Christians-dealing with Halloween?

[poshme]

Just wondering what other people do- I'm not very happy anout my DCs doing Halloween activities- school topic/ school disco/ cubs all currently focussing on Halloween.
I've said no to school disco, and told cubs DS won't be there & my DCs are upset they're missing out.
I don't agree with trick or treating so we don't do that.
Just wondering how other people deal with it.

Coupon - All Souls/Hallows services are about rememberance, lighting a candle for those you have lost. I know some churches (C of E or Methodist are the ones I know) do a service for those families who have lost somebody during the year and for whom the church has done a funeral.

Other churches do a more general rememberance thing where you can go to remember anybody.

Our local church is doing a light service instead of Hallow'en which is just a bit of fun to give children a good time without having to get drawn into commercial stuff which is what Hallowe'en seems to be for a lot of people.

SamPull - look up pagan roots of Christian festivals, may explain some of the symbolism

I get all the symbolism, InsultingBadger - the examples of were for comic effect.

My point was that for the atheist family there are many occasions where people and communities celebrate things that we don't celebrate in the same way, if at all - and some of them involve beliefs that are quite odd when you look at them from the viewpoint of a non-believer. Easter, for example. Or Halloween.

If the OP just has Halloween to worry about, I think they're doing ok!

There is a great little video about the meaning of Halloween

Someone said Halloween was about 'glorifying the occult'. If you take away the commercial aspects of Halloween and the catholic festival superimposed on it, what you have is Samhain. This is the end of the year in the pagan calendar so is a celebration of the new life and new year to come, and a remembrance for those who have passed. It is also a time when we think on our own mortality, and work on how we can make the most of our time here, and stop less beneficial behaviours (new years resolutions if you like).

Is there anything there to offend? I will point out, though i'm sure I do not have to, that pagans do not believe in the devil since they do not believe in the Christian god, so certainly do not worship him or seek him out. No-one is under any obligation to celebrate any festival, but there really is no need to 'demonise' Halloween. Take a moment to see the natural world going to sleep for the winter, preparing for the spring, and you will be somewhere close to understanding its real meaning.

I don't understand why as a Christian you would reject one festival interweaving of pagan and Christian tradition (Halloween) but celebrate two others with the exact same interweaving (Christmas and Easter).

Halloween isn't about celebrating evil, it's about conquering fear and superstition (fear of the "souls" roaming) by lighting seasonal lanterns and having fun and laughing and dressing up.

Let me get this right, you don't like your children celebrating the eve of a Christian festival (all saints day).

Are you going to take the same stance on Christmas Eve and not let them sing carols?

I'm CofE. I just feel that Halloween is celebrating evil in a way- I can't fully explain it

Probably because All Saints and All Souls are big RC festivals.

Maybe it's because of the Christian belief that unpleasant spirits would be cast out by God, rather than by ourselves with pumpkins, costumes etc.

Christians have obviously adopted some of the pagan customs at Easter as well as celebrating the resurrection, but that's all about life so it's the opposite of Halloween.

Coupon - why is it a problem that the focus is on death? I would have thought that someone with faith in the next life would not be bothered by this. The Celtic world would have seen death as the necessary opposite of life, as dark is the opposite of light, so as much emphasis was given to a time of death as to a time of rebirth and new life, and probably more so to Samhain because, as I said earlier, it was also the end of the year and the start of the next.

SunshineMMum - your learned friend is right. There is no evidence of Druids going door to door demanding human sacrifices. There is little doubt that sacrifice was part of Druidic ritual, but there is also little evidence (outside Caesar and Tacitus who are hardly impartial sources) that it was particularly widespread, or even that the victim was always unwilling - there is evidence that Lindow Man for example was a willing participant. There is evidence that sacrifice occurred more often in times of crisis - Alveston Cave springs to mind.

Regardless, there is nothing to suggest that Samhain was associated with sacrifice any more than any other festival - and as has been said no-one is objecting to Christmas or Easter, and since blood sacrifice is not generally part of Neopagan and Druidic rituals it would be an odd reason to object to Samhain as it is celebrated today.

I'm hoping this doesn't out me in RL but I've got PhD in calendar customs (not hallowe'en itself, but my BF in academia was already doing that :-D).

Can I try to reassure you that Hallowe'en is NOT about satanic worship, or witchcraft or anything of the sort - it may have been adopted by modern pagan religions (which are only a century or so old, as far as any actual evidence shows)- but that the Christian traditions of All Soul's Eve/All Souls Day/All Hallows are far, far older than that - it has been a time of remembrance, of thanks, and of mindful contemplation in the Christian calendar for hundreds and hundreds of years, way before anyone even invented satanism or paganism.

Furthermore, British traditions of guising (dressing up), visiting (trick or treating) and prank-playing go back centuries, so anyone who tells you that Halloween is an American import is also talking out of their proverbial.

Fwiw, I can't see the difference between not recognising Christmas because it's all about the materialism, and not recognising Halloween because it's all about the ghosties. Have some confidence in the impressive cultural legacy of your religion!

Doesthatmakesense - so what did people do pre-Christianity? I completely agree with you that the links between many neopagan practices and their supposed celtic counterparts are tenuous at times (Ronald Hutton is great at stripping away the misconceptions as far is this is concerned).

However, there is I think no doubt that a fire festival marking the end of the year and celebrating the dead took place at this time. All Saints was introduced in the C7th and moved to the autumn in the C9th. If you want some evidence that the origins of Samhain predate this there are sites near Athboy, Co Meath, where monuments approx 5000 years old are aligned with the Samhain sunrise. Samhain fires were taking place at Tlachtga from approx. AD200. Elsewhere it is more likely that the timing would have been determined by the changing weather or the gathering of the final harvest, so less precise than that of solstice or equinox. Otherwise I agree with you!

