Andrea Sarvady & Shaunti Feldhahn: Spotlighting Halloween’s Dark Past crux of Debate

Andrea Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week, and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds. Sarvady (asarvad@gmail.com) is a writer and educator specializing in counseling, and a married mother of three. Feldhahn (scfeldhahn@yahoo.com) is a conservative Christian author and speaker, and married mother of two children.

Andrea Sarvady:
Halloween has always been a favorite holiday of young children; it’s creative, adventurous and filled with exciting, innocent fun. So when I learned that a sizable group of my fellow parents viewed it as the “devil’s holiday,” I set out to find out why. Unfortunately, the more I learned, the more confused I became.

A major argument against Halloween stems from its pagan origins. Yet there simply is no separating many holidays from such roots. Christmas trees dragged into a living room and decorated with lights are unquestionably a reenactment of a pagan offering to the gods that bring warmth and spring’s bounty. Even Easter probably got its name from Eastre, the Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, and Halloween, or Samhain, as the holiday was originally called, was an attempt to keep bad spirits from returning and damaging crops. If anything, Halloween began as an anti-devil crusade, a way to keep a malevolent creature at bay before the long, hard winter closed in.

Another argument repeated on many conservative blogs and articles is that scary costumes and other ghoulish images will create nightmares and are the opposite of God’s will. Fine. Yet then how can some communities justify the creation of seasonal “Hell Houses,” filled with macabre images of women screaming over botched abortions and gay people languishing in the flames of eternal damnation? Is terrifying young people like this OK if it suits your purpose?

Now I understand that nobody looks at a child tearing down the dark street in a Spider-Man or fairy costume in search of chocolate as anything but adorable. Yet some folks see a slippery slope between permitting that harmless activity and devil-worshipping down the line. A friend’s daughter was once told by a pal down the street, “If you dress up for Halloween, it means you don’t love Jesus.” I struggle to see the connection here.Parenting is a decision-making minefield, and I fully support the choice of these parents to do what’s best for their family and to uphold their faith. It’s just that when I picture a night of raucous, carefree fun, of shiny costumes, too much candy and staying up past bedtime, I can’t help but wonder: Where’s the real harm?

Shaunti Feldhahn:
One of the biggest misconceptions about Halloween is that it is “nothing but innocent fun.” Now, children getting excited about trick-or-treating is innocent and a blast, which is why my husband and I allow our children to participate. But we are also very aware of a dark side to the holiday that is anything but innocent, and are very careful about steering clear of it. For us that includes no scary costumes and no haunted houses. But many parents prefer to avoid Halloween altogether.

Parents with Judeo-Christian beliefs have struggled with Halloween for centuries. Two thousand years ago, Nov. 1 was the Celtic new year, the beginning of winter, the time of death. The Celts believed that the night before was the most supernatural moment of the year, when evil spirits walked abroad. So they celebrated the festival of Samhain with animal sacrifices and by dressing up like evil spirits to ward off the real ones. As time went on, these occultic beliefs became mixed with the spreading Roman culture, so the early church began to try, like many Jewish and Christian parents today, to change the holiday. In the 800s, Pope Gregory IV designated Nov. 1 as All Saints Day, to commemorate Christian legends of the faith, and the night before as All Saints Eve (translated as All Hallows Eve). Parties, bonfires and costumes became the norm of this more wholesome celebration.

But many continued to celebrate Halloween for dark purposes. Today, that has translated directly into very real, very evil Oct. 31 witchcraft and Satanic ceremonies, which I have heard something about from two friends who were raised by Satanist parents. As Steve Russo, author of “Halloween: What’s a Christian to Do?” described in an interview:

“There is a danger to being desensitized to evil. And Halloween is one of the eight high holy days for Satan worshippers and those that practice Wicca. So that means that there are all kind of things that go on unbeknownst to the average person. I am not anti-Halloween or pro-Halloween, but I do want to provide answers for parents.”

I appreciate parents who, like the early church, have consciously tried to change the tenor of the Halloween holiday. But I also respect those who feel it is safer to avoid it altogether.