Thinking Christian about Halloween

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hello everyone, I'm Dr. James Spencer, and welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. You know, Halloween is coming up upon us, as are some of our other holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas. And so I wanted to do a quick podcast on thinking about the holidays within our cultural context, particularly in the United States. So what I would say is that whatever concerns we should have about Halloween's origins and its connection to Celtic practices associated with the end of harvest and the onset of winter, we should also be concerned about the organized creation of dissatisfaction by which retailers encourage an endless cycle of want that combats contentment. You know, the cultic context from which Halloween originated certainly distorts God and presents a distorted picture of the spiritual realm. However, in the context of 21st century America, Halloween and various other holidays are also problematic because they reinforce commitments to ways of life that hinder us from reflecting Christ. And today, Halloween's rituals are different, though not less problematic. So suggesting that Halloween's rituals are different now than at the time of its origins doesn't make its potential mystical or spiritual influence trivial. The occult is a very real thing, and we don't want to dismiss that too lightly. Yet I think focusing too narrowly on that aspect of the threat, that aspect of Halloween, and that aspect of Halloween's origins, can cause us to neglect the more modern-day rituals in which Halloween and other holidays have now become immersed. And those rituals involve a logic that really presses us to link celebration with consumption. So rather than making sacrifices to protect ourselves from the forces of darkness and decay, as was often done in the original cultic rituals, they're moving from harvest into winter, and they believe that there was a thin veil, that the veil between the after or the realm of the dead and the realm of the living was the thinnest at this time during the year. And so some of the rituals were designed to protect them from spirits that might cross over from the realm of the dead to the realm of the living. They would put on costumes to confuse the spirits. They would offer various food and drink offerings that were intended to protect them from the spirits. They would light bonfires. All of this was related to this idea that at this time, between harvest and winter, there was a higher likelihood that evil spirits could come across from the realm of the dead. Good spirits can enter as well, but they were really warding off these evil spirits. And so rather than making those kind of sacrifices today, which doesn't make a lot of sense to us, or even, you know, some of the rituals that would have been involved with All Saints and All Souls Day, which were Christian holidays that celebrated the saints and celebrated those who had passed away, we tend to ward off the evils of dissatisfaction. And we do that by casting our cash or our credit. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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In other words, Halloween seems to have become a little bit more about dressing up our dog in a cute costume or our kid in a cute costume and enjoying that, getting a few pictures, posting on Instagram, and then moving on with life. But the reality is that we've fallen prey a little bit to sort of a shopping cycle. Halloween doesn't mean that much to most of us anymore, as far as I can tell. It's not a holiday that we celebrate because the harvest has come in, in other words. Most of us live in cities. I know I do. And so while I'm near cornfields, I'm in central Illinois, and so I see the cornfields, I'm not a farmer. And so I'm not exactly celebrating any harvest. I'm not concerned about the onset of winter. Our concerns have shifted, and so this particular time in the cadence of our year, for most of us, really doesn't mean a whole lot. Halloween sort of held on. It's become a tradition within America, but that tradition has no particular rooting in our own real concerns on a day-to-day basis. It's sort of a distraction for those concerns and a way for us to just have a little fun. And so it does tend to play into some of the challenges that we face in more of a consumer-based society. You know, like I would say that Halloween isn't Halloween without costumes, candy, and decorations of various sorts. And it's hard to escape. I live in a subdivision, and so, you know, it's hard to escape the Halloween decorations and the kids coming around for trick-or-treat. And that's okay. I don't mind doing that. But it really, you know, most people wouldn't just have Halloween without the costumes, without the candy, and without the decorations. Those things have now become essential to what Halloween is. And they've kind of held on from these ancient Celtic rituals and probably All Saints and All Souls Day. These things are sort of adaptations in our modern day for what they used to do back then. But I would say that the traditions have grown up around holidays in the United States. They're still spiritually problematic, though they tend to be less focused on the realm of the dead than on the realm of retail. And so for many, the holidays, including Christmas and Easter, involve rituals that are less reflective of Christ than a culture in which we pursue an endless craving and a misdirected desire. And so they create holidays. They create a cadence of life. But it is, to some degree, a cadence that involves a fresh marketing cycle. Unlike what we see in the beginning, where the Celtic rituals are rooted in an agricultural cycle, a seasonal change cycle, where they're looking out at the world, they're experiencing the world, their vitality, their security is in many ways wrapped up in how much food they harvest and how that's going to last them through the winter. That's a very different cadence of life than most of us are used to living. You know, Walmart and Target and