Death to Halloween! (Very Scary!)

It is that time of year again when Orthodox and some other Christian writers attempt to warn people about the evils of Halloween. They assert - and I have done no less in my much younger days - that Halloween is a pagan holiday, and thus everyone who participates in its celebrations by default participates in the ancient Gaelic harvest festival called Samhain (“summer’s end”). As I grew older I saw that the people who dress up as princesses and Marvel super heroes have about as much to do with devil worship - for this is often the claim - as the people who send each other Christmas cards or Easter candy have to do with worshiping Jesus Christ. This is all that I will say about this, and it may be a topic for another time. For myself, I still do not see any need to celebrate Halloween any more than I do the Chinese New Year, the Parinirvana Day, Eid-al-Adha, or Yom Kippur. But I am no longer interested in writing pseudo-pious articles linking my neighbors’ children to devil worshipers for merely dressing up in costumes any more than I am interested in condemning Russian Orthodox Christians for eating pancakes on Maslenitsa, since pancakes are an ancient pagan symbol of the cult of the Sun - round, yellow, and hot.

Much can also be said about the Prophet Elijah ending up as the patron saint of thunder and lightning, or Saint Blaise of Sebaste as the protector of cattle in the Russian tradition - apparently, for no other reason, except that his name is vaguely-similar to that of the pre-Christian god of cattle Veles. Much can also be said about the traditions of the Holy Rus during Christmastide - from divinