Today is Halloween, it is a day that some of my friends don’t celebrate. It is a day that, when I was younger, we used to turn off our lights and hide in the back of our house because we didn’t celebrate it when we lived in California. (Not necessarily for religious reasons) When we moved from California to Pennsylvania we started doing the whole trick or treating thing and it was fun. All our friends were doing it, our schools had parades. All I knew about the holiday itself is that it had something to do with carving out a pumpkin, dressing up in some outfit (we never did scary) and going out, house to house saying trick or treat. What is this day all about- how did it get its roots? I currently have one facebook friend that is really truly against Halloween and that is what really got me thinking about it.
So I looked at a lot of different sites on-line as to the history of Halloween. I wanted to know. I wanted an unbiased approach to it. I had seen the “Christian” approach to it and have seen the demonic approach to it, but I didn’t know the actual history of the day. I think it is something that people should know about and educate themselves about. http://www.halloween-history.org/ seemed to have the best, non-biased information. In reality, it has stemmed from both Christian and Pagan traditions. The Christians had a very similar tradition of celebrating the dead at one point and time. It was originally on May 13th to honor the past Saints and martyrs. They moved the date to mirror the Pagan day as they didn’t like the Pagan tradition and wanted to bring God into it. They have made it into something where trick or treating was used to aid souls to heaven.
In reality – there are a lot of different traditions and weirdness that has gone on in the past. Christmas or Jesus’ birth to me more precise, most likely didn’t happen in December, but it was more convenient and a better time to celebrate it. In reality – the Pagan cultures often would celebrate their gods during the time around the winter solstice. So just because it was originally a day where Pagan’s celebrated, should Christians not celebrate on that day also?
In my humble opinion, almost everyone in America does celebrate Halloween. It can be used for good or it can be used for bad. It can be used as a way to reach out and minister to people like a lot of churches do with trunk or treats, or it can be used to celebrate the devil and Paganism. In my book, I am going to let my kids dress up. They will not be wearing any demonic (although early Christians did dress as the devil) or scary/ goulish costumes, and we will talk about the traditions and background and how to bring Christ into every aspect of our life.
The Bible does tell us not to celebrate Pagan festivals etc, but most of them also have Christian roots, the calendar has just placed them together so that it is more convenient. In reality, God can work through everything and I think that if we raise our children in the right way, that we can really light up the world. Instead of a Jack-O-Lantern, I think that we will have a Jesus-Lantern J carve out a pumpkin with the knowledge that when we put a light in it, we can light up the night. When Jesus comes into our lives, his light shines through us and can light someone’s path.
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