Lurchers I am thoroughly enjoying your contribution to this thread.

Thank you Spidermama

I wrote a long post but quite frankly I dont get Halloween. it might have a Christian legacy but the fact is that the way we celebrate....dressing up as witches or hanging fake severed heads on doors just foesnt feel very christian...or honouring to God or the dead. so I can see why the op might feel uncomfortable participating even though no harm is meant by the cub group nor are children who have fun dressing up un Christian its just an odd holiday. easter might hqve pagan origins too but a bunny is far less gruesome

Jack Chick on Halloween

poshme we do not celebrate Halloween as a family. So I totally get where you are coming from.

As a Christian I don't feel comfortable glorifying 'evil' things. By this I mean dressing up as the devil, as vampires, zombie's or murders etc!

When DD was smaller it was totally easy to avoid it all and just not join in. As she got older that was harder and I did not want her to miss out on fun so I encourage our church to do a Light party every year. This means my taking the lead in organising it. At a light party the kids dress up in a non-scary way, they play games and have fun, eat nice food and sweets and get a party bag. There might also be drama and singing etc.

While shops, resraurants and pubs are making money selling 'Halloween' type stuff we are running a local community party for free. I can't really see why people would object to Christians not celebrating Halloween!

We carve pumpkins with smiley faces.

We do not go trick or treating, although this year we are going treat and treating, where we take sweets to friends and see if they will give us some too (I have pre-arranged for a few friends locally who I think will be in). I offered to do this last year but DD was not actually that bothered! The idea of kids knocking at random houses is not nice, or (I think) especially safe and is probably scary for elderly people.

In the past I got in healthy snacks and Christian book marks to give to trick or treaters, I am happy if they are little kids dressed up but I don't want older kids on my doorstep moaning if the sweets I give are not good enough! So now each year we download a poster from the police that says No Trick or Treat. I know Thames Valley do one. It just says something like 'enjoy your evening but don't disturb mine.'

At Christmas I got carol singing with my church, if someone had a sign up saying 'enjoy your evening but don't disturb mine.' I would respect their wishes and not sing on their doorstep!

poshme, my dd is 9 now and this year the school ran a disco a few days before Halloween. It was not called a Halloween disco, although clearly that was what people thought it was because many kids dressed up in scary stuff and the decorations were pumpkins and skulls etc. I felt it was OK for DD to go because it was not actually on Halloween (and we have our church Light party then) and she did not dress up scarily. Some people will not see the distinction but I felt happy with it and DD had fun and just enjoyed playing around.

I am very aware that non-Christians and some Christians find it quite funny that some of us do not like to celebrate Halloween. That is fine. I would rather save my energy for celebrating the good things in life.

I hope you have a wonderful 31 October, or Light party or All Hallows Eve. You can always have fun and do something at home, dress up, play games, get in some candy and hid it around the house and hunt for it; or dress up and go to the cinema to watch a funny comedy.

When my daughter is older she will make her own mind up and she may well, as I did as a teenager, go to Halloween parties. God is so much stronger and more powerful than a few party antics and I don't think I need to be scared of people dressing up or having fun. Terrible awful things are done around this world all the time, so I don't think we should waste our energy on this day, I don't think we should get this one night out of perspective. But I do think people who do not want to celebrate it should not be made to feel bad' as if they are letting their kid down, which I did hear from a parent outside of mumsnet!

Hanging you could tell your kids some people don't celebrate Halloween. If they ask why you could say because they don't want to, they don't find it fun or meaningful or good to do, but I expect they do celebrate other things and have fun at other times.

Italian - I don't think anyone should be made to celebrate Halloween or any other festival, or be made to feel bad for not doing so. I don't celebrate Rosh Hashanah or Eid and i'm fine with that. My issue is with the misinformation as to its origins, and the confusion of Pagan with Satanist - the insinuation that there is something inherently evil about it. I think Conformist's link is more scary than anything i'm likely to encounter on the 31st!

MostlyLovingLurchers I am more concerned with what is done on Halloween now rather than the origins of it.

Some of the origins of it are Christian en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween#Christian_influence and specificially Roman Catholic en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souling (if Wikipedia is to be believed). There does also seem to be a big modern influence, pumpkins from USA and Hollywood movie costumes etc.

The things I dislike are children dressed as the devil or ghouls and those horrible masks in shops and things like a bag of candys called 'Decapitated heads'.

I am sure there will be some people who will engage in occult type things on Halloween and that is an additional reason why I don't want to celebrate.

I am sure there will be some people who will engage in occult type things on Halloween and that is an additional reason why I don't want to celebrate.

So don't celebrate it. Pagans perform rituals and may work magic at Eostre and Yule, and at the other festivals - it is not something that is reserved for this one. What you call occult is someone else's religious practices. Satanists are another thing entirely, and i'm pretty sure that they will be busy being Satanists the rest of the year too.

Fwiw, i'm actually in agreement about a lot of the commercialisation and dressing up - some of it is in pretty poor taste, not least those costumes that were withdrawn from sale from some of the main supermarkets once they realised that they were pretty offensive to mental health patients.

I am not remotely offended if you choose not to celebrate. I agree in part about some of the dressing up and cynical commercialism of the whole thing. I am bothered by the fact that if you google something like Druidism and Halloween you get page upon page of links to Christian sites spouting utter nonsense about the festival's origins and current Pagan practices (give it a go if you don't believe me). You may not be bothered by that, but I am, and it was because some of this misinformation appeared in this thread that I posted.

contortionist I love Jack Chick. No one else can does "crazy Christianity" as well as he does.