all the different retailers, Amazon, they may have a little trouble delivering if there's a big snow or something like that. But for most of us, we're not concerned about there's not going to be food on the shelves at our local grocery store because there's a little snow on the ground. That was different in the Celtic context. The agricultural cycle, they were dependent on what they harvested to make it through the winter. And so our cadence is just a little different. It does involve a marketing cycle. It does involve, you know, the return of the spirit pop-up stores. It involves Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all the rest. Retailers aren't these mustachioed villains hatching plans for world domination while petting their favorite kitty. They're simply following the logic of the market as well by providing us with the opportunity to keep up with our traditions, like spending too much on a really cheap costume. And so, let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. If we've largely forgotten how to celebrate the harvest or celebrate something at this time that's actually important for us, which was the original context of the Celtic celebration, and prepare for winter without elaborate costumes and candy on Halloween, doesn't it only make sense that the retailers would need to assist us in those celebrations? So Halloween, like other holidays, has been reoriented to make sense within our world. Instead of sacrificing to the Celtic gods, which makes no sense today, in part because it doesn't have a strong business model, Black Friday and Cyber Monday do make a lot of sense. You know, we've all got to support our economy. We believe that our economy is important. We want to have a strong economy. And so if we can do our part by going to the store and buying inexpensive items that, some of which we need, some of which we don't, but either way, that cycle does very little to reinforce our own Christian formation. It really fits us within the economic logic and shopping rhythms that too often characterize our collective lives. So without denying the ongoing influence and practice of the occult in the United States, I think that we should recognize that our view of God, the world, others, and ourselves may also be distorted by cultivating sort of a social imaginary that encourages us to make sense of the world as if God does not exist. Social imaginaries shape our understanding of what is normal by prompting us to question practices that seem to stand apart from our underlying sense-making, how we make sense of the world. And immersed in social imaginaries that deny God, Christians need to be intentional about being strange in the right ways. So my concern is not to deny the dangers of mysticism, but to highlight the equally pernicious problem of new Halloween and holiday rituals that have emerged as a consequence of the world's sense-making apart from Christ. We don't always see these rituals as sufficiently problematic and as such do not adequately separate ourselves from them. For instance, if we focus on Halloween's cultic origins, that's prompted Christian groups to celebrate Halloween under a different name. Harvest festivals or fall festivals often resemble Halloween in that they incorporate costumes, candy, games, and other similar imagery as Americanized Halloween gatherings, just called something different. But harvest festivals may make Halloween more palatable and wholesome, but they don't generally confront the consumerist rituals that are embedded within Halloween in the United States. They just distance it from that sort of early cultic origin. And how these holidays can and should be times of celebration and worship, harvest festivals offer Christians an opportunity to do just that. So I'm not opposed to harvest festivals. Yet being held at a church doesn't automatically sanctify everything about a celebration. We should think about the way we celebrate these holidays and how our way of celebrating may be hindering us from walking in newness of life. Halloween and harvest festivals can become another excuse to shop. They prompt us to spend an inordinate amount of time as shoppers and buyers as we seek to keep up with the Joneses or one-up our neighbors. Scrolling through the virtually endless number of costumes, props, and decorations, finding that our jack-o-lantern doesn't stack up with that of our neighbor or making sure the kids coming by will remember us as the house with the great treats, embeds us within a narrative that is, at best, Christian adjacent. Similar dynamics could be identified at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter as we busy ourselves with cooking and baking and shopping and all the various other activities like Martha rather than sitting at the feet of our Savior like Mary. So I'm not anti-holiday or even necessarily anti-Halloween. I am, however, concerned that Christians, myself included, celebrate the holidays in a more deliberate than default manner. We are always in the business of being and making disciples, which means that we need to learn to respond faithfully to the ever-present God who continues to be active within and among us. And as we rightfully consider how to avoid the evil spirits associated with Halloween, we'd be wise to remember that those spirits are not limited to supernatural beings, but to the spirits of the age that lure us away from the peace and contentment that Christ can provide. I hope you enjoyed some of that. I hope that this gives you a different, slightly different perspective on Halloween. And I hope you enjoy the holidays this year. But most of all, I hope that the holidays are spiritually forming for you and that you can form more closely to the image of Christ through them. I pray that for myself, my family, and for you all. Have a great day and thanks for being here on this episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. God's word will change our life, but sometimes it's hard to know where to start. Well, that's where I come in. I'm Jodi Nisnick, host of

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