Halloween
Halloween is coming up. How can I talk to my child about this activity vs Christianity? Should we be participating in it? ~ Jilly
Great question, Jilly!
Halloween is indeed on the way, and will arrive on Thur Oct 31.
Firstly, good on you for wanting to talk to your child about this. When I was a kid, Halloween was hardly acknowledged in Australia - it was just a strange American fascination. However, Halloween has been growing in popularity in this country, particularly over the last decade, so Christian parents are right to want to address it with their kids.
I’ll attempt to answer each of your questions in turn:
Q. How can I talk to my child about this activity vs Christianity?
Halloween versus Christianity, is not so easily parsed. That’s due to the origins of the holiday.
In his book, Halloween Through Twenty Centuries, scholar Ralph Linton writes:
“Among all the festivals which we celebrate today, few have histories stranger than that of Halloween. It is the eve of All Hallows—or Hallowmas or All Saints’ Day—and as such it is one of the most solemn festivals of the church. At the same time, it commemorates beings and rites with which the church has always been at war.”
With this in mind, one way to talk about Halloween to your child is to explain that the original festival of All Hallows Eve (now rendered Halloween) was an opportunity to remember those who had died in the faith and to look forward to the resurrection of the dead. Unfortunately, the original intention of this holiday has been twisted: elements of old pagan rituals have been mixed-in, and the focus has shifted to ghosts and goblins (and if the kids in my neighbourhood are anything to go by) very scantly dressed teenage girls.
In this sense, Halloween is not that dissimilar to Christmas: a holiday that originated as an opportunity to celebrate the birth of Jesus which is now, largely, focussed on mass-consumerism.
Which leads me to your second question…
Q. Should we be participating in it?
If your answer to this question is an emphatic No! For the love of God, NO! then I might be tempted to ask if you refuse to celebrate Christmas as well. Indeed, when I think about dangers that might imperil the souls of my children, Greed and Gluttony are far more sinister (and culturally acceptable) threats than Dracula and Wednesday Addams.
I understand that some Christian parents have decided to keep their children away from all things pagan and fantastical - you might remember the backlash from some Christian parents when the Harry Potter novels were being recommended to children by school teachers. However, I would recommend a different approach that (admittedly) takes more effort than simply banning the world of witches wholesale.
When it comes to my own kids, I’ve encouraged them to venture into the realm of fantasy with all of its dangers and delights. To read books about fairies and monsters and witches and zombies, but (crucially) to do so in the knowledge that God is King over all things - both real and imagined.
Within the strong walls of Christian belief, children (and adults) are free to play safely in the worlds of fantasy and make-believe, even when those worlds are dark and scary. As the great G. K. Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy,
“Doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism.”
Instead of making too much of the powers of evil (like some do at Halloween), or making too little of them (by banning them altogether), Christian parents can acknowledge that such dark forces do exist, but that God has triumphed over them through the death and resurrection of Jesus. To quote my friend, Andrew Moody,
“He steals the prey out from the devil’s teeth. He exposes the weakness of Satan by defeating him with a cross. He sends out a gospel that allows puny humans to defeat the prince of darkness (Rev.12:11).”
Allowing your child to participate in Halloween, while affirming that God is bigger and more powerful and more present and more real than anything that Halloween can throw at them, is one way to teach them an important lesson about the nature of good and evil and God.
I’ll end here by making clear that I would never pressure a Christian to participate in Halloween. Caution should be exercised whenever we are choosing to participate in anything that has the potential to confuse or distort the truth. But with care and intentionality, Christian parents can use Halloween as a fun opportunity to affirm the gospel.
Love, JS
