‘JesusWeen’ Will Replace ‘Halloween’ With Some Religious Conservatives

 

 

THE NEWS: A pastor in Calgary, Canada, isn't too happy about the idea of Halloween. Not Christian enough, he says. So he's promoting something he calls "Jesus Ween."

THE PROVOCATION: No, this isn't a weenie roast, though such an image is somewhat ironic considering:

1. Christians once burned people at the stake for being witches or heretics and
2. More than a few people out there think Jesus actually was a witch (check out Morton Smith's book Jesus the Magician, which makes a good case for this). 

No, no one's talking about roasting Jesus - either over an open fire or in the manner of the old Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts back in the 1970s. (Yes, I'm dating myself here, but with this disclaimer: I never actually watched one all the way through.) Instead, the pastor in question is jumping on the old bandwagon of claiming Halloween is somehow evil ... if only because it can lead to diabetes rather than salvation. 

Paul Ade has been giving kids Bibles instead of candy for nearly a decade now. I suppose that encourages literacy, though if I were a kid I'd much rather get a Harry Potter book. That, I'm sure, is far too scandalous for someone who believes Halloween is somehow anti-Christian. But, as an aside, I feel compelled to point out that the Bible itself is at best a PG-13 book. It contains tales of harlots, drunken sex, incest, genocide and deceit - and this all by the supposed "good guys."

"I don’t believe Halloween represents anything close to God or close to Christianity," Ade says.

This is no small-potatoes operation. Ade has contacted more than 3,000 churches in North America and reports considerable backing for his idea: "I would say we have received about 70 per cent support." There's even a website for the campaign, which states that "Evil prevails when good people do nothing."

I'd amend that slightly in this case to read: "Stupidity prevails when people don't know what they're talking about."

In this case, it's pretty clear Ade and his followers don't know much about Halloween. The name, to start with, is entirely Christian - though it may give some Christians the heebie-jeebies because the word "Hallows" is also found in the title of the final Harry Potter book. In actuality, the term Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows Evening, the day before All Hallows Day on the Catholic calendar. The hallows, in this case, are simply saints (not the invisibility cloak, magic wand or resurrection stone of J.K. Rowling's books). And one could surmise that any day commemorating all the saints would have to be pretty important.

The following day on the Catholic calendar, All Souls' Day, is dedicated to those departed loved ones who haven't made it to heaven yet. In Mexico, many Catholics pay tribute to the deceased in what's known as Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), by creating altars to relatives who have passed away. These may be adorned with a variety of items, ranging from pictures and candles to flowers and sugar skulls. They also also frequently include offerings representing the four ancient elements:

• Earth - food and drink
• Wind - tissue-paper cutouts
• Fire - candles
• Water - in a bowl

Dia de los Muertos parade, Santa Fe, N.M.

This is doubtless where Ade and his cohorts start to feel a tad uncomfortable. The Mexican holiday sounds, in many ways, quite Pagan. And this is only to be expected when one considers that the entire celebration has its roots in the ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), which far predates the Christian era and has the general meaning of "summer's end." It was considered the time when the veil between the worlds of the living and dead was thinnest, allowing people in this world a rare opportunity to commune with those in the next. Hence all the sugar skulls and all the symbolism involving ghosties and ghoulies who supposedly prowl about on All Hallows' Eve.

Death is, if nothing else, mysterious. It's scary. No one really knows what's on the other side, and the idea that one can contact one's departed loved ones - if only for a day or two each year - provides a measure of comfort to people around the world. Even the ancient Romans, the height of civilization in their day, honored their dead with a nine-day festival in February called the Parentalia. Some have even found faint echoes of this ancient Roman practice in modern Halloween. Instead of trick-or-treating to obtain candy, Roman citizens would bring honey, milk and other offerings to the graves of their parents and "dine with the dead" there. Similarities to the Dia de los Muertos tradition should be obvious.

The Catholic Church appears to recognize the value of such celebrations as a means of coming to terms with death, grief and the absence of people who for so long were an integral part of our lives., The JesusWeen people, on the other hand, want to deny this aspect of human existence. Perhaps it's because they're so dedicated to their dogmatic beliefs about heaven and hell that the idea of communing - even symbolically - with the dead is too great a threat to their theology.

Consider the following excerpt from blog by Kimberly Daniels that was posted on evangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network two years ago: "During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches."

More recently, Robertson himself said, "We don't believe in haunted, we don't believe in ghosts, we don't believe in all this business. Halloween is Satan's night, it's the night of the devil."

Never mind that Jesus rose from the dead and, according to the Gospel of Matthew (27:51-53), brought up a lot of other people with him. None of that seems to matter. The fact is that somewhere along the line, the concept of ghosts became associated with hell and the devil. This isn't surprising, really, since people tend to lump the things that scare them into a single category and call it "evil." Usually, these scary things are synonymous with things they simply don't understand. (Hence, for instance, many straight Christians view homosexuality as "evil.")

Halloween is just another thing they can't, and frankly don't want to, understand. For years they've staged "harvest festivals" as a supposedly more Christian form of the holiday. Costumes depicting witches, ghosts and the like are generally eschewed in favor of alter-egos such as princesses or Bible characters ... if costumes are allowed at all. Ade, for his part, issued the following dress code for JesusWeen: "On October 31st, every Christian is expected to wear a white top to symbolize Righteousness and the love of God to all mankind. The money normally used to buy costumes can be given to ministries that print christian books to help the unsaved or give such funds to JesusWeen or food bank to help the poor." Sounds like a nice money-making proposition to me.

Sometimes, kids are taken on hayrides followed by Bible studies. Sometimes, churches hold "fall carnivals." In other cases, kids are "locked in" church gyms overnight as in sober graduations and provided with activities their elders deem appropriate. First harvest festivals, now the JesusWeen movement. As King Solomon was famously quoted as saying, there's nothing new under the sun.

Or the more things change, the more they stay the same.

All these movements are about control, and when you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Death is perhaps the best example of something we just can't control. No one knows the day or the hour. And  sometimes, we never get over missing those people who've left us behind. That can be devastating, and it can be hard to handle. Traditions like Samhain, Dia de los Muertos and Halloween can be healing. In a sense, going out and collecting candy, having a little fun and honoring the dead all at the same time reminds me a bit of an Irish wake.

Death, grief and honoring those who have preceded us are things that know no spiritual bounds. People of all faiths do these things every day around the world. Celebrating Halloween or Dia de los Muertos doesn't make Christians any less faithful. It shows they're human. These traditions, like Samhain and many others around the world, are simply ways to come to grips with our mortality. If we ignore or attempt to repress them, we deny a part of who we are as human beings.

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