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081 | Discerning Halloween
543 Plays3 years ago
Every fall the posts and hot takes are flying: Should Christians celebrate Halloween?
In this episode, Phy breaks down the history of Samhain and All Hallowed's Eve, then discusses how to discern the celebration of this holiday and the options of imitation, abstention, or redemption. She also discusses magic in books and movies.
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Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity Podcast. I'm your host, Felicia Mason-Heimer, and I am here to teach you how to know what you believe, to live it boldly, and to communicate it graciously to the world around you. I believe that women are ready to go deeper in their faith than ever before, and they don't have to go to seminary to do it. I am so glad you're here, and I hope you'll join me on this journey because every woman is a theologian.
Impact of Discussing Controversial Topics
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello friends and welcome back to Verity Podcast. I am so excited you have joined me this week and I have a feeling that some of you may be listening to this episode who have never listened to my podcast before. Whenever I talk about controversial Christian topics, I usually get some new listeners and I just want to say
00:00:50
Speaker
Thanks for being here. I'm so glad you are here. And if this is your first time, I hope you'll hang around and check out a few of my other episodes too. What we're about here at Verity is applying scripture to all of life and letting our love for Christ guide our decision making from things as seemingly insignificant as Halloween.
00:01:15
Speaker
to things as huge and complicated as understanding the Trinity or discipling our kids or tending to our marriages. So I'm glad you're here and in today's episode we are going to be talking about Halloween.
00:01:32
Speaker
This is one of those divisive topics that comes up every fall and since it's the beginning of October when this episode is going out I figured what better time than now to get this out into the world so we can have thoughtful conversations around this topic instead of anger and vitriol and guilt and condescension. Doesn't that sound like a better option?
00:02:00
Speaker
I think that is what the Lord wants for us, and I think as we look at scripture and as we look at Christian history, we're going to see what God's intent is for each of us and our individual families as we make decisions about Halloween.
Exploring Christian Holidays
00:02:20
Speaker
Before I dive into some of the history of this holiday, if you're new to Verity, we are all about looking at the history and development of both Christian holidays, but Christian thought and practice because it helps us in discerning what to do and what the Holy Spirit is leading us to do. And so we're going to look at the history of this holiday in just a little bit. Please also excuse the jingle bells in the background. That is Perpetua, our cat, and she just is all about being in my podcast.
00:02:49
Speaker
office right now. Okay, so before we get into the history, I first want to kind of set the stage or set the expectation for our whole outlook on Halloween. Why do we care at all? Because I sometimes see online people saying things like, if you don't want Halloween to be about Satan, don't be a Satanist. There, fix the problem.
00:03:17
Speaker
And as we'll see in a few moments, that's an oversimplification of the issue. Because this holiday, when celebrated according to the original roots and the original intent and the current intent of Wiccans in the New Age, it really is a satanic holiday. So we have to, as Christians, be discerning about it. So that's an oversimplification. But at the same time,
00:03:44
Speaker
We don't want to go back to this satanic panic of the 1980s where there's a devil under every rock. You're scared of anything that might, you know, have a thread of darkness in it or a mention of magic or, you know, a fairy godmother or something like that. We don't want to go that far. We don't want to stray into legalism either, right? So we don't want to be dismissive and we don't want to be legalistic.
Faith and Moderation in Practice
00:04:11
Speaker
And the beautiful thing about the Christian faith, when rightly understood and rightly practiced and grounded in Scripture and guided by the Holy Spirit, is it always ends up in a holy moderation. That's what we come to over and over and over again on this podcast when we look at issues like this. Holy moderation and wisdom is what we see. Another thing we're going to talk about is the discernment process
00:04:36
Speaker
for someone who claims to be a follower of Christ as they are deciding how they disciple not just their family but the people around them. The holidays we choose to celebrate are a part of how we shape our people
00:04:51
Speaker
and their view of what is good and true and beautiful in the world. And this phrase of good and true and beautiful is something I really, really want to emphasize at the outset. So this is actually part of an educational philosophy often found in classical and in Charlotte Mason educational approaches. And the goal of it is to give children specifically, but any person
00:05:19
Speaker
a feast or a huge smorgasbord of options in media and books and experiences that elevate what is good and true and beautiful. And this lines up with scripture.
00:05:34
Speaker
Philippians 4.8 says, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such
Spiritual Authority vs. Freedoms
00:05:52
Speaker
things.
