunlight…and people would disguise themselves as one of the roaming spirits, to avoid demonic persecution”. This would explain how the holiday became associated with the wearing of monster costumes and decorations that features ghosts and monsters.

Rafael Martinez, the Co-Director of Spiritwatch Ministries, addresses the pagan culture and its connection with All Hallowed Evening in his article entitled Halloween: Treat Or Trick?, and follows the celebration’s spiritual history, but the article brings to mind the question of whether or not there is a true difference between being spiritual and being religious. In the article, Martinez describes Paganism as being “spirituality based upon a belief in many gods and goddesses…and upon man's essential union with them as a manifestation of their divinity”. But what is “spirituality based” and how does it differ from being based in religious practices or beliefs? Religion is defined, at Dictionary (dot) com, as being a set of beliefs concerning the purpose of the universe while spiritual is defined as “pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature”. Conversations of religion often revolve around the spirit and Christ the father, Christ the son and Christ the Holy Spirit, so this begs the question of whether or not religion and spirituality are interchangeable. If the two are in fact interchangeable, then if Paganism is “a spirituality based on a belief in many Gods” and religion centers on the belief and worship of an unseen deity, it would seem that Pagan rituals could be seen as religious practices, and if this is the case, then what does it have to do with Halloween?

According to Martinez, while Christianity began to replace the Celtic pagan spirituality in the fifth century A.D., many of the converted Celts combined their original pagan practices with the traditions and practices of their newfound Christianity. With the establishment of All Hallowed Evening by Pope Gregory IV “as a means to both honor the martyrs of the Church and assert its' authority”, many of the pagan aspects of Samhain, “a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and generally regarded as ‘The Celtic New Year’”, were preserved by the Celtic people and were brought by Irish immigrants to American soil.

Much of the literature written about Halloween agrees with Martinez’ historical account of Halloween’s pagan origin, but the information starts to differ when the discussion turns to Samhain. The belief was that Samhain was so named for the Celtic God of the Dead, but as Dennis Rupert, pastor New Life Community Church of Stafford, Virginia points out in his article The History of Halloween -- It's Probably Not What You Think, research has shown that there were around 350 Celtic gods “and Samhain isn't found among them”. Rupert says that the Irish did not have a lord of death and the word samhain simply means summer’s end. Without the existence of a lord of death being worshipped on Halloween, this would make one believe that Halloween’s creation being to glorify Satan would be slightly off base.

Martinez does mention in his article that the pagans practiced witchcraft as a means of contacting and appeasing spiritual entities other than God, but pagans also believed that there was more than one God. The inclusion of witchcraft in pagan beliefs is, however, where Christians start to feel that pagan beliefs border on the occult and this falls in stark contrast to the Bible, however, the differences in interpretation of the Bible with regards to individuals conveying the messages of spirits, referred to by practitioners of necromancy (contact with the dead) as ‘mediums’, is as different as the interpretations of the Bible itself among different religions. No two religions can agree on the true meanings of any of the verses within the Bible and will probably never agree on how God feels about Halloween.

Religious experts agree that God does not condone satanic worship or the worship of other Gods as evidenced in Exodus 20:2-3 of the King James Version of the Bible:

2) I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3) You shall have no other gods before me.

There are several examples throughout the bible that indicate that God does not condone evil in any form and is willing to punish those who do, but if Halloween was meant to commemorate the end of summer and the end of the harvest season, how is that evil? Also, how can the celebration of a new year, in itself, be evil? And if there was no true lord of death among the Celtic gods, is there anything connected with All Hallowed Eve, as it was celebrated in the fifth century A.D., or when Irish citizens brought the celebration to America, evil?

There is no true evidence that in 21^st Century society, rational thinking people are using Halloween as a form of idol or satanic worship. Perhaps, the inclusion of witches, ghosts, skeletons and bats is more tradition than ritual, but without the proper education it is impossible to truly understand what the meaning of Halloween is and if Halloween is really bad, and it is that education that will eventually answer this debate.

# posted by Eric E. Jenkins @ 1:41 PM