Below are some quotes
from various Orthodox Christian websites concerning
the "satanic panic" over Halloween, though they all
pretty much say the same thing and offer the same
distorted information:
From the website of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral
of St. John the Baptist:
"Orthodox Christians cannot participate in
this event at any level."
"Halloween has its roots in paganism, and it
continues as a form of idolatry to worship Satan,
the angel of death."
"The Orthodox Christian must understand that taking
part in these practices at any level is an
idolatrous betrayal of our God and our Holy Faith.
For if we imitate the dead by dressing up in or
wandering about in the dark, or by begging with them,
then we have willfully sought fellowship with the
dead, whose Lord is not a Celtic Samhain, but is
Satan the Evil One, who stands against God. Further,
if we submit to the dialogue of "trick-or-treat,"
our offering goes not to innocent children, but
rather to Samhain, the Lord of Death whom they have
come to serve as imitators of the dead, wandering in
the darkness."
"The Halloween festival was the proper night for
sorcery, fortune telling, divination, games of
chance, and Satan worship and witchcraft in the
later Middle Ages."
From the website
OrthodoxChristian.info:
"Be warned: Halloween is not what it appears
to be! Its seemingly innocent manifestations
represent a memory of an ancient celebration deeply
rooted in paganism and demonology and continues to
be a form of idolatry in which Satan, the angel of
death is worshipped."
"From an Orthodox Christian viewpoint, participation
in these practices at any level is idolatrous, and a
genuine betrayal of our God and our Holy Faith. To
do so by dressing up and going out would be to
wilfully seek fellowship with the 'dead' whose Lord
is also known as Satan, the Evil One, who stands
against God. Or, to participate by submission to the
dialogue of 'trick or treat' is to make offering,
not to innocent little children, but to the lord of
Death, whom they unknowingly serve as proxy for the
'dead'."
"Even if Halloween was good, clean, innocent fun, to
what benefit - spiritual, intellectual or otherwise
- is this for a Christian?"
From the website
Orthodox Christian Information Center:
"If we participate in the ritual activity of
imitating the dead and wandering in the dark asking
for treats or offering them to children, we then
have willfully sought fellowship with the dead,
whose Lord is not Samhain, but rather Satan. It is
to Satan then that these treats are offered, not to
children."
"Halloween undermines the very basis of the Church
which was founded on the blood of martyrs who had
refused, by giving up their lives, to partake in any
form of idolatry."
"Holy Mother Church must take a firm stand in
counteracting any such (pagan) events. Christ taught
us that God is the judge in all our actions and
beliefs and that we are either FOR GOD or AGAINST
GOD. There is no neutral or middle of the road
approach."
From the website
AllSaintsOfAmerica.org:
"I believe that the issue of Halloween is an
example of a more fundamental struggle between
Orthodoxy and the secular spirit of our age."
"This must be our Orthodoxy, and to believe it and
to witness it is to truly become a 'fool for Christ.'
Never has it been more foolish than it is today to
be an Orthodox witness in the secular world of today.
It is for this witness then that we don't
participate in Halloween."
"Halloween, as it is practiced, rejoices in the
irrelevance of spiritual evil."
From the website
FatherAlexander.org:
"It is that time of the year when the secular
society in which we live is preparing for the
festival of Halloween. Many do not know its
spiritual roots and history, and why it contradicts
the teachings of the Church."
"The Holy Fathers of the first millennium (a time
when the Church was one and strictly Orthodox)
counteracted this Celtic pagan feast by introducing
the Feast of All Saints. It is from this that the
term Halloween developed...The people who remained
pagan and therefore anti-Christian reacted to the
Church's attempt to supplant their festival by
celebrating this evening with increased fervor."
"We also need to avoid any sort of Halloween party
or celebration as well as decorations in our homes.
If our children attend schools that hold such
parties, no matter what the day, they must not
participate."
Ok, I think you get the picture how many Orthodox
Christians unfortunately view Halloween. What is
unfortunate is that they base their beliefs on a
bunch of distorted information that have no basis in
fact. If it does, I challenge anyone to present the
historical evidence that Halloween is indeed an
ancient pagan festival that was celebrated by
sacrifices of humans to Satan (Samhain) and honored
demons with treats. And these are only a few of the
many distortions popularized in the "christian"
tracts of fundamentalists and of multimillionaire
publisher Jack Chick.