00:05:53
Speaker
This has to do with the renewal of our minds in the Holy Spirit as mentioned in Romans 12. So as Christians, our long-term goal and our long-term glorification, sanctification by the Holy Spirit is to be renewed and transformed.
00:06:14
Speaker
And we are transformed by the renewing of our minds that we learn what is acceptable and good and perfect, what is God's will. This is the goal of the Christian. And I want to start in this place because what can happen is we start to take our Christian freedoms and we elevate our Christian freedoms to the point we've actually abdicated our Christian power.
00:06:41
Speaker
And here's what I mean by that. We're more interested in what we're free to do than we're interested in the authority that we have. And by operating only in what we're free to do, we choose to do things that take us away from the authority we have in the world and the power we have in the spiritual realm specifically.
00:07:05
Speaker
We have the Holy Spirit of God, overcoming power of Christ, to impact our world and our communities, to guide and disciple both our children or our spiritual children, the people around us that we are to be a witness to and to lead and be an example to, right? And part of doing that is elevating what is good and true and beautiful.
00:07:26
Speaker
And that's why I wanna start here because as we talk about Halloween, I want us to keep in mind is what I'm choosing to do and how I'm choosing to do it.
00:07:38
Speaker
elevating the good, true, and beautiful in this world, or is it doing the opposite? And as I get to the different ways that Christians navigate this holiday, I think that you will be able to discern what you need to do for your family in order to do that. So without further ado, let's
00:07:59
Speaker
go into the history of Halloween. So what I'm about to share with you is not drummed up to take away the fun of the holiday. It's a Google search away. You do not have to dig deep to discover the history of this holiday as it's currently celebrated because we have a mixture here of the Christian slash Catholic Church and its holidays mixed in with a Druid and Wiccan
00:08:28
Speaker
holidays and we're going to kind of have to make a distinction
Halloween's Historical Context
00:08:31
Speaker
between the two. But all of this is right out there and I have this all in written form in my ebook on Halloween and All Saints Day with all of the references I use to develop the history I'm about to share with you. So this is from history.com and multiple other places that I have the references for you. Reuters History, Washington Post,
00:08:56
Speaker
alt press, it's all out there. And I have all of the references in the Halloween ebook, which is in the ebook library on Felicia masonheimer.com. So if you want to do your own research, you can start there and then expand from there. This is all a Google search away.
00:09:15
Speaker
So we're going to look at the origins of Samhain. So this is the holiday that was established before the Catholic Church established All Hallows' Eve, which we'll look at in a second. And Samhain is what brought about most of the Halloween traditions that we know about today, that are celebrated today. That's where they originated.
00:09:38
Speaker
So, Samhain is one of the eight Wiccan sabbats, or high holidays, and most Wiccans believe that it's the most important or powerful sabbat of them all. And so if you don't know what Wicca is, it's a sect of paganism, it's kind of like a druid religion,
00:09:56
Speaker
and it's actually on the rise. It's becoming very popular and elements of it are being integrated both into New Age practice and just general spirituality. Some places that you'll see Wicca on Etsy or TikTok, the Cottagecore hashtag or Cottagecore vibe, Pinterest, if you look at Cottagecore materials, you're going to see a lot of Wiccan elements there. You're going to see them in New Age,
00:10:23
Speaker
kind of shops or Instagram accounts where you'll see, you know, crystals and connection with mother nature. You're also going to see with a kind of combined with the natural birthing community. So I am very involved in the home birthing community because I've had three home births.
00:10:40
Speaker
And one thing you'll often see in the natural birth, home birth community is this kind of new age, mother goddess, mother earth approach to things. And you'll see Wiccan elements kind of integrated into that too. So there's some crossover between Wicca and new age and female Wiccans are called witches and they gather in covens or covens to celebrate their Sabbat holidays.
00:11:04
Speaker
So these Sabbats tend to follow the astronomical and ecological calendar. This is not unique only to Wicca. This is something that like everybody kind of revolved around. Even if you look at the biblical feasts for Israel, they're kind of following this agricultural calendar. But in Wicca, they also kind of in an upside down way celebrate plantings, equinoxes,
00:11:28
Speaker
and harvest. So Samwin, which is spelled S-A-M-H-A-I-N, is post-harvest on October 31st and is considered the new year for pagans. There are seven other holidays from the winter solstice to, you know, May Day to summer solstice and then the fall equinox, which is September 20th. But the biggest holiday of the year is Samwin on October 31st.
