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Halloween: Good or Bad? 10/15/2015 8:47:48 AM
Is it okay for Christian's to celebrate Halloween? Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival. Today it is a holiday that gives people a chance to display their Halloween decorations, go to haunted theme parks and play imaginary dress-up.
The tradition of dressing-up in a costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago winter was a difficult, worrisome time. Simply getting in your car and going to get groceries at a local grocery store was not an option. Garden’s had to be grown, food had to be canned, and meat had to be cured. The Middle Ages was a particularly difficult time to be alive.
A common belief back then was that on Halloween, ghosts would return to the earthly world. And that if the people left their homes, they would surely encounter some of these ghosts who were roaming the earth. So to avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would not recognize them and instead mistake them for another spirit.
To keep the ghosts as far away from their homes as possible, people would place containers of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and detour them from trying to come inside. For more Halloween background see Wikipedia.
Halloween, is it good or evil?
Can Christian’s celebrate Halloween?
Is it possible to simply have innocent fun
without being converted to the dark side?
You’ll have to answer those kinds of questions for yourself. Whether you have thought about it like this or not, there are some good qualities Halloween has to offer. Let us not forget:
1) Halloween reminds us of the ever enduring earthly transformation that takes place from the changing of the seasons.
2) Halloween provides us with an opportunity to get to know our neighbor, and thus opening the doorway to being more loving and understanding of our neighbor.
3) Halloween gives us a chance to be creative: Who/what will you disguise yourself as this year? What design should we carve on the pumpkin? Who has a story they would like to share around the bonfire?
4) Halloween reminds us to relax. Take a break from reality. What better way to briefly step away from the flurry of life than to spend an evening with friends and family giggling, eating, and guessing: Who’s behind that mask? Is that you dad?