This smear campaign against Halloween, in which it
has been scapegoated among Christians as the
ultimate manifestation of secularism and satanism in
contemporary culture, only goes back to farely
recent modern times when certain Christian groups
resorted to any fanciful tale to counter the
emerging counter-culture of the 60's and 70's that
was corrupting the youth. Christian leaders since
then have clutched us in a guilt trip ever since
about a holiday which prior to this extreme reaction
was indeed harmless for the most part like any other
holiday and had no connection with satanic rituals.
It was a cultural festival which, though mischievous
at times, really posed no threat to society until we
were forced to believe that it did.
The fact is that I also once opposed Halloween for
religious reasons, being convinced by fundamentalist
literature that it was the "devil's holiday", a
conspiracy of Neopagans and Satanists to corrupt our
youth. Later when I researched the background of the
holiday I came to different conclusions. I realized
in the impurity and evil of my egotistical heart I
was choosing a much easier enemy to fight rather
than the much more difficult enemy within, the enemy
of my ego which easily saw scandal elsewhere rather
than in the impurity and scandal within my own heart
and mind.
As a child born and raised in Boston, Halloween was
one of my favorite holidays like the majority of
American youth. It was a fun and innocent time to
watch Halloween specials on TV like It's the
Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and maybe play with
my fright-meter with some mild horror films, to
carve pumpkins and eat the toasted seeds, to order
an extra batch of Scholastic books in school dealing
with stories of the holiday, to dress up like a
favorite cartoon or pop culture character, to have a
Halloween party at school with candy, to color
pictures of witches and vampires and ghosts which
are a part of the folklore surrounding the holiday
taming children's deep-seated fears of them, to go
trick or treating around the neighborhood giving us
the one chance in the year to actually meet our
neighbors and receive a friendly gesture of candy,
and when we got home we would eat our candy after
they were carefully checked by parents. I was a
child of the 1980's, so the initial signs of fear
about the holiday which started in the 1960's were
beginning to spread at the time also. Rumors were
circulating that razor blades were being placed in
apples and poison in candy by evil neighbors trying
to harm us. Of course, none of these reports were
actually traced and this was the first myth I was
exposed to about Halloween that had no basis in
reality. When people realized that such crimes were
never reported, they still checked "just in case",
since now the media gave crazy people an idea of how
to get media coverage by harming a child on
Halloween. In fact, this is exactly what the rumors
did in a few not too serious cases. The innocence
and fun was slowly but surely being lost.
As I entered my teenage years I continued to enjoy
Halloween in mostly the same ways, but slowly
stopped trick or treating. I can remember a few
years being a little mischievous on Halloween with
my friends, but it was mainly within our own circle
in which we would have egg and whip cream fights all
in fun. I still very much loved the holiday and the
atmosphere it brought to the autumn season,
especially in the midst of a New England autumn with
the reality of death surrounding us in nature. Being
a child of many fears about the supernatural, this
was a time in which those fears were dealt with in
an entertaining and humorous way and it helped me
think more deeply on supernatural issues as well.
Like most Greek youth in America of my time, my
involvement in the Church was limited to Sundays and
ecclesiastical holidays where I had served as an
altar boy since the age of seven and of course
attended Greek school twice a week for six years.
Because I loved holidays such as Halloween (as well
as Christmas and Easter), from a young age I wanted
to learn the story behind them to celebrate them on
a deeper level. This thirst for knowledge led me at
a young age to contemplate deeper matters than most
of my peers. In fact, the first time I opened my
Bible was after watching the horror movie "The
Seventh Sign" in 1988 which starred Demi Moore. I
was twelve years old and this was one of my first
R-Rated movies, but when I got home I looked
anxiously in the Bible for the Book of Revelation
and have hardly put my Bible down since.
My first in-depth research about the origins of
Halloween stemmed from a bad grade in my seventh
grade Social Studies class. I think I got a "B" on a
test and since I wanted to maintain my "A" I had
asked my teacher for some extra credit. Since it was
a few weeks before Halloween my teacher recommended
that I write a two-page paper on the origins of
Halloween. I was actually excited about this
assignment and began to study the origins. After
reading through all the books dealing with the
subject in my school library as well as articles in
the Encyclopedia Brittanica, I wrote my
paper and received my "A". But this was also the
first school assignment I ever had that I not only
got excited for, but learned a great deal.
