Why God loves Halloween (Part 1)

Over the next few posts, I’ll be posting my notes from Durham CU’s lunchbar on ‘Why God loves Halloween’. Unfortunately the recording didn’t work, but here is my full script that I made notes from.

Parts of this talk might come to you like an episode of ‘QI’ – a lot of what is commonly believed about Halloween is far from being actually true. So be prepared for a siren and flashing lights to come to life – at least metaphorically speaking – as many of our assumptions about Halloween are actually far from true.

First of all, let’s dig into the roots of Halloween as a festival.

The word ‘Halloween’ is simply a shortening of ‘All Hallows’ Eve’. The word ‘hallow’ means ‘saint’, in the sense that ‘hallow’ is just an alternative form of the word ‘holy’ (like the line from the Lord’s Prayer that some of you might know, ‘hallowed be your name’). ‘All Hallow’s Day’ or ‘All Saints’ Day’ has been celebrated on November 1^st for several hundred years. Celebrating ‘All Saints’ Day’ started in the late 4^th Century, but it was celebrated at different times of the year in different places. The date of All Saints’ Day was fixed for November 1^st in the late 8^th Century.

Now, in the Bible, each day begins at dusk – days are measured evening to evening, rather than morning to morning. And so, in the Church calendar, the eve of a day is the actual beginning of the festive day. Christmas Eve is perhaps most familiar to us. And similarly, All Saints’ Eve or Halloween – 31^st October – precedes All Saints’ Day on 1^st November.

The ancient roots of All Saints Day and of All Saints Eve in Christianity demonstrate that it has, in fact, nothing to do with Celtic druidism or the Church’s fight against druidism. Remember: All Saints Day has been celebrated since the late 4^th Century. Celtic druidism emerged much later. It just happens that October 31^st is also the date for the Celtic Samhain festival. It is a popular myth that Halloween has anything to do with Celtic druidism. And whilst Halloween is never mentioned in the Bible, and there’s no suggestion that it should ever be formally marked, the idea that it celebrates certainly is a key Biblical theme.

So why did celebration of All Hallows’ Day and All Hallows’ Eve emerge? What did they originally mean? In short, they were a celebration of the victory of those who trust in Jesus over the devil and over all evil. And in order to show you why early Christians thought this was so worth celebrating will require me to introduce you to the worldview of the Bible.

Christians have always believed that there are great distinctions between the Creator and his creation. The claim is that the God of the Bible is the loving and powerful Creator, and that he made everything – both the material and the spiritual. He gave both human beings and angelic beings free hearts, to love what they wanted. We’re told that Satan, the devil, was an angel created by God. He led an insurrection against God, and other angels followed him. And we’re told that all humans since have chosen to rebel with Satan against God – not to love him above all. It’s not that we’re all devil worshippers, but that each of us chooses to spurn God’s love for us and to love other things more than God. I can’t go into detail on this now – please do ask me questions – but all this accounts for the evil we see in the world today. Evil social structures, evil behaviour, evil diseases, death and evil spirits all root from the fact that we align ourselves with evil forces in the world today. We all complicitly play along with the devil’s lie and reject God and his love.

Now Jesus made it clear that he had come to bring an end to the grip of the evil realm. There are plenty of occasions in the gospel accounts where Jesus frees people from the effects of evil in the world. Here’s one account:

‘As Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, a woman was there who had been disabled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he said to her, “Woman, you are released from your disability.” Then he laid his hands on her, and instantly she was released and began to glorify God.’ [Luke 13:10-13]

Now I guess that the situation described here isn’t one that’s particularly familiar to us, though in Africa and Latin America, where there is more awareness of the spiritual realm, people might recognize this situation. Sometimes evil powers do manifest themselves in the material realm. We’re not sure exactly how this woman became crippled by this evil spirit. We do know is that she was now straight-jacketed and enslaved by this spirit. It’s as if the woman’s physical condition is a picture of the fact that she is ‘bowed’ by her affliction. She’s bowing down; it’s as if she’s constantly bowing to the demonic influence over her. She’s physically and spiritually chained. And here we see a sobering truth: aligning ourselves with the evil realm will always leave us chained up – occasionally physically, but certainly spiritually.

Jesus calls the woman forward. You can imagine the pause as she shuffles to the front. He speaks to her, “You are released.” No hocus pocus, and she stands up straight. No wonder that there was praise on her mouth as she straightened. I sometimes wonder what the immediate reaction was in the synagogue – a stunned silence, a whole load of shouts – we don’t know. What we do know is that the woman was free. She would have felt free for the first time in eighteen years. Jesus has come to bring an end to the reign of evil and to bring release from it. This woman’s experience was a bit like a taste from the cooking pot ahead of the banquet to come, where evil and all its effects will be done any with forever.

So according to the Bible, the ultimate end for the devil and evil powers will come. And Jesus claimed to ensure that this would happen through his own death and resurrection.

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