As a Christian I have always felt a bit embarrassed about other Christians slamming Halloween for its pagan roots.
Yes, there is good evidence to tie it to old pagan rituals involving human sacrifice or the return of the dead (to visit/haunt the living– whatever you wish to call it) rather than “once to die, and then the judgment.”
The arguments from these people primarily seem to run that Halloween should be rejected because of where it came from (many books and, I imagine, websites, go deeper into the details so I feel no need to here).
But this is a genetic fallacy, and even before I had figured out the name for it, I knew it was faulty thinking, because I’ve only once (and that was just last year) heard a Christian reject Easter for its equally traceable pagan roots.
I’ve floundered every year on how much to let my children participate.
When I had an 8-year-old foster boy, I agreed to take him to his school’s “carnival,” and was relieved when I learned it was canceled because of freezing rain.
We made a costume together for door-to-door trick or treating (to fit *over* the warm clothes– you have to do that in cool places like Alaska), but I firmly guided him away from the gross or mass-inspired (from cartoon characters to Harry Potter) costumes, because I feel those either focus on what is evil or stifle creativity.
In case anybody wonders, or needs the idea, we made a spider: matching sweatpants and shirt (that could be reused in the future) with a pair of stuffed pantyhose sewn on each side with string tying the ankles of the hose to the wrist above it.
8-year-old *loved* it: all the arms had “life” because they were connected to him.
I felt rather clever.
Anyway, what really got me last year (and assured an until-further-notice non-participation) was how an article I read in the paper melded with a section from one of my favorite books (The Perilous Gard).
The timing itself was… precise. In the morning I read the retailers’ claims that the increasing presence and gruesomeness of Halloween paraphernalia is utterly market driven: “We’re just giving them what they want!”
The same day (while I was making dinner) I listened the the section of the book that was the preparation of a human sacrifice.
It turned my stomach like it never has before, and I couldn’t imagine any more the “practice” and implications of this gross stuff to be innocent or worth perpetuating.
Here is where the genetic fallacy can have value: it should remind us what was (or should have been) left behind. We shouldn’t forget what it’s like to watch people live in fear– not knowing there was a sure defense from every terror that walked the night on the Feast of the Dead.