When I was about eighteen years old I was involved
in the youth ministry of my diocese (now metropolis)
and was asked to write a session teaching the youth
about Halloween. By this time I was already exposed
to the Protestant literature exposing the "dangers"
of Halloween and was a bit conflicted on how to
present all this contradictory information that in
essence began to confuse me about the holiday. Even
though I felt somewhat positive about the holiday, I
felt obligated to react negatively lest the youth be
infested by the "demonic allurements" of Halloween.
Though I tried to be somewhat moderate in my
approach, it was more on the negative side of
moderate, and this caused the majority of youth to
be skeptical of what I was teaching since they had
not been exposed to my literature and saw no harm in
the holiday. To them, all I was doing was depriving
them of some innocent fun and candy and calling it "demonic".
If I were in their position, I would be skeptical
too, so I fully understood why they could not accept
it.
The confusion I felt that day prompted me to do
further research into the subject, because it seemed
to me that all the negative reactions against
Halloween were based on myths and propaganda. I felt
like Halloween, like pop culture, was being used as
a scapegoat among Christians to attribute the
failure of our churches to the "demonic allurements"
of society with a particular event or person, when
in reality it was the shallowness and
unreasonableness of the churches that in many ways
were the cause of the real evils that Christians
needed to fear and avoid. And when I did my research,
I realized how much I had been lied to and regretted
the lies I spread by focusing on problems that were
not problems at all, and covering up instead the
real problems.
Hyper-Religiosity and Halloween
When I hear Christians today condemning Halloween as
a demonic holiday filled with pagan rituals and
accusing all participators in the holiday of being
in league with Satan, of whom no doubt they were
also in their younger years, I'm immediately
reminded of the hyper-religiosity and immaturity of
the Jews of our Lord Jesus' time. Hyper-religiosity
and immaturity are based on an improper fear that
tends to rely on superstition and human tradition
for dealing with issues affecting our everyday lives,
and in return something good or even divine could be
misinterpreted as being evil or demonic in origin.
This is what Jesus spoke of when he accused the
teachers of the Law of being blind guides leading
the blind who close the doors to the Kingdom of
Heaven on themselves and in turn not allowing anyone
else to enter.
It seems as if it was in the nature of the Jews to
follow the path of superstition and human tradition
against the clear path of God's wisdom and
commandments. Could this be why the children of
Israel had a golden calf molded at the foot of Mount
Sinai? Could this also be the reason why the people
of Israel would continuously abandon God's ways and
seek their own ways in resolving their issues
throughout the Old Testament? Could these incidents
also be the source for the extreme reactions of the
Jews and teachers of the Law in Jesus' day who
tended to add laws onto the Law and create
superstitions to keep people in line lest God punish
their wickedness?
A common extreme reaction of the hyper-religious
teachers of the Law was to see the devil where he
was not and to not see the devil where he was. This
is why they accused Jesus Himself of being an agent
of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. Such extreme
hyper-religious reactions trickled down to the
common uneducated folk as well, as we see among the
disciples of Jesus in Matthew 14 when they saw Jesus
walking towards them in their boat over the water,
causing them to wonder if this was a ghost they were
seeing, making them to, as the Gospel says, cry out
in fear. Fear, immaturity, hyper-religiosity,
extremism, and distortion of facts all go hand in
hand, as we are often taught not only throughout
Holy Scripture, but within the writings of the
Church Fathers as well.
The medieval West, especially after the Great Schism,
also became a victim of this hyper-religiosity that
springs from willful arrogant ignorance. We see this
especially during the time of the Crusades and the
Inquisition. The foundations of the United States
are also based on such hyper-religiosity carried
over from Europe, hence such events as the Salem
Witch Trials and the need to separate the Church
from the State. In fact, it is hyper-religiosity
which is at the root of the secularism of our days
and not pop-culture or Halloween. Pop-culture and
such things as Halloween indeed can be reflective of
secularism, but they are not the root of the evils
of society as Christian leaders often claim.
The Origins of Halloween
I will not get into all the details about the
origins of Halloween, lest I be accused of spreading
satanic lies and propaganda myself. I encourage
everyone to undertake their own honest research into
the subject and judge for themselves what the true
origins of the holiday are and separate fact from
fiction. Consider this merely as a guide to help you
think a bit deeper on the subject.
For example, when one reads all the ignorant
propaganda regarding Halloween, the thought that
comes into my mind are the various accusations the
Roman government made against the early Christians.
This is what Pliny had in mind in circa 110 AD when
he calls Christianity a "superstition taken to
extravagant lengths." Similarly, the Roman historian
Tacitus called it "a deadly superstition," and the
historian Suetonius called Christians "a class of
persons given to a new and mischievous superstition."
