by Fr. Jonathan H. Cholcher
Believe it or not, Halloween originated as a Christian observance emerging from its western European, Roman Catholic cultural context. Halloween is literally the eve of All Saints (Hallows) Day kept on November 1, a tremendously important day in the medieval western European Church calendar. Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church door on Halloween (October 31, 1517) because he knew most people would be in church to see them the next morning for All Saints Day. Thus the Lutherans celebrate October 31 as both Halloween and Reformation Day. By the way, the Wittenberg church boasted one of the largest collections of saints’ relics in the whole of the Holy Roman Empire, some three to four thousand.
However, like St. Nicholas turning into Santa Claus, or Merry Christmas morphing into a generic Happy Holidays, the nominally Christian beginnings of Halloween have slowly been changed into something without genuine Christian meaning at all. Halloween in our popular culture no longer has anything to do with Saints, who they are, how they became holy, and what if any impact they have on us today. Thus Halloween has been secularized.
Halloween has reverted almost completely to its pre-Christian expressions: spiritualism, magic, costumes, hedonism. The faithful departed Saints have been replaced with super-heroes, monsters, and demonic villains. Now most trick-or-treating and Halloween parties in schools and offices take place on a convenient day, not on All Hallows Eve itself. Television networks and streaming services anticipate Halloween with at least a month-long series of horror movies filled with ghost stories, supernatural suspense, demonic possession, and endless gore.
In Orthodox practice, the feast of Halloween does not exist because, for one thing, All Saints Day in the Orthodox calendar is the first Sunday after Pentecost (late spring, early summer). Christians in Orthodox cultures, e.g., Greece, Russia, the Middle East, are historically devoid of western European Halloween traditions, and they have no pressing need to retain Halloween customs one way or the other.
The secularization of Halloween is an important barometer, though, to Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike, of the true spiritual state of the society in which we live. The fact that Halloween once was a Christian observance, and now is not, but pervades all our lives with ever-increasing godlessness, shows how disconnected our society has become from God, His life of holiness, and eternal salvation. At the very least, living in a non-Orthodox culture descended from western European Christian roots, the Orthodox should point out the genuine vestiges of Christianity still embedded in the culture (e.g., Halloween, Saint Nicholas, Christmas, Easter, etc.) and call people to the truth still evident there, even while not fully or even partially participating in the non-Orthodox customs of the day.
Secularization is worldliness, and the Orthodox are just as prone to this temptation as the non-Orthodox. Secularization is the process of defining everything, especially the more transcendent and spiritual aspects of life, merely in terms of this temporal, finite existence with its self-seeking desires and passions. Crucially, secularization is the separation of life from God the Creator and Sustainer of all things, and the division of every aspect of life into categories of our own making. Secularization is the destruction of communion with God, hence the fragmentation of everything else dependent on God: our very selves, our families, our communities, and the Church.
Saint Paul writes (Rom. 12:1-2): “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Gk., nous; literally, faculty of spiritual perception; 1 Cor. 2:16), that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
Saint John corroborates (1 Jn. 2:15-17): “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
We are witnessing in our society and world today the effects of disintegration because of secularization, worldliness. The more divorced from God people become, devoid of the interconnection with God and each other through faith in Jesus Christ the Redeemer, the angrier, more discontented, and hateful people become, retreating into their own ideas of what they think reality should be. Halloween, unfortunately, has become a prime example of this trend entertaining all kinds of fantasies concerning the supernatural, debauchery, and death.
For the wise, Halloween can be a serious reminder of the absolute need to return to godliness. This is a reminder not just to return to one’s roots in a particular cultural history or tradition, but to rediscover the very root of our existence altogether. That root is the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26), to be holy people, saints, as God created and redeemed us to be. Halloween can be a bread-crumb, a clue, for people to find their way back home to God.
