That and the old man who gives out walnuts. I hated that guy when I was a kid.

__________________
Patricia
Communicant Member
Westminster Presbyterian Church, PCA
College Station, TX

Give yourself to prayer, to reading and meditation on divine truths: strive to penetrate to the bottom of them and never be content with a superficial knowledge.
David Brainerd

I'll admit to being geeky even then--I was five and I went as the Celestial City.

__________________
Philip
Potomac Hills Presbyterian Church (PCA) Leesburg, VA
Attending Reformed Presbyterian Church, Lookout Mountain, GA
Student Covenant College

The Importance of Being Orthodox

yeah, don't do it. Kids will in no way care about Luther's 95 thesis', especially when it replaces their candy.

__________________
Andrew S.
Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Abilene,TX

I teach tai chi and many Christians believe it's from the devil. What a bummer

__________________
Dao
PCA
Atlanta, GA

"Free will," says Charles Spurgeon, "has carried many souls to hell but never a soul to heaven."

I agree. An alternative though might be to dress up as Luther. Kids are bound to ask what your costume is and you can tell them a little bit (yes a LITTLE bit) about the Reformation. Just don't go overboard.

Clarification: I mean that you could dress up as Luther in order to hand out the candy from your house. Not that you should be roving through your town dressed as Luther and informing the populace of the importance of the Reformation.

__________________
Kathleen M
nondenominational
Montana

Kathleen, your clarification cracked me up. What a picture.

I think the Reformation is a great thing, obviously, but if I were handing out info, it would be simply the Gospel, rather than the 95 thesis (not that the Gospel is not contained therein).

__________________
Shalom,
jessi
PCA
Steelers fan exiled to Virginia


“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”
Martin Luther

A Vic Lockman tract (and some candy) would be a nice treat.

__________________
SW
Church of the Highlands, San Francisco, CA

No wonder their isn't much persecution for American Christians. They conform to the world so that there is no difference between them and their heathen neighbor.

Psalm 106:
34 They did not destroy the nations, concerning whom the LORD commanded them:

35 But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works.

36 And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them.

__________________
Traci
Lynnwood OPC
"I have taken all my good deeds, and all my bad deeds, and cast them through each other in a heap before the Lord, and fled from both, and betaken myself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in him I have sweet peace."--David Dickson

Somehow I don't think that we would be too heavily persecuted here in America if we stopped celebrating Halloween.

__________________
Christabella Warren
Fourth Presbyterian Church
Bethesda, MD
========================
These evils I deserve, and more . . . . Justly, yet despair not of his final pardon, Whose ear is ever open, and his eye Gracious to re-admit the suppliant. -- John Milton's Samson Agonistes

Your house will be egged or rolled sometimes for not handing out candy. That there is persecution. No, actually, you are handled differently in your neighborhood when you do not conform to holy days. It is noticed. Thankfully in our country this may only mean being treated differently and having people hiss at you behind your back but even on OT times that was scorn and persecution of a sort.

Ah, so there is persecution of Christians in America after all, eh?

Only if they don't conform.

I respect you all the more, then, for holding to your beliefs in spite of such opposition. My conscience does not convict me in regard to celebrating Halloween because I do not "celebrate" it in a pagan sense and I would warrant that the vast majority of people in America who "celebrate" it think of it in much the same way that I do: as a day to pass around ghost stories and consume more candy than usual. There is nothing in the Scriptures that categorically denounces ghost stories as being evil or promoting evil and so it will take more evidence to convince me that celebrating Halloween is necessarily taking part in a Satanic feast day.

Thank you for your kind words.

Let me give you one thing to think about. Do you think the Israelites actually converted to paganism or do you think they just dabbled with the heathen nation's customs while they practiced Temple worship and sacrifices? What they did was called adultery. You can't commit adultery unless you are married.

To obey was better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. (1 Samuel 15:22)

True enough. But reading ghost stories and eating candy is not paganism. Nor are those practices associated with Satanic rituals, even remotely. Nor were they traditional practices associated with Samhain Night.

I think that perhaps a lot of the trouble is that we are thinking about two very different things when we talk about Halloween. I have an idea of a celebration of ghostly tales; you have an idea of the more traditional Halloween celebrated by pagans several centuries ago and still perpetuated by a few Wiccan quacks who don't have anything better to do and are certainly not representative of most Halloween celebrators.