00:11:56
Speaker
So the fall equinox is important to pagans for a very specific reason. They believe this is a time when the veil is thin between the physical and the spiritual worlds. And there's an access to those who've died or passed to the spirit realm that
00:12:12
Speaker
It's easier to reach them. They expect spiritual movement. And so the traditions that we know, costumes, trick-or-treating, and in pagan circles, something called a dumb supper, where you set a place for departed loved ones at dinner, this originated with Celtic paganism in Ireland and in Druid worship services that were associated with it.
00:12:34
Speaker
So when Rome then conquered the Celtic lands, some of those pagan Roman festivals such as Pharrellia, which honored the dead, were integrated into Samhain. And then eventually, in the 1840s, a modified version of this, as it has developed over the years, came to the United States in the 1840s during the Irish immigration.
00:12:58
Speaker
So the Celts are observing this Sam Wynn kind of festival where there's this superstitious kind of approach to the dead and this contact with the dead and, you know, elevation of ghosts and communicating with people who have passed on.
00:13:21
Speaker
At the same time, the Eastern and the Western Church were commemorating the dead, but doing it in a very different way. In May 13th of 609 AD, Pope Boniface IV created All Martyrs' Day in honor of those who died in the Roman pantheon. So this is, you know, 400, 500 years after these great persecutions of Christians, and the Pope decides, let's make an All Martyrs' Day to honor them.
00:13:50
Speaker
But then Pope Gregory III moved all martyrs day to November 1st, and he expanded it to include saints as well as martyrs. So not all martyrs received church sainthood. Some did. But when they expanded the day to include all saints, it now included church fathers and mothers, people who'd accomplished miracles. They were also included even if they hadn't died for the faith.
00:14:17
Speaker
So another day was then added on November 2nd. This is called All Souls Day to honor other non-persecuted dead. So this made All Saints Day the eve of All Souls Day. And so they're November 1st and 2nd back to back.
00:14:34
Speaker
Today, many Wiccans resent what they call the Christianization of Samhain. They even acknowledge that the name Halloween reveals how the church redeemed the pagan holiday with a biblical alternative. So many scholars believe that when Pope Gregory moved all martyrs day to November 1st,
00:14:55
Speaker
He was very specifically trying to counter this holiday of fear of the dead and worship of the dead with this commemoration of the Christian dead, those who had died for their faith. So All Saints Day celebration was called originally All Hallows or All Hallomas. It was from the Middle English which means All Saints Day, All Hallomas.
00:15:19
Speaker
So the night before it was called All Hallows' Eve. So Halloween, as we know it, Hallo-Eve, All Hallows' Eve, that word is a Christian name. It's a Christian name and it refers to the day after it, which is All Saints' Day.
00:15:39
Speaker
And Wiccans resent this. They do not like that it's called Halloween. The Halloween name is pointing to All Saints Day. It's not pointing to Samhain. And the festivities that we know culturally are all associated with Samhain. So the church was directly trying to counter this pagan festival by creating All Saints Day or moving All Saints Day the next day.
00:16:05
Speaker
And even today, Wiccans do not appreciate this.
00:16:09
Speaker
When I was doing research for this episode, I went directly to articles that were talking about how to celebrate Halloween as if you were Wiccan or as if you were Pagan because I wanted to hear their perspective on it. And one thing I found so interesting was an article from altpress.com about how to celebrate Halloween like a witch. And this quote was in the article, if you want to celebrate Halloween like a witch, keep doing what you're doing.
00:16:36
Speaker
unbeknownst to you, you're already partaking in a celebration derived from a long history of magical tradition. I thought this was fascinating because a lot of the things that we do on Halloween seem super harmless, right? Trick or treating, dressing up in costumes. And the question, you know, Christians have to ask is,
00:17:00
Speaker
Do I have the power to redeem this holiday just by being a Christian? Can I participate and just be like, I'm a Christian. I don't have to fear this. I can just participate. It's just clean fun. Or is there a spiritual reality that we should be acknowledging?
00:17:19
Speaker
especially as we raise families and make a decision about this holiday. Those are the questions I want you to be asking, I want you to be thinking about, and I really want you to keep in mind this concept of the good, the true, and the beautiful as we navigate this and as we go to the next section, which is about discerning what to do with a holiday that has a clearly known wiccan
00:17:44
Speaker
basis, and then this alternative holiday of All Saints Day that is based in a celebration of people who followed Jesus. It's so fascinating to me that the church saw, there's this holiday, it's pagan, it's pretty dark, you know what, let's move All Martyrs Day from May, let's move it to November, and let's celebrate it then.
