Are Christians Still Afraid of Halloween?

I've never been to a church that didn't celebrate Halloween in some way.  Bear in mind, I'm a Southern Baptist, and we are the group that everyone thinks protests things like Halloween.  (We don't, but everyone thinks we do because of a few independent churches who call themselves "Baptists" and make us all look like morons.  But I digress.)

It's well understood that Halloween is a game, and that there's no harm in dressing up as a robot (as I once did as a child) or a fairy (my wife's costume of choice) and goofing around.  In fact, I would have to look long and hard to find a Church that actually had a problem with that sort of thing.  However, the internet has brought these people closer to us.  (Thanks, internet.)

Over at ChristianAnswers.com, we are given the following head-scratcher concerning Halloween:

My family does not celebrate it or participate in it. We do not believe that our children are “missing out,” and neither do they. Other days are used for costumes and parties.

Eh?  It's OK to do Halloween things on any day other than October 31st?  That doesn't make any sense.  The article never gives a reason why someone should abstain from these things from Halloween, but the writer is certainly very proud to be doing so.  The only explanation given goes as follows:

The October 31st holiday that we today know as Halloween has strong roots in paganism and is closely connected with worship of the Enemy of this world, Satan. It is a holiday that generally glorifies the dark things of this world, rather than the light of Jesus Christ, The Truth.

I'm not sure where they studied history, but Halloween has a long and complicated history that changes with each culture.  Throughout these changes, it has never actually been associated with worshiping the Devil.  (In fact, Devil worship is an incredibly rare belief system that one is hard pressed to find before the 20th century.  More on this in a future post.)  Someone needs to tell the folks over at ChristianAnswers.com that you can't cite historical facts like that without quoting a source of some sort.

The Jeremiah Project (I have never heard of them) gives us a lengthy post about the history of Halloween that simply can't get over the fact that Halloween customs are "borrowed from Pagan practices."  This is another historical fallacy that many amateur Christian writers make - the appeal to Paganism.  In antiquity, the Romans labeled non-Christians as Pagans.  It referred to the varied pantheistic and polytheistic views of these people who were not monotheists, and these groups had many different religions amongst them.  A "pagan" may have worshiped at the temple of Isis or to a few of the Norse Gods.  There were different traditions amongst the Pagans and absolutely no solidarity within their ranks.  As such, there's no such thing as Pagan religion or Pagan rituals.  Those are just weasel words used by writers with no historical training.  (A historian who talks about such things will actually name the specific religion and it's ceremonies.)

The same fallacy is used over at DemonBuster.com (I don't make these names up), except this time it's the Druids who are to blame.  As I've said in the past, absolutely nothing is known about the Druids.  All of their records were destroyed by the Romans and almost no mention of them exists in history.  If they had a religion, it is long dead and no one has known its details for a very long time.  Unless the minds behind DemonBusters.com have unearthed some new historical documents and translated them from the Celtic languages of antiquity then we can safely say that this argument is invalid.

GreaterThings.com tells us to have costume parties on some other day, with no explanation as to why these things are OK every other day of the year.  Logical fallacies are abounding.  I can only assume that these people actually think that October 31 is a magical date when demons have access to our world and are made more powerful by the sight of children wearing Transformers costumes.  That is not how Halloween was ever portrayed in history, and that sort of demonic mysticism is not supported by Biblical passages or any occult practices.  That's not how it works in anyone's religion.

I can tell that someone's not a real historian when their ideas could have been inspired by Buffy marathons.

But, remember, that's just the internet.  In the real world, Christians are celebrating Halloween just like everyone else; many churches even set up booths in their parking lots just to give candy out to local trick-or-treaters.  There's nothing wrong with having fun on Halloween, and decent churches know that.