Halloween improper for Christians to celebrate

Editor:

By the time your readers read this, Halloween will be over, but the divisive controversy regarding whether Christians should reject Halloween wont be. It is just postponed for another year.

I am a Christian and Sunday school classmate of Barry Paschals. However, Im afraid I disagree with his views (column, Oct. 28) regarding Halloween as a benign holiday and whether Christians should participate. In contrast with David Sislers factual presentation (column, Oct. 28) of the the history of Halloween (or Samhain, as it was known before the 8th century), Paschal presented the same touchy-feely rhetoric that has gotten Christians in trouble for the last 2,000 years.

Once again, we are taking it upon ourselves to determine what is right with regard to the participation in or celebration of a wordly event, a pagan holiday (with all of its sinister meaning) in this case, instead of relying upon God-inspired scripture for guidance. As Paul taught in II Corinthians 6:14.18, there can be no harmony between righteousness and wickedness, and we should separate ourselves from and touch no unclean thing. Everything represented by the celebration of Halloween, or as we should refer to by its original (albeit English- translated) names of Festival of Death, Day of the Dead, Devils Night, Hell Night, Witches Night of Power or Greater Sabbat, etc., seems pretty unclean to me.

I am familiar with, and of course believe in, the loving teachings of Jesus Christ and how we are saved by grace through our faith in him. But I have a hard time understanding how one can take his teachings regarding not fearing darkness or evil (Matthew 10:26) and misconstrue this to represent the tolerance of and participation in it. To me, there could be no clearer example of taking a bit of truth to form a greater lie.

There is no doubt that the attempt in the 8th century by the Catholic pope to christianize the festival by creating All Saints Day on Nov. 1 was a horrible failure. All it did was give the gruesome festival of the evening of Oct. 31 a benign, palatable name. If this attempt to interject Christianity into this pagan festival was such a dismal failure then, what makes us think that any amount of ministry we do today is going to be any more successful? History seems to bear out what Paul taught regarding the fact that good and evil cannot and should not mix.

The thing that most concerns me is the division among Christians regarding this topic. There is no doubt in my mind that this division is inspired by Satan. We know he will work in small and mighty ways to drive wedges between fellow Christians, as well as between Christians and non-Christians. Im sure he relishes the first accomplishment quite a bit more. I cant help but picture him as he has a good laugh about it. After all, its his party (festival) and he gets to have his cake and eat it, too.

Wayne Moore

Evans