In this context, the word "superstition" has a
slightly different connotation than it has today:
for the Romans, it designated something foreign and
different - in a negative sense. A religious belief
was valid only insofar as it could be shown to be
old and in line with ancient customs; new teachings
were regarded with distrust. It is for this reason
that the charge of "atheism" was brought against
Christians, and almost every time disaster struck
the Empire the accused were the Christians for
displeasing the gods with their atheism. On a more
social, practical level, Christians were distrusted
in part because of the secret and misunderstood
nature of their worship. Words like "love feast" and
talk of "eating Christ's flesh" sounded
understandably suspicious to the pagans, and
Christians were suspected of cannibalism, incest,
orgies, and all sorts of immorality.
Yes, these same pagan Romans who contrived these
lies against Christians also contrived lies against
their opponents to the north - among whom were the
ancient Celts. The Roman historians note how a
propaganda campaign went out against the Celts to
basically demonize their enemies so as to conquer
them in a war that became a campaign against "evil".
Such demonization is even common today, so it should
not surprise us that the Romans would do this
against the Celts. Unfortunately, the propaganda
which describes the "horrific rituals" of the Druids
detailed in Halloween propaganda is only described
by the Romans during their campaigns, and are so
outrageous that they can hardly be seen as factual.
Hence, there’s a distinct lack of historical or
archaeological evidence that the ancient Druids ever
sacrificed anyone, for example. The pumpkin also is
a New World plant that never grew in Europe until
modern times, so it couldn’t have been used to make
jack-o-lanterns by the Druids. There’s zero evidence
that the ancient Druids or their congregants ever
dressed in identity-hiding costumes or engaged in
ritualized begging at harvest time. The connections
between these Druid practices and modern Halloween
are based on early Roman sources and modern
fundamentalist propaganda.
What we do know is that the dead were honored by the
Celts, not as the fearsome dead, but as the living
spirits of loved ones and of guardians who hold the
root-wisdom of the tribe. The Druid rites, whatever
they were, therefore, were concerned with making
contact with the spirits of the departed, who were
seen as sources of guidance and inspiration rather
than as sources of dread. And of course, there was
probably divinination and other pagan practices, but
these were common in the world before the spread of
Christianity and in no way can account for the
condemnation outright of Halloween in our times.
Before and after the arrival of Christianity, early
November was when people in Western and Northern
Europe finished the last of their harvesting,
butchered their excess stock (so the surviving
animals would have enough food to make it through
the winter), and held great feasts. They invited
their ancestors to join them, they decorated family
graves, and told ghost stories.
Regarding the horrific Samhain, according to the
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, in an
essay called The Myth of Samhain: Celtic God of
the Dead, both Neopagans and Christians have
been wrong on this topic: “There is some evidence
that there really was an obscure, little known
character named Samain or Sawan who played a very
minor role in Celtic mythology. He was a mortal
whose main claim to fame was that Balor of the Evil
Eye stole his magical cow. He is rarely mentioned in
Celtic mythology; his existence is little known,
even among Celtic historians.” However, “…there is/was
no Celtic God of the Dead. The Great God Samhain
appears to have been invented in the 18th century,
as a God of the Dead before the ancient Celtic
people and their religion were studied by historians
and archaeologists.” Major dictionaries of Celtic
languages don’t mention any “Samhain” deity either:
McBain’s Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic
Language says that “samhuinn” (the Scots Gaelic
spelling) means “Hallow-tide” (or ‘sacred time’),
and that it probably came from roots meaning
“summer’s end;” with a possible derivation from the
annual assembly at Tara every November 1st.
MacFarlane’s School Gaelic Dictionary defines it
simply as “Hallowtide.” In other words, what we find
out is that Samhain was merely the Celtic New Year,
just like September 1 was the Orthodox/Roman New
Year.
The truth about trick or treating is a far cry from
the horrific images “conjured” by fundamentalists.
Rather than an ancient satanic plot to kill or
corrupt children, the American tradition of trick or
treating is mainly a modern custom invented by town
councils, schoolboards and parents in the 1930's to
keep their kids out of trouble. The great poisoned
treats scare trotted out every year and exploited by
Mr. Chick is, however, just another
urban legend as noted above. Almost every actual
example of booby-trapped Halloween treats has turned
out to be a murder plot by a relative, not a
malicious act by strangers.
