{"id":304,"date":"2015-10-22T22:23:25","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T22:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jackofalltribes.com\/?p=304"},"modified":"2015-10-22T22:23:25","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T22:23:25","slug":"the-story-of-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/the-story-of-halloween\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story of Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"halloween\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Story of Halloween<\/p>\n

Some people pit Halloween against Christianity, as if they were opposing political parties vying for votes.\u00a0 But history is not that simplistic.\u00a0 Halloween as we know it is a blend of folk traditions and economic opportunities.<\/p>\n

Ancient Celtic peoples in Europe had four primary holidays marking the beginning of spring (fertility season) on February 1, the beginning of summer (grazing season) on May 1, the beginning of fall (harvest season) on August 1, and the beginning of winter (season of death) on November 1. Each holiday was roughly halfway between the solstice and the equinox.<\/p>\n

The four holidays were times for calling on the seasonal gods to prosper and sustain them through the challenges specific to each season. Days were measured from sundown to sundown, so the holiday at the beginning of winter began with festivities at sundown.\u00a0 And this being the season of death, people believed that deceased ancestors paid them a visit that evening.\u00a0 So as not to offend these ghosts, people left treats of food outside the doors of their dwellings.\u00a0 And to blend in among the dead, people went out with cloth masks over their heads with only their eyes exposed.<\/p>\n

As Christianity spread into Celtic communities it brought belief that believers who die enter Heaven.\u00a0 Heaven is far more wonderful than this dying world, so these departed loved ones are not drawn to our shabby environs anymore.\u00a0 But in many regions, the first Christians were killed for their faith.\u00a0 And these martyrs (meaning “witnesses”) were eventually honored as “saints” (in Latin) or “hallows” (in Germanic languages), both meaning God’s “holy people.”\u00a0 So the traditional day of the dead became All Saints Day to honor the martyrs, followed on November 2 by All Souls Day to honor all the departed ancestors.\u00a0 In England November 1 was called “All Hallows Day,” which began with “All Hallows Evening,” which evolved into “Halloween.”<\/p>\n

Contrary to the idea that Christians invented All Hallows Day to replace the day of the dead, by the time Pope Gregory asked Louis, the Carolingian emperor, to make All Saints Day an official holiday (in 835 CE), it had already been a grass roots tradition for at least 200 years.\u00a0 It wasn’t imposed by religious authorities; it\u00a0emerged in popular thought.<\/p>\n

By the 1500s, the coming of winter brought beggars who went door to door offering to pray for the inhabitants (or their deceased relatives) in exchange for a “soul cake,” a small loaf of bread. This turned into an All Souls Day tradition of “guising,” people dressing in costume and offering to perform a song or a play in exchange for food or money, or “mumming,” acting out the play silently.\u00a0 One common plot involved a person meeting the devil or death itself in human form, and how the person could be saved from death and hell.<\/p>\n

In 1517 Martin Luther, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, posted a list of church abuses in need of reform. When he nailed his list to the door of All Saints Church on October 31, he was not interested in Halloween.\u00a0 Luther’s document sparked the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 But many Protestants believed that the Roman church had fallen into worship of the saints in place of worshiping God.\u00a0 So most Protestants ignored All Saints Day.\u00a0 Yet within 50 years of Luther’s protest, many churches were celebrating October 31 as Reformation Day or, perhaps ironically, as “St Martin’s Day.”<\/p>\n

Church feasts blended with cultural traditions in popular practice, and into the 19th century people of Celtic descent were still pulling cloth masks over their heads and leaving food at the door to honor the dead or to entertain ghosts, depending on their level of lingering superstition. And youngsters had begun to run off with the food left outside the door.\u00a0 Then they began to prank their neighbors to show that “ghosts” were angry at being ignored.\u00a0 Then kids would dress as ghosts and good-naturedly knock at the door demanding a “treat” if the neighbor did not want to be “tricked.”\u00a0 The greeting became “Trick or treat?”<\/p>\n

By the 1950s consumer marketing was promoting candy treats and colorful masks, which had gone from burial shrouds to every kind of costume people could dream up. In today’s popular Halloween season, artists play with themes of fear and death, but ghost stories, whether oral, written or in film, have almost nothing in common with ancient agrarian cultures or Christian holidays.<\/p>\n

Christianity has never been a unified organization.\u00a0 To some it is a religion.\u00a0 But to those whose faith is in the Savior of the Bible it is a relationship.<\/p>\n

In the Bible death is a major theme. Man, by turning from a trusting relationship with God, the Life-Giver, brings death.\u00a0 But God chooses not to abandon his people.\u00a0 He voluntarily clothed himself with mortal flesh and came into the death-bound world to be the man we failed to be and to die in our place.\u00a0 He endured the worst horror we could inflict.<\/p>\n

His death was not the end.\u00a0 He conquered it.\u00a0 He rose from death and met again with many who knew him.\u00a0 Of course, they were fearful at first.\u00a0 But he was no ghost.\u00a0 He is very much alive.\u00a0 He spoke peace to them, showed them his scars, touched them, ate with them, promised to return, and sent them again with the good news that eternal life with him is freely given to all who trust his words and follow him in faith.<\/p>\n

As the good news reached cultures with traditions different from Judaism, the apostles sought the Holy Spirit’s leading about what to require of them. Freed from the need for sacrifices or circumcision, the apostles required only that believers refuse to eat blood and refuse to participate in idol worship or sexual immorality (Acts 2:29), practices which had long led pagan cultures to occultism, human sacrifice, prostitution, and ritual abuse of children.\u00a0 These were the horrors he freed us from.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0resurrection mocked the devil’s horrors.\u00a0 Paul wrote, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (Colossians 2:13-17 NIV).\u00a0 We were saved from death not by rituals, but by a Person.<\/p>\n

Death came by the man Adam, 1 Corinthians 15 says, but resurrection came by the man Jesus. What is planted, like seed, is corruptible, but what is raised with Jesus is free of corruption.\u00a0 What is planted is dishonorable, but what God raises is glorious.\u00a0 What is planted in weakness is raised in power.<\/p>\n

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death\u2014that is, the devil\u2014and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).<\/p>\n

Freedom from the fear of death comes through Jesus who conquered death.\u00a0 Assurance of eternal life is the outlook of those who know and trust him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

David Shelley<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 jackofalltribes.com<\/a> and International Students, Inc.\u00a0 All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

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The Story of Halloween Some people pit Halloween against Christianity, as if they were opposing political parties vying for votes.\u00a0 But history is not that simplistic.\u00a0 Halloween as we know it is a blend of folk traditions and economic opportunities. Ancient Celtic peoples in Europe had four primary holidays marking the beginning of spring (fertility […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[77,52,74,75,76],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-death","tag-fear","tag-halloween","tag-holidays","tag-tradition","books-of-the-bible-1-corinthians","books-of-the-bible-acts","books-of-the-bible-colossians","books-of-the-bible-hebrews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}