Perhaps if you told me what a specific aspect of Halloween that you don't like is, I can better understand your position?

I understand that you don't think you are celebrating Halloween, but what do you call it when you do all the same things as the heathen, all on the same day that they do it? You can't have your cake and eat it too. It's a package deal. You definitely are not avoiding even the appearance of evil.

You don't get to just rename it and try to change it around. That is exactly what the RCs did with all of these holy days. It is called syncretism.

syn⋅cre⋅tism  /ˈsɪŋkrɪˌtɪzəm, ˈsɪn-/

–noun
1. the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion.
2. Grammar. the merging, as by historical change in a language, of two or more categories in a specified environment into one, as, in nonstandard English, the use of was with both singular and plural subjects, while in standard English was is used with singular subjects (except for you in the second person singular) and were with plural subjects.

This is why the Israelites were told and warned not to mix with the heathens. They did and it was their downfall. We have this huge example given to us in the scriptures as a warning and we ignore it.

1 Corinthians 10:

5 But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness...

11 Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

Interesting...then if I were to arbitrarily choose a day other than Halloween on which to read ghostly tales just for the pleasure of reading them, would you consider that morally sound?

Well, whether reading ghostly tales is edifying, I think, is something you need to work out. I do think we should throw out the entire thing with all its practices, except I eat candy all year.

If you did do that on another day it would lose all its significance and that would not be a bad thing.

Reading ghostly tales is certainly edifying and I do not mean this in a facetious fashion at all. The early Puritan fathers wrote extensively on the subject of the supernatural, for the purpose of instructing their congregations regarding both the wiles of the Devil and the extraordinary Providences that God has shown his people. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the vast majority of English Gothic tales were written from a strongly Protestant perspective and constantly reaffirmed a religious and highly ethical system of values again and again. I cannot recommend the 19th-century Calvinist preacher Charles Robert Maturin's novel Melmoth the Wanderer enough to any member here who has any doubts about the ability of the supernatural Gothic to act as a tool for expounding on the word of the Lord. Of course, in terms of the genre, it is all a matter of personal taste, but there is no doubt that this body of works has its origins in a strongly Protestant and strongly religious point-of-view.

But, just to make sure that I grasped your idea correctly: you believe that the trouble with Halloween right now is not so much what is being done, but the fact that it is being done on the date of a former pagan feast day?

In fact, we don't know exactly when Samhain was except that it was around the time of Halloween. The reason that Halloween is on Oct 31 is that it happens to be the day before All Saints' Day (thus, All Hallows Eve or Hallowe'en). Certain superstitious people, remembering older traditions, then began to suppose that the night before All Saints' Day was a night when the old pagan gods and demons came out to play before the Saints drove them away. The association of the date with paganism is not all that far-fetched, but the actual date of Samhain itself is unknown because the ancient Celts measured time by seasons, not by months.

Actually, as I reflect on it, our family did celebrate Halloween one year: we carved a pumpkin with the face of Martin Luther and placed it on the front porch to scare Roman Catholics

__________________
Rich Koster
1689'er
Browns Mills NJ USA
Often Goofy Reformed Eccentric
Romans 7:14-25

I'm out of thanks - but thanks! I remember finding out how many of our ghost stories have Puritan origins and how surprised I was! Also - a side note - if you have you ever been to any Puritan or early American Protestant graveyards, you will see Death Heads on the graves. Creepy stuff (to me).

Personally, I don't like ghostly stories. I'm skittish about supernatural things. But I do think the Puritan and protestant origins of these tales are fascinating. Thanks for pointing it out.

Not a former pagan feast day, it is alive and well and has been passed down all these years. That and the fact that it is so clearly pagan with all the witches, ghouls, and spirits etc. Everything and anything evil and wicked is embraced. My neighbors across the street have cobwebs all over their porch with a witch on the door and a gargoyle on the porch steps. Hello! this is not something Christians should encourage and embrace in ANY fashion but should be shunned and abhorred.

We should be like Job who not only didn't commit evil but eschewed it.

I am saying that it is silly to participate in all the practices associated with the modern form, on the same day and try to say that you are not participating in the day.

It's like making cakes to the Queen of heaven in the OT. The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings, and say we just do it for the kids because it's fun and the kids get kick out of making the fire and eating the cakes, but in the same breath to say: but we don't believe in the Queen of heaven we just like to do all the same things the pagans do and on the same day as they do because it's fun. It is ridiculous.