00:18:13
Speaker
And I wonder what was going through their mind that they did that? Were they really trying to redeem what Samhain was doing? Was there another reason? It seems to me like it was pretty intentional and that's what historians tend to believe. So knowing what we know about the history of the holiday,
00:18:31
Speaker
We then have to decide, what do I do when my kids in school, everybody's celebrating Halloween? What do I do when I'm even in church and everybody's celebrating Halloween? Last year in October at church, my kids are homeschooled, at church, my kids were asked repeatedly every Sunday leading up to Halloween what they were going to be on Halloween.
00:18:51
Speaker
And we personally don't celebrate, which I'll get to in a second, but it was just funny that even in church they were being asked this question. And so we have to be able to answer our reasoning for why we are or aren't celebrating. And I don't want our reasoning to ever be legalism. I don't want our reasoning to ever be
00:19:14
Speaker
rules and law. I want our reasoning to be both understandable to my kids and understandable to the people that we communicate it with, but I also want it to be grounded in the good, the true and the beautiful and the Holy Spirit of God.
Approaches to Halloween
00:19:28
Speaker
So as families are navigating whether or not to celebrate Halloween, they are going to fall into one of four camps. First is ignorance. Second is imitation. The third is abstinence. And the fourth is redemption. So let's dig into these.
00:19:44
Speaker
Ignorance. Some families don't dig into the origins or history of Halloween at all. So maybe they grew up celebrating the holiday. Maybe they just never thought to ask any questions. Whatever the case, they just imitate the existing trend and just
00:19:59
Speaker
hop right into it with little resistance because they don't know any different or they just haven't stopped to examine the issue. And this includes many believers, especially first generation believers. Why would they have a reason to even think about this until they begin following Jesus? So there's plenty of people who are in the ignorance camp.
00:20:19
Speaker
The second is imitation. So some families know the objections to Halloween, but maybe they write them off as legalistic. Maybe they experienced real legalism growing up. Maybe they were part of the 1980s satanic panic movement and they're just like, oh my gosh, this is just exaggerated, whatever. It's just fun. And so they continue to participate without really asking any questions, even though they know more than the families who are just ignorant.
00:20:48
Speaker
The third camp is abstinence, so some families completely boycott Halloween. They'll even turn off their lights and refuse to open the door to trick-or-treaters, they just don't participate at all. And this may mean that they participate in church events, but some may not even go that far. They just believe that no association is the best option.
00:21:08
Speaker
The last camp is redemption. And so some families don't observe the cultural holiday, but will participate in outreach events to the community on Halloween. So maybe they'll even dress up, hand out candy with their church. Maybe they'll do a trunk or treat at their church or community, or maybe they'll have people come to their house who are trick or treating and open their door.
00:21:30
Speaker
So I want to share that when we lived downtown in the city, our city is a huge trick-or-treating city. It also has a strong Wiccan and New Age presence, which is interesting to combine with that. But people will bring their kids, even bus kids in to trick-or-treat in our city because it's a really awesome place to trick-or-treat. When we lived downtown,
00:21:56
Speaker
We could not in good conscience close our door and shut out this parade of neighbors on the one day of the year that they were coming to our house. We opened our door. We handed out candy. We asked them their names. How are you? Oh, what are you dressed up as? Because most of the people at our door do not know Jesus.
00:22:18
Speaker
They do not know Jesus. They do not know the roots of Halloween. And even if they did, they might not care because they don't have the Holy Spirit guiding them. They don't have the Holy Spirit convicting them. They don't have that. They're not walking in that kind of knowledge that we are responsible for.
00:22:37
Speaker
And we also want to keep the gospel front and center here. I want to know my neighbors. I want to love my neighbors. So while we were living in the city, we operated in a redemption model of Halloween.
00:22:52
Speaker
We gave out candy, we talked to our neighbors, we talked to the kids, we got to know the people on our street. I know several other people who use Halloween as a neighborhood outreach event. Someone else I heard about has the biggest
00:23:07
Speaker
trick-or-treating house on the entire block. People want to come to their house because they give out the best candy. They are so much fun. They even set up a little tent in their front yard for offering to talk with people or pray with people if they need it, kind of off to the side. But they just throw this big shebang when these people come to their house. That's an example of redemption.
