Let’s make this a holiday feature story day here at GetReligion.
In addition to the Thanksgiving coverage memo from our patriarch, Richard Ostling, I would like to offer a “think piece” link to all of those reporters who are out there — right now — writing stories about (a) conservative Christians who don’t celebrate Halloween at all, for some reason or another, (b) megachurches that hold “You could go to hell” haunted houses full of fake blood and images of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll or (c) churches that attempt safe versions of the holiday, keeping kids off the street and (d) congregations of all kinds who plan to have safe, socially distanced activities in 2020.
OK, that last one is completely valid, but rather tame.
Truth is, lots of religious believers wrestle with Halloween for a variety of reasons — including people who would simply prefer to emphasize the feasts of All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Lots of churches will hold events with children in costumes — dressed up as their patron saints.
Then there’s the whole question of Hollywood providing all the occult-scary imagery for this event, along with the rather recent trend toward young adults in skimpy, sexy “fill in the blank” costumes.
So with all of that in mind, let me ask reporters to consider doing a feature this year on how clergy, parents and believers in ancient churches wrestle with these issues. I am referring to an op-ed at The Washington Times by a friend of mine, Father Andrew Stephen Damick — who is an online apologetics scribe working with the Antiochian Orthodox Church here in America. Here’s the double-decker headline:
Should Christians participate in Halloween?
Halloween is about demons. No, that’s not a problem
The essay starts exactly where journalists tend to start when thinking about stories of this kind:
Every October, Christians trash each other on social media over Halloween. Is it harmless costumes and candy? Participation in the occult, cavorting with demons? Co-opting a pagan holiday?
Christians believe demons are real. The Bible talks about them. Most Christians agree that you should stay away from them. Fallen angels lurking in your kid’s candy bag might freak out a Christian mom or dad. And the stranger-sabotaged candy scares of the 1980s still haunt some parents.
Halloween remains popular among American Christians. Yet this stalking sense of the demonic has some churches holding sanitized “harvest festival” events, away from the gruesome imagery in the streets, satisfying the family desire to participate without the risk.
Other Christians take the hardline tactic of pointing out historical links to the Celtic pagan Samhain festival, supposedly the “real” Halloween. Trick-or-treating is declared equivalent with Ouija boards and seances. The 5-year-old in her princess tutu and tiara overloading on sweets is basically equivalent to a necromancer.
Here is the big idea that journalists may want to run with: What’s up with all of this talk about the demons, in the first place?
Are demons something that religious believers take seriously? Who does this? In what pulpits and pews.
Veteran reporters may recall a mini-media storm a few years ago when the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told New York Magazine that he still believes in the Devil and evil incarnate. In a nice twist, another traditional Catholic — the author of “The Exorcist” backed him up.
Here’s a bit of the Damick essay on that subject:
… In the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the unseen world of angels, demons, spiritual powers, giants and other mythic-level themes in Scripture is taken seriously. That means that Halloween is also about demons. But that isn’t a problem.
Most popular Christian preaching and teaching focuses on man’s problem with God or God’s problem with man (depending on your theology). But rarely does it discuss man’s problem with demons or the demons’ problem with God.
Yet these themes are in the Bible. Consider the incident in Mark 5 (and Luke 8 and Matthew 8) where Jesus drives demons out of the man called Legion and into a herd of pigs. Or the confrontations in Job 1 and 2 between God and the Satan in the presence of the “Sons of God” (angels obedient to God). You don’t have to look very hard in the Bible to see that there is a demon problem. God has enemies, and they’re the fallen angels.
The Bible calls the gods of the nations “demons” (Ps. 96:5, Deut. 32:17, 1 Cor. 10:20), identifying the beings pagans worshiped as fallen angels. It never says they don’t exist. Confrontation between demons and God and his angels is a perennial subject in the Bible.
That’s the view in my own church’s tradition. There are other points of view to study, discuss and then include in serious reporting on this topic.
FIRST IMAGE: Screenshot of a demon from one of the legions of Halloween features on YouTube.
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