According to Tad Tuleja’s essay, “Trick or Treat:
Pre-Texts and Contexts,” in Jack Santino’s anthology,
Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life,
modern trick or treating (primarily children going
door-to-door, begging for candy) began fairly
recently, as a blend of several ancient and modern
influences. At various times and places in the
Middle Ages, customs developed of beggers, then
children, asking for “soul cakes” on the Christian
feast of All Souls Day on November 2nd. This was
also known as "souling". Also in medieval times such
begging took place door to door during the Christmas
period, as is still done in contemporary Orthodox
countries like Greece. Shakespeare mentions the
practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of
Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of
"puling [whimpering or whining] like a beggar at
Hallowmas." In 1605, Guy Fawkes’ abortive effort to
blow up the British Parliament on November 5th, led
to the creation of “Guy Fawkes Day,” celebrated by
the burning of effigies of Fawkes in bonfires and
children dressing in rags to beg for money for
fireworks. As the decades rolled by, this became
thoroughly entwined with Halloween celebrations and
customs. Also in mid-nineteenth century New York,
children called “ragamuffins” would dress in
costumes and beg for pennies from adults on
Thanksgiving Day. Vandalism began to spread also in
nineteenth century America during the Thanksgiving
season among young boys pulling pranks. With
increased urbanization and poverty in the 1930’s,
adults began casting about for ways to control the
previously harmless but now increasingly expensive
and dangerous vandalism of the “boys.” Towns and
cities began organizing “safe” Halloween events and
householders began giving out bribes to the
neighborhood kids as a way to distract them away
from their previous anarchy. The ragamuffins
disappeared or switched their date to Halloween.
However, there is no evidence that souling was ever
practiced in North America, where trick or treating
may have developed independent of any Irish or
British antecedent. Ruth Edna Kelley, in her 1919
history of the holiday, The Book of Hallowe'en,
makes no mention of ritual begging in the chapter "Hallowe'en
in America." Kelley lived in Lynn, Massachusetts, a
town with about 4,500 Irish immigrants, 1,900
English immigrants, and 700 Scottish immigrants in
1920. The thousands of Halloween postcards produced
between the turn of the twentieth century and the
1920's commonly show children, but do not depict
trick or treating. Trick or treating does not seem
to have become a widespread practice until the
1930's, with the first U.S. appearances of the term
in 1934. The term “trick or treat,” finally
appeared in print around 1939!
When explaining these things to people, I'm often
asked: “How can these evil things never happen if so
many people preach that it does? Where would
Christians get these ideas if they weren’t fact?”
The short answer, of course, is that preachers are
people and (1) all people make mistakes, (2) some
people are ignorant, and (3) others just tell lies
out of fear or something else. Of course, I'm not
advocating on behalf of paganism when I say this,
but just good ol' plain honesty. For all I know the
Druids may have sacrificed children or did other
horrific things, but this is not supported by any
evidence and even if it did there is still no actual
relationship between that and anything we do on
Halloween, and for this reason the propaganda
against Halloween and human reason is unsound and
improper. If someone decides Halloween is
inappropriate for them, there is no need to “bear
false witness” (that is to say, tell lies)
about Halloween, Neopagans, Satanists or indeed any
other religious topic, in order to make a spiritual
decision for him or herself, or their children — the
only people for whom they may have the right to make
that decision.
The Christianization of a Pagan Holiday Myth
There is also the myth that Christians condemned the
pagan festivities of October 31 by replacing it with
All Hallows Eve, the day before the Feast of All
Saints in the West. It is often recorded that in 601
AD Pope Gregory I issued a now famous edict to his
missionaries concerning the native beliefs and
customs of the peoples he hoped to convert. Rather
than try to obliterate native peoples' customs and
beliefs, the pope instructed his missionaries to use
them: if a group of people worshipped a tree, rather
than cut it down, he advised them to consecrate it
to Christ and allow its continued veneration. Though
this is true, this edict is likely not the reason
why November 1 became the Feast of All Saints in the
West.
Both the Feast of All Saints and the Feast of All
Souls evolved in the life of the Church
independently of paganism and Halloween. Let us
first address the Feast of All Saints. The exact
origins of this celebration are uncertain, although,
after the legalization of Christianity in A.D. 313,
a common commemoration of the Saints, especially the
martyrs, appeared in various areas throughout the
Church. For instance in the East, the city of Edessa
celebrated this feast on May 13; the Syrians, on the
Friday after Easter; and the city of Antioch, on the
first Sunday after Pentecost. Both St. Ephraim (d.