If they had cobwebs on their porch and a gargoyle on the porch steps for a holiday that was not associated with a former pagan holiday (which apparently we do not even know the correct date of anymore!), would you believe that to be immoral? I'm sorry that I seem to keep nitpicking here, but I think that you're wading into dangerous territory here. You're basically assuming that putting up a decoration of a ghoul is an admission of celebrating the evil that the ghoul represents. I think that you would find that most people who put decorations of ghouls up would not have positive feelings if they actually saw a ghoul! If you have heard of Guy Fawkes' Day, you will know that the Protestant celebrants of that holiday would dress up as Guy Fawkes -- not because they wanted to BE a Catholic terrorist but because it was simply a part of the festivity.

Also, the former pagan celebration of Samhain Night did NOT include putting up decorations of ghouls. Another instance of the way in which the modern celebration of Halloween has nothing to do with the old pagan tradition.

I was willing to go with you on objecting to Halloween because of its possible placement at a date close to a former pagan feast day. However, I think that the comment on Halloween decorations is perilously close to being judgmental -- and also unscriptural. You cannot continue to cite excerpts from Scripture that say that we must abhor all semblance of evil, because those would only apply if these people were actually celebrating evil -- and they are not. If you personally object to such things, then that is within your right: but please do not assume that people are acting immorally simply because they enjoy cobwebs and you don't.

Just what is wrong with gargoyles? The house you described seems rather tasteful if all they have is a couple cobwebs and a gargoyle. It's the morbid figures and skeletons that get me.

My question is this: just what false gods would you say that those who celebrate Halloween are worshiping?

My answer to your last question would be: none. But I am sure that I shall be countered quite shortly.

I have no problem with morbid figures myself -- I rather see them in the tradition of the old Renaissance memento mori, reminding one of one's mortality and the transience of this earthly life -- but like I said above, it's all up to one's own preference.

You're very welcome, montanablue! And yes, I've been to the old Puritan graveyards in Salem and Boston and absolutely love the artwork on the headstones. Amusingly enough, those skulls are about the closest the Puritan fathers ever got to sculpting and artistic experimentation. There are some morbid figures for you!

Out of curiosity, what stories in particular are you thinking of as having been influenced by Puritanism?

I have a hard job seeing the innocent childish fun in "trick or treat" in any case.
Doesn't it mean "give me a treat or I'll play a trick on you"? and how nice is that??
The Scottish tradition was "guising" in which the boot was completely on the other foot - it basically meant the kids dressed up and practised some kind of "turn" to do on people's doorsteps, in return for which they were rewarded with sweets or whatever. It was still a celebration of things that should no way be celebrated, but slightly preferable.
Now the much less pleasant trick or treat is creeping in here too, and even in a little village like ours old people are frightened and hope to escape notice as they hear the noisy bands go by.
It seems topsy turvy to me for any Christians to embrace such an event, even in the name of the freedom of believers

__________________
JennyG
Church of Scotland (Presbyterian)
Fife, Scotland

Well, how Scriptural is the Santa Clause "naughty-or-nice" tradition in Christmas? Isn't that promoting a covenant of works? Unfortunately, one can nitpick something to death without actually arriving at an honest conclusion regarding its morality.

True enough, neither is scriptural.
I would still rather see children try to get treats by good behaviour than by intimidation!

I respectfully admit that I have no idea how the 21st-century trick-or-treat process operates in the British Isles, but I can assure you that here in America, it's the kids who intimidate the adults into giving them candy!

I don't know if we're getting crossed wires here; that's exactly what I meant too.

It most certainly is a former pagan festival or feast day, I think that is undisputed.

A gargoyle or a ghoul have meaning. You can't just take a cat and call it a dog. Things have meaning or we would have chaos. These things are not relative as some would like to make them. You can't just take an idol of Baal and keep it in your house for aesthetic reasons as a Christian. A Christian wouldn't want to you would think, knowing what an afront to your God it is.

If we were to play a word association game and I said cobwebs or ghoul what would you think of? Lets be honest with ourselves here.

