It seems to me that as the fundies are feeling more marginilized in the past couple of decades, they are becoming more isolated, anti-social and paranoid. the trend for home-schooling is an example of this. They are retreating more and more from mainstream society as an attempt to preserve what is becoming a more and more anachronistic worldview.
There’s an article in the current Salon.com, http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/10/28/halloween/index.html , that calls a lot of assumptions about Halloween into questions. The author claims that it’s purely an American invention that shares nothing but a date in common with Samhain, various European traditions resemble Halloween but not on Oct. 31 (i.e. Walpurgisnacht, 6 months earlier), that prior to 1980 horror movies weren’t timed to release on Halloween (FRANKENSTEIN originally released on Thanksgiving, oddly enough), and that scary costumes have no earlier history than late 50s/early 60s.
I can’t vouch for all the conclusions of the article, but it’s interesting. Only Christmas is a bigger cash cow for retailers in this country.
“Jesus wept” says the Bible. And I believe it. I also believe he laughed at puns in Aramaic. He farted, belched, and scratched himself and sighed because, damn, that feels good. Heavenly, if you will.
And once, it says, his Mom came up and said, Gee, Jeezy (her pet name), these nice kids are having a wedding party and all the wine is gone, party is definitely bummed. Now, Jeezy, you don’t have to do anything fancy, raise the dead or cure leprosy, there aren’t any demons who need a can of Holy Whoop-Ass applied, but couldn’t you, well,… And He did, says so right there. Water into wine, freak freely, you party animals, and walk reponsibly.
It ain’t likely the Lord has any objection to children connecting with their neighbors, getting some experience in sharing, and just plain having some fun. If God didn’t like fun, sex wouldn’t be fun. So I don’t think the Jesus they taught me about in Sunday School, the one who loves all the little children of all the various hues, is likely to be p.o.'d about Halloween. He might have a few questions about other “religious” observances. “Verily, I ask of thee, what the hell is this rabbit stuff all about, huh? For I getteth it not, sayeth the Me.”
What? Sacreligious to joke about The Boss. Nah. He’s a big boy, He can take it They don’t come any bigger, from what I hear.
" And verily, the bartender sayeth, "Few are the Samaritans who enter herein;
And the Samaritan sayeth, at three shekels per measure, I say uno thee, thou shalt not have many more!"
Well. maybe He was just too hip for the room.
during the 1970s my church had really elaborate Halloween parties, complete with a pretty scary haunted house (not a “Hell/Judgement House” but a regular one with monsters- for sound effects, I supplied a tape of The Beatles “Revolution 9”)- one of our main elders dressed each year as an appallingly ugly woman L
Then one year, they started scheduling hayrides & harvest parties instead- no explanation or anti-Halloween rant. But I think I figured it out…
by the time the late 1970s came around, the counter-culture of the 1960’s was starting to become the culture. The “Christian consensus”
that US society had in common was starting to collapse. Occultism was starting to be taken seriously by conventional society. Christians who had been converted out of hippiness & occultism were coming into adulthood & “monster/occult” stuff that the previous Christian generation had not taken seriously was too close for comfort for the next generation. Charismatic Christians could testify to experiences against the demonic realm, often from people who had messed with dark aspects of the occult. Finally, there was the matter of actual hoaxsters like Mike Warnke, John Todd, Rebecca Brown, etc who claimed to be ex-Satanists or the like become Christian (Brown did not claim to have been one but to have fought them)- as well as the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria of the 1980s.
However- CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine had a couple of good articles putting things in perspective (I found these while looking for Christian article on Wicca that didn’t lapse into hysteria).
I hold to this theory also tho I’m not married to it. The earliest reference I’ve found to it is an early 1900s book Israel-Britain by Adam Rutherford tho I’m sure the theory goes back to the 1800s at least.
Here’s the reasoning- Luke 1 tells of the priest Zechariah serving in the Temple Sanctuary when the angel Gabriel promises he & Elizabeth will be parents to John who will be the Messiah’s forerunner. It says that Z was a priest in the order of Abijah- one of the 24 orders of the Aaronic priesthood. Supposedly, the Abijah order served around the month of June near Shavuot/Pentecost festival time. So Abijah gets home in late June, he & his wife get busy & conceived John around then.
Luke 2- Six months later (late December?), Gabriel tells Mary she will mother the Messiah. She goes to her relative Elizabeth to help with
John’s birth in March, then has her own baby Jesus six months later in September (perhaps even early October). That is also the time of the Hebrew autumn harvest festivals- Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur & Sukkot (Feast of Trumpets/New Year, Day of Atonement & Feast of Tabernacles).
