This last day of October is the eve of All Saints Day. It’s called Halloween, which is a shortened form of Allhallows Even, or the day before All Saints Day.
Hallowed means Holy – and Holy people are called Saints. Remember, saints are not perfect. They know above all that they are sinners. Saints are what the Bible calls real Christians.
Well, what’s so special about Halloween? Should such a day be celebrated by anyone, and if so, how? Now here we meet a subtle change – the day is in danger of being taken over for a purpose precisely the opposite of what was intended. The entire Western world is brainwashed by the American carnival of Halloween, in which everyone, children especially, dress up in ghoulish costumes, carry lanterns cut out of pumpkins to look like faces, and follow the theme of the after-life; the dead – the departed souls, with ghost stories and scary tricks, and a morbid representation of witches, demons and evil spirits. The children are taught to visit the homes around them, playing Trick-or-Treat, meaning – ‘give us a treat or we’ll play a trick on you’. The more frightening and realistic you can make it all, the better the party will go. All this, on the Eve of the Celebration of All Saints!!
The original idea of Allhallows Even was to remember the dear departed souls with prayers of thanksgiving and remembrance. Thanking God for good people who have blessed our lives beyond measure, and rejoicing in God’s gifts to us through so many people who have gone before. That’s the idea – but once you secularise it, it’s like pushing a cart down hill: once it starts rolling, you can’t stop it, and what began as a party or carnival based on thankfulness for the dead, rolls down hill into the realm of spiritism, mediums, witches, witchcraft, spells – not only good but evil spirits, the occult and demons. Not only heaven, above all, but hell . People enjoying this celebration get angry with committed Christians for being kill-joys. ‘It’s a harmless bit of fun, that’s all’, they say ‘There’s no harm in dressing up and playing at witches and ghosts’. The inference is clear, anyone objecting is a long-faced kill-joy hurling wet blankets on all sides. The snag is not just the deterioration of this into something quite threatening, but for millions of folk it’s an invitation to open the door to the occult and, once opened, they can’t shut it! An open invitation to whatever is out there to come into us, is a recipe for a million horrific nightmares, and the tricks in Trick-or-Treat so easily become a vicious and threatening form of demanding money with menaces. This is one sentence from Jesus:
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive. Luke 20:38
A Prayer:
Thank you Lord for all those now with you, whose lives have enriched me and my family, and the entire human race, beyond telling.
Now read Luke 20: 27-39.