So what about Halloween?

So what about Halloween? 

You can't really celebrate All Saints Day without confronting All Hallows' Eve or Halloween which is technically the night before. What are we to make of it, and what has it to do with anything Christian? When I went into the temple of Tescos last week I was confronted with stacks of large sweet tubs all costing around £5, produced with the sole purpose of being given out to little kids in ghost and skeleton costumes, or the lazier ones who have jumped on the 'trick or treat' bandwagon.

The origins of Halloween go back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhein (pronounced sow-in) which was a celebration of the end of autumn, a time for stock-taking and preparation for the cold winter months ahead, a time often associated with human death in those pre-central heating days. There was also a feeling that at this time of the year the physical and supernatural worlds were at their closest, when the spirits of those who died in the preceding year roamed the earth. To ward off these spirits, bonfires were lit and people danced around in costumes.

If we skip a few centuries, past the Romans and into the Middle Ages, we find that when local people converted to Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church often merged Christian festivals into versions of older religious traditions in order to win converts. This was a process that Popes had been encouraging for many years. So it was that the Church eventually replaced Samhein with All Souls' Day.

All Souls' Day is an opportunity, mainly in Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholic churches to commemorate the recently departed. All Saints Day is slightly different, where we have an opportunity for believers to remember all saints and martyrs, known and unknown, throughout Christian history, and also consider what it is to be 'a saint'.

So where does that leave us as Christians? Can we reclaim anything from the commercial Halloween and its fascination with witches and ghosts?

I think we can confront it, by on the one hand warning that our children should not be dabbling in anything that glorifies ghouls and ghosts and the murkier side of the spiritual world, but that at Halloween, or All Souls' Day we celebrate the life of all who we have loved and lost through death, and also celebrate God's eternal protection, provision and purpose for our lives, where good has triumphed over evil, and over the centuries many have given their lives as martyrs to that truth.