00:23:32
Speaker
We are inviting people to come to our homes and we're using this holiday to say, hey, I care about you. I want to build a relationship with you and I want you to know me so you can know Jesus in me. This doesn't mean you have to hand out tracts, although maybe that's what God calls you to do. It just means that you're cultivating relationship. This would fall under the redemption model.
00:23:56
Speaker
However, we then move to the country and here we have no trick-or-treaters whatsoever. And so we don't have a need to open our door on Halloween. So the question then becomes, what do I do about my children who are school age children and who have a mixture of homeschooled friends, public schooled friends, and they have friends who are celebrating Halloween. How do we navigate this as a Christian family?
00:24:24
Speaker
without operating in legalism or condescension or pride? How do we express Christian freedom while also upholding what is good and true and beautiful? Am I going to be ignorant? Am I going to imitate? Am I going to abstain? Or am I going to redeem? And I'll finish that story in a little bit here.
00:24:48
Speaker
after a three year hiatus, Verity Conference is back and it's coming to Petoskey, Michigan, November 4th and 5th. I am so thrilled to bring back Verity Conference after our short break of a few years for COVID. And this time we are much bigger with two amazing speakers joining me to talk about apologetics and evangelism. How do we share our faith effectively in today's culture
00:25:16
Speaker
in a way that is both gracious and truthful. You'll hear from me, Jeremy Jenkins of All Things, All People, and Bracelis Dominguez, who is going to share with us how to love other people while also speaking the truth. Jeremy specializes in world religions and cults, and he will be talking about evangelism in that context. I am so excited for this event. I hope you can join us. You can grab the remaining early bird tickets on my website, FeliciaMasonheimer.com, if you click the conference tab.
00:25:47
Speaker
I want to add one other element that I think we need to consider when we decide what to do about Halloween. Of course, we're thinking in terms of what is pure and lovely and good, but many Christian families will say, okay, I get you, I hear you.
00:26:04
Speaker
My son wants to go as Mr. Incredible. My daughter wants to go as a princess. They're not dressing up as anything gory or yucky, so what's the big deal? And I would say, maybe there isn't a big deal. Maybe there's a way for you to redeem the holiday with your kids. But here is the big thing that needs to happen if we're going to disciple our kids biblically while participating in a holiday like this.
00:26:32
Speaker
we must nurture in them a respect for the spiritual nature of the world because here's the deal you guys the longer you walk with God
00:26:45
Speaker
the more mature you grow and the greater your pneumatology, your theology of the Holy Spirit, the more aware you become of the spiritual nature of the world. And this is not a fearful thing because, as I said earlier, we're walking in our Christian power. We're walking in the authority of Christ. And His name has authority over everything. But His name's authority is not meant to be abused for our freedom.
00:27:15
Speaker
His name's authority is for us to make an impact on our community, which leaves us with only a few options when it comes to things like Halloween.
00:27:25
Speaker
We don't have the option of passive participation if we're walking in the authority of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. We have the option of abstaining or redeeming. And so I believe that every Christian family must decide how am I actively redeeming this holiday or how will I abstain and what will I replace it with?
00:27:52
Speaker
That's where we are left. Because if we have this appreciation and respect for the spiritual nature of the world, we cannot ignore what the Wiccans are doing on Samhain. And I am perhaps more aware of this and more conscious of it because of where I live.
00:28:10
Speaker
because they're doing tarot readings in my local coffee shops, because of what is sold downtown, because there are people in the woods in my area on October 31st worshipping the enemy.
00:28:26
Speaker
And I just want the people who are listening to understand that this is a very spiritual thing. And it doesn't end at Halloween. It's not just about Halloween. This is not supposed to be scary. It's supposed to be weighty. And to remember that as I pray over my city, as I pray over my street, as I pray over my neighbors, I want to be asking God, how can I both be a light?
00:28:52
Speaker
And how can I be a minister of the gospel to these people? And how can I also elevate what is good and true and beautiful in a spiritual world? And when I have that in mind, when I turn towards my children, I have to ask myself, am I cultivating in them?
00:29:11
Speaker
an apathy and dismissiveness to the spiritual nature of the world. And this is what I fear can happen regarding Halloween.
Spiritual Awareness in Holiday Participation
00:29:19
Speaker
And it's a reaction to the satanic panic of the 80s. So the devil under every rock legalistic stuff, we swing the pendulum to the other way. And now we're just like, whatever, just don't be a Satanist.