To call evil good or good evil is sin. We have catagories as humans, on the one side there is goodness and light, on the other darkness and wickedness. These catagories are ancient and most know which one goes where. As Christians in union with Christ we are to keep ourselves holy and unblemished by the world: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

True enough -- except here it happens 365 days out of the year instead of just 1. It's quite possible that if there's anything daemonical about Halloween, it is that it has turned into a racket for the candy industry.

-----Added 10/12/2009 at 03:39:38 EST-----

Nobody is calling good evil and evil good. Please explain specifically why you feel that putting up a ghoul is necessarily a celebration of the ghoul -- otherwise, I feel like you're dodging my Guy Fawkes example...

I suppose I'm actually not thinking of stories as much as a certain ideas about the supernatural world. I was thinking particularly of Increase Mather's "Wonders of the Invisible World," which isn't a book of stories, persay, but I think its had an influence on the way Americans conceive of the supernatural/ghostly world.

I have some friends from the Boston area though (I was with them when we were looking at death heads), and I know they were telling me some supernatural stories that were from the Puritan era... I'll have to ask them which stories those were. (I want to say stories like Sleepy Hollow - but that's more a Dutch tradition (still reformed though) than a Puritan tradition.

Countering, on schedule I hope. Just because something is from the Renaissance does not sanctify it. The one good thing that came out of it was the cry of theologians "to the sources!" Meaning the primary sources of the scriptures.

The reasons behind all of the morbid things from the medieval period was superstitious nonsense. Trying frighten spirits and demons etc away. I will never understand the modern fascination with skulls and death. Why would the children of light want to dwell on or in darkness? I just don't get it.

-----Added 10/12/2009 at 03:54:00 EST-----

I am not dodging, I know almost nothing about Guy Fawkes day. I will look it up.

I am not trying to say that everything out of the Renaissance is automatically sound. What I am saying is that the memento mori have nothing to do with frightening away spirits, as you said, but are meant to remind people of their mortality. The Halloween tradition is a little dodgier -- the pumpkins, for example, were originally meant to frighten away spirits. But I was simply trying to defend skeletons and skulls as not necessarily being Satanic symbols. Or do you believe that the Puritans were wrong to carve skulls on their gravestones?

No problem, take your time!

Ok looked it up. I am not sure though of why Protestants dress up. Is it to celebrate him being caught? I don't see how this would have any parallel to Halloween. I think it could possibly be catagorized as a day of thanksgiving for justice being done. A totally different thing than a day of the dead with divination and people communing with dead people or trying to scare them off or whatever superstitious nonsense is going on.

-----Added 10/12/2009 at 04:08:33 EST-----

I need links and info about your Puritan skull thing. I have never heard of any of that and would like to inform myself.

Traci, here is a link to a photo of one in the Boston Common burial ground - these are actually the ones I've seen. My friend had a book about them - or it was a chapter in a book - I'll ask her about it.


Edit: I don't know why this link won't work, but I'm attempting to fix it

I haven't had time to read this thread properly all through! I missed that bit about Guy Fawkes.
No - that never happened. No-one dresses up as Guy Fawkes, and no-one ever did. What happened up uintil into my lifetime (not any more, owing to PC) was that the children constructed a "guy" or effigy by stuffing old clothes with straw, to represent Guy Fawkes. They would wheel it around the streets saying "penny for the guy" to all the passers-by for the few days before Bonfire night - on that night it would be the centrepiece of the bonfire and be burned to a crisp signifying what they thought of his terrorism!
Not the same thing at all.

No one is dressing up as witches and ghouls to scare the spirits off anymore. Not everyone who celebrates Halloween practices divination either. They are doing it to have fun being scared, just like the Protestants who dressed up as Guy Fawkes. If that's not your cup of tea, then that is fine -- but please don't believe that everyone who enjoys Halloween is a pagan. And again, this is not the same as the Israelites incorporating pagan rituals into their own religion. No one is celebrating Halloween as a religious holiday except Wiccans and that, on their part, is absurd since Halloween existed long before the Wiccan "religion".

Again, I think that you're setting up an extreme, straw man representation of Halloween so that you can attack it when, save for a few vestiges like carving the pumpkin, Halloween doesn't resemble the old pagan festivals even remotely anymore.

-----Added 10/12/2009 at 04:22:57 EST-----

Actually, it's not that different at all. How is having a gargoyle on your porch any different from having an effigy of Guy Fawkes? They are both clearly villainous in the eyes of the celebrant -- and they are not being worshipped or perceived of as good in any way.