Soooo if Jesus was born around Sept, that means He was most likely conceived in December- so I just keep that in mind at Christmas.
Oh yeah- it’s also possible Jesus was born in the equivalent of “the garage” of Joseph’s relatives because there was no vacancy in the good guestchamber.
Frankly bribing kids with candy to learn Bible truths is IMO far more morally questionable 
As one of Christian background and still strong belief in a loving, universal god, I would NEVER commit what I see as a sin of pride, or a lack of love, by refusing to ever consider a joint festival with them.
Do pagans=unbelievers?
As far as I am concerned, we are all of God, and any who have love and goodness in them have God in them (or the positive lifeforce, or force of good, or whatever people want to call it) whether they identify as christians, agnostics, jews, hindus, sikhs, muslims, uncertain people, nature worshippers, whatever.
But I am glad your church does provide an alternative for the children so at least they have some fun.
I’m curious but does this mean that, as a Christian, you can’t read Plato or Aristotle? Or Homer? Or Sophocles? Or any other philosopher, dramatist, poet, or author who doesn’t fall within your definition of “Christian”? If so, it seems as though you’re leaving a lot out of your cultural and intellectual life.
Bingo FriarTed. I knew I wasn’t the only one who’s noticed that the fundie anti-Halloween campaign didn’t really start until c. 1980. (Thanks for the links too.)
Just spoke to a religious (conservative Conservative/borderline Orthodox) Jew who assured me she does not even bother buying candy because in her (religious) neighborhood, they have never had a trick or treater in three years; no one celebrates Halloween, “because it is a pagan holiday.”
The almost-uniformly non-observant Jews I knew earlier in life had no such problem. I was surprised at her statement.
OK, you take the Bible as literal truth. So, if you’re a 1st Century resident of Corinth, then no joint pagan/Christian festivals. Oh, you’re not? You do realize that Paul said that line, in a letter to a specific group of people, addressing a specific problem then-and-there, don’t you? Even if it was divinely inspired, it was still addressed to certain people. He didn’t send that letter to every town. He didn’t say the “yoked” thing in his first letter to those people, either. It was a response to changes occuring between the time the two letters were written in that town.
C’mon, even a literalist can’t understand anything without looking at some context.
Yet another reason why the Mary Freaks are the way to go!
And why Catholicism is still the favourite religion of this athiest!
Rituals kick a$$.
I’ve been dying to say this.
So, rather than being against Halloween because of its e-e-evil pagan origins, Fundamentalists are against Halloween because of its e-e-evil Catholic origins! 
OK, so maybe it wasn’t that funny. Anyone want to help me out with my leftover Halloween candy?
CJ
You underestimate the fundamentalists’ ingenuity. For some of them, including IIRC Mr. Chick, the fact that the origins of Halloween are pagan (even although they probably aren’t) is confirmation that Catholicism is simply an undercover version of paganism, which, of course, makes it all the more e-e-evil.
Halloween is all about fun for the kids.
Thats what it is.
Costumes, candy, scary stuff.
(though for me, scary stuff is like bees, etc.)
It feels weird to have people think its wrong to celebrate it.
A church lady visited us, and we discusse dit breifly, and she said, “Now she’s saved, she doesn’t do Halloween”.
But, I am saved, and I do Halloween.
It made me feel weird, like “I’m more saved than you cause I don’t do Halloween.”
Vanilla, don’t worry. She isn’t more saved than you because she doesn’t do Halloween.
She’s probably more saved than you because she votes Republican!
Nudge!
Heck, she might be more saved than either of us & vote US Taxpayers Party! G
Vanilla, don’t worry. She isn’t more saved than you because she doesn’t do Halloween.
She’s probably more saved than you because she votes Republican!
Nudge!
Heck, she might be more saved than either of us & vote US Taxpayers Party! G
vanilla Nobody can be more saved than someone else or more lost than anyone else. Either you are one or the other. So you choose to participate in Halloween. I’m sure you have your reasons. I’m kind of leery of it but who knows, maybe there’s nothing wrong with it. As long as you don’t concentrate on the dark, demon, witchcraft side of it. I guess you can dress up as a clown or princess or whatever.
My son was a red M&M.
I hear red M&Ms are Satan’s favorite. Sure, the green ones lead you down the path of sexual debauchery, but those red ones …
It’s all fun and games until someone loses a soul.
Yeah, but what about Glenda the Good Witch? That’s just a opening up another can of worms…