373) and St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) attest to this
feast day in their preaching. In the West, a
commemoration for all the Saints also was celebrated
on the first Sunday after Pentecost. The primary
reason for establishing a common feast day was
because of the desire to honor the great number of
martyrs, especially during the persecution of
Emperor Diocletion (284-305), the worst and most
extensive of the persecutions. Quite simply, there
were not enough days of the year for a feast day for
each martyr and many of them died in groups. A
common feast day for all Saints, therefore, seemed
most appropriate.
In 609, the Emperor Phocas gave the Pantheon in Rome
to Pope Boniface IV, who rededicated it on May 13
under the title St. Maria ad Martyres (or St. Mary
and All Martyrs). Whether the Pope purposefully
chose May 13 because of the date of the popular
celebration already established in the East or
whether this was just a happy coincidence is open to
debate.
The designation of November 1 as the Feast of All
Saints occurred over time. Pope Gregory III
(731-741) dedicated an oratory in the original St.
Peter's Basilica in honor of all the Saints on
November 1, and this date then became the official
date for the celebration of the Feast of All Saints
in Rome. St. Bede (d. 735) recorded the celebration
of All Saints Day on November 1 in England, and such
a celebration also existed in Salzburg, Austria. Ado
of Vienne (d. 875) recounted how Pope Gregory IV
asked King Louis the Pious (778-840) to proclaim
November 1 as All Saints Day throughout the Frankish
Empire. Sacramentaries of the ninth and tenth
centuries also placed the feast of All Saints on the
liturgical calendar on November 1.
According to an early Church historian, John Beleth
(d. 1165), Pope Gregory IV (827-844) officially
declared November 1 the Feast of All Saints,
transferring it from May 13. However, Sicard of
Cremona (d. 1215) recorded that Pope Gregory VII
(1073-85) finally suppressed May 13 and mandated
November 1 as the date to celebrate the Feast of All
Saints. In all, we find the Papal Church
establishing a liturgical feast day in honor of the
Saints independent of any pagan influence.
Particular ethnic groups developed their own lore,
which was merged with the celebration. For this
reason, little ones (and some big ones) still dress
in a variety of costumes and pretend for the evening
to be ghosts, witches, vampires, monsters, ninjas,
pirates and so on, without any thought of paganism.
Nevertheless, All Saints Day clearly arose from a
genuine Christian devotion independent of paganism.
Conclusion
I wonder today if my interest in Halloween and the
macabre stems from my New England roots. After all,
New England gave us the masters of American gothic
and horror literature like Edgar Allen Poe,
Nathaniel Hawthorn, H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King.
Our history in New England is deeply rooted in the
folklore of Europe, as is evidenced in the Salem
and Boston witch trials and the tales of "true"
vampire legends in Rhode Island and Maine. Our tales
of the paranormal are unlike anywhere else in the
United States, and everywhere you go you are
surrounded by these legends. Though these are all
things that interest me and have made me proud to be
a New Englander, I think my love for Halloween stems
a bit deeper. Demons, evil, death, fear, vice, pain
and suffering do exist and are a part of human
existence. As Christians we have the weapons and the
answers to overcome these and they go hand in hand
with the hope which our faith brings us. Apart from
this reality, I don't think I would enjoy Halloween
as much. It is the connection between faith and fear
that is even behind all the great classic monster
stories we hear about on Halloween, like Dracula,
Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Headless
Horseman, and so on, and in these romanticized
gothic tales vice is always spoken against and
demoted while virtue and selflessness is promoted.
As an Orthodox Christian, I do not want to come out
as a proponent of Halloween since it is not an
Orthodox feast I feel the need to defend. The reason
I am trying to bring some awareness of the truth
about Halloween is because as an Orthodox Christian
I believe it is my duty to speak the truth and
expose error in a spirit of love and concern,
especially when other Orthodox are spreading these
lies out of ignorance. Halloween is a part of our
society and especially of our children's lives, and
an answer from an Orthodox Christian perspective is
needed. It does not help our Christian witness in
the world to distort information to make our message
sound better. In fact, it does just the opposite and
I believe those capable of discovering the truth
will be judged for disseminating lies which are
unfounded. We have not been given a spirit of fear,
but of power and truth to be above propagating
errors. It is the proclamation of the truth which
brings freedom and respect, and a pure heart which
makes all things pure.
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