00:29:30
Speaker
No, there's more here. There's more here biblically. I mean, the New Testament was written in a pagan culture, okay? Worshipping other gods, doing weird stuff about dead people, you know, having sex in weird places, like this was happening. And they were having to be conscious of what is holiness in this context. And that's the same question we're having to ask. It's a slow fade.
00:29:59
Speaker
from this stalwart, Holy Spirit-led Christianity to this apathetic, dismissive, halfway Christianity, this cultural Christianity.
00:30:14
Speaker
And what I encourage my listeners to do is to ask, how can I participate in any holiday, not just Halloween, any holiday in a way that cultivates my children's respect for the spiritual nature of the world, for the name of Christ, for the gospel?
00:30:34
Speaker
Am I cultivating apathy and dismissiveness in my kids? Am I teaching them to just be like, whatever, it doesn't matter? Because, you know, that's just what we always did. My parents never talked about it. Whatever you choose to do, and I absolutely am not telling you what to do, but whatever you do choose to do, your children should know why you do it.
00:30:54
Speaker
Here at Every Woman a Theologian, the ministry that I founded and run with my husband, we're about teaching women and families not only what they believe, but why they believe it. And your children should know the why. If you are celebrating Halloween, just like everybody else, they should know why. You should have a conversation about it.
00:31:16
Speaker
This is why we celebrate this and this is why we don't wear ghost costumes or we, you know, don't participate in these other things. Or this is why we don't celebrate Halloween. And when you're explaining that, you're giving them the tools to critically think about this for themselves. Bring it back to Scripture. Give them a scriptural defense for why you do or don't celebrate Halloween.
00:31:40
Speaker
why you do or don't celebrate Christmas in a certain way, why you do or don't do Santa, why you do or don't do the Easter Bunny or anything that you are doing, you should be able to bring it back to scripture and say, this is why. And especially on a holiday like this,
00:31:57
Speaker
we must return to our guiding principles. Is this good and true and beautiful? Or am I celebrating it in a good and true and beautiful way? And am I cultivating in the people around me a respect for the spiritual nature of the world? Or am I cultivating apathy and dismissiveness?
00:32:17
Speaker
As we close this episode, as we get towards the end, I want to do a quick little rabbit trail regarding magic in general, because this is a question that comes up a lot. Well, what's the difference then between celebrating Halloween and reading Narnia or Lord of the Rings or hey, Harry Potter, what's the difference? And I'll toss this out here as something to think about. I don't expect
00:32:42
Speaker
everyone to agree with me and that's totally fine but there's a couple of things I want to offer as thoughts on the difference between celebrating a holiday with the history that Halloween has or Samhain has and reading say Harry Potter.
00:33:01
Speaker
So when I read books, both for myself and then for my children, I am again looking for what is good and true and beautiful. And my standard for that is scripture. It's the gospel. That epic arc of a story across the Old and New Testaments with a God who is good and strong and a God who fights for his own, a God who wins. Good wins in the end in the Bible.
00:33:28
Speaker
And that is the element that we see in stories like Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings and even Harry Potter. So when I am reading a book, if it has magic in it, here's what I want to see and look for.
00:33:46
Speaker
Is the storyline here upholding that good, true, and beautiful arc? Does good win? Is good clear? Or is there confusion about what good is? Is there confusion about who the bad guy actually is?
00:34:05
Speaker
Is it clear? Because one of the things I've found to be most problematic especially in fiction or regarding magic is when good and evil become hard to discern. I'll give you an example of this.
00:34:18
Speaker
My husband loves Marvel movies and we watched through most of the Marvel movies and shows up to about two years ago. I'm recording this in 2022. So probably up into 2020, we had watched through the Marvel movies and shows. So Loki had released, the show Loki had released and WandaVision had released. And so as we were watching through them, one particular thing that stood out to me was in the movie Endgame.
00:34:48
Speaker
If you recall, the bad guy in Endgame kills half of the Earth's population. And why does he do it? Because he believes that it's merciful. This is an example of good and evil being confused and conflated. And that was the point where Josh and I said to each other,
00:35:14
Speaker
the Marvel movies are headed down a dangerous road. Because this confusion of good and evil, what is good, what is evil, and what is actually bad, who the actual bad guy is, that's where we start to stray into this relativistic, confusing territory that leads to no good at all, no truth, and no standard of beauty.
00:35:41
Speaker
So when I'm looking at a book or a movie and it has magic in it, I'm not as concerned with magic, which has been written into stories for eons and been able to uphold that core of what is good and true and beautiful.
00:35:58
Speaker
I'm not as concerned about the magic as I am with the clear delineation between good and evil. And also, I'm asking myself, who's reading or watching this? If it's me, I'm an adult, I'm a mature Christian, I can discern through this. Am I going to let my seven-year-old watch it? Probably not.
00:36:17
Speaker
Am I going to hand my seven-year-old Harry Potter? No. I probably wouldn't let my kids personally read them until they're 13. And even then, we'll probably have open conversations about those. Have we introduced Chronicles of Narnia? Yes, we have. But even then, we're having open conversations about what magic is. That in this book, magic is being presented in a good way.
00:36:43
Speaker
and that there's also an evil way. We talk about the white witch. What is she? What does she represent? We talk about magic in general, that in books, magic is presented as good and evil, but in real life, it's different. We don't need magic because we have the Holy Spirit. We have God's power in us when we follow Jesus, and that is stronger and better than any magic.
00:37:08
Speaker
It's like Aslan says, it's the deep magic from the beginning. How you explain this to your kids is probably going to be different than it is for us, but we just are doing a continual work of distinguishing between magic and miracles, between magic and the Holy Spirit. We're explaining when we're listening to something like Chronicles of Narnia, this is fiction. This is a story. We don't emulate this in real life. We're teaching them a framework.
00:37:34
Speaker
of truth. We're teaching them a framework of good and beautiful. And I'm always remembering, it's my job to cultivate the tastes of my children and my family. And as their parent, as their teacher, since they're homeschooled, I am choosing what cultivates their tastes. So I'm not going to hand them things that are cultivating and directing their tastes away from what is pure and noble and praiseworthy.
00:38:03
Speaker
And so in your own home, you have to decide. Maybe it's not worth it to you to let them read Lord of the Rings. You don't think that that's cultivating their taste in the right direction. And that's totally fine. I believe this does fall within a Christian freedom spectrum. But we do still have to consider what is objectively true in Scripture. And what's objectively true in Scripture
00:38:26
Speaker
is that we are not to partner with darkness. We're not to celebrate what is dark, evil, gross, gory, deathly, because Christ overcame death. He is the resurrection life. He is the one that is light and goodness and truth and beauty. And so what we are taking in, the storylines we're consuming, the holidays we're celebrating should align with that. And let me tell you something.
00:38:56
Speaker
I didn't celebrate Halloween growing up. And I never once felt like I missed out. It was never legalistic. It was never, you know, thumbing our nose at other people. It was just, we didn't do it. And it was a beautiful and happy holiday with my family. We did other things. We did fall festivals. We did good and true and beautiful things. And it was great. And I'm not scarred for life because of it.
00:39:23
Speaker
But here's the thing, and this goes back to something I mentioned earlier. My parents actively had other things for us to do. And I think if you do decide to abstain, it's super important to have something else that you're filling that space with. What is it that your kids can look forward to? When you're not choosing to follow the culture or to follow your community down this path, what do you do instead?
00:39:50
Speaker
So this brings me back to the story I was telling of when we moved from downtown to the country. So our kids were older at this point. We actually had to think about this. And that's when we decided, you know, let's look at the church calendar because we had started really observing the church calendar, paying attention. We are not in a liturgical church. We're in a non-denominational church at Lane's Baptist, but we celebrate Advent and Easter resurrection day.
00:40:20
Speaker
and several other church holidays, and I have guides for celebrating those. If you're interested, they're in the shop. But we began celebrating All Saints Day, which, as we talked about at the beginning of this podcast, is the day on November 1st that Halloween is named for. All Hallows' Eve is pointing to All Saints Day. And I love All Saints Day because it is celebrating the rich history of the church across time,
00:40:49
Speaker
across nation and across experience. I just love that about All Saints Day. And so what we've done is we have baked fun cupcakes and I buy these little puppets that are different Bible characters. You stick them on little sticks. We stick them in the cupcakes and they can pick whoever it is that they want to have. We get baskets with little candy. They wake up and they're at their
00:41:15
Speaker
places. We do a party usually on All Saints Day where we invite people over and we all dress as our favorite Christian hero from any time in history. I was St. Catherine, Josh was Peter the Apostle, the girls dressed up as Joan of Arc, and then another one of them dressed up as a queen who
00:41:35
Speaker
helped in the Reformation, we had friends come over who dressed up as missionaries, someone came as C.S. Lewis. So there's so much fun that we've had with this holiday, celebrating it in a different way. To the point that my girls look forward to it and they don't feel like they're missing out. But we do throw a harvest party earlier in October, a couple weeks prior to Halloween. And that's all it is, it's just a harvest party, just a fall festival.
00:42:03
Speaker
And we've thought about, hey, maybe we make that a costume party. Maybe we say you can bring a costume and dress up into whatever you want. So, you know, to us, this is a way of creating fun things that have nothing to do with the specific observations of Halloween. And you might be listening and be like, this is like literally splitting of hairs.
00:42:25
Speaker
You're free to think that, but we don't think that because, again, when we have grown in our respect for the spiritual nature of the world and we're aware of what's happening in our specific community, we have decided that it would be better to not partner with the patterns that are associated with this holiday and to instead observe other fun things.
00:42:51
Speaker
we could do a summer costume party. You don't have to have a costume party only on October 31st, right? But even if you don't choose to celebrate the way we do, say you don't do All Saints Day, you don't completely stop participating in Halloween, you still do it, or you hand out candy to trick-or-treaters, or you just do trick-or-treat, my encouragement to you is,
00:43:16
Speaker
As you participate, to be thinking, how can I actively redeem this? Am I actively redeeming this? Am I communicating clearly to my kids if I have them? Why we're participating?
00:43:30
Speaker
what authority they have in Christ. Do my kids know what this holiday is about? Have I explained what Christian freedom is? And am I regularly explaining the why behind our holidays to our kids? Because here's the thing, guys, this is not
00:43:52
Speaker
just about one holiday. This is really about our overall Christian outlook on the world and towards the things we build our lives around.
Reflecting Core Values Through Holidays
00:44:02
Speaker
Holidays are lived liturgies in community. That's why they matter so much. They're repeating to us what matters most. They're repeating to us what we want to celebrate and build our lives around.
00:44:15
Speaker
And that's why when we as a family, you know, we're picking what we wanted to celebrate, we pick the things that echo the good and the true and the beautiful.
00:44:25
Speaker
We picked the things that elevate that. And so I do believe that it is possible to do Halloween in a way that is redemptive and actively promoting the gospel and actively building relationships with people that you are ministering to. I believe that's totally possible. And I respect families that choose to do that.
00:44:47
Speaker
I think the only time we really need to be concerned is when we are elevating Christian freedom above our Christian power and authority, when we're being dismissive or apathetic of the spiritual world and training our kids to be the same, and when we are celebrating Halloween in a gory, deathly, ghostly kind of way. That's when we have a problem.
00:45:12
Speaker
But if you have prayed about this and you've talked with your family and you're thinking thoughtfully about this and you know you can redeem this actively, then it's absolutely possible to continue walking in the power of God and to be aware of what God is asking you to do. This year I talked with my church actually about doing an outreach event. Our church is located downtown.
00:45:33
Speaker
to maybe join in the trick-or-treating to meet some of the people who'd be out and about downtown. And I was a part of suggesting that as an outreach. So obviously I think it's possible to redeem Halloween, but I think it has to be very intentional and it has to be something that is operating in Christian authority and by the Holy Spirit and is not something that's dismissive or apathetic about the holiday.
00:45:59
Speaker
I hope that as you listen to this, it gave you just some things to think about, some things to consider and pray about. If you would like this in a written format with all the history, the links that I shared, as well as a celebration guide for All Saints Day with links to recipes and to activities, scripture readings,
00:46:20
Speaker
little hand puppets or costumes, you can grab the Halloween and All Saints e-book in the shop. If you go to FeliciaMasonHeimer.com and you click the drop down menu, you'll see e-books and it is the Death Has Lost Its Sting e-book because ultimately, you guys, that is what this is about. In Christ, death has lost its sting. There's no point in going back and celebrating death.
00:46:49
Speaker
We have all the hope of life ahead of us. And as we walk in that, we get to experience the true goodness and beauty of life in Christ, and we get to bring that to our communities however we are convicted to do it.
00:47:10
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Verity Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, would you take the time to leave us a review? It helps so many other women around the world find out about Verity and about every woman a theologian as a ministry and a shop. We appreciate you and I hope you'll be back next week as we continue to go deeper into God's word and the heart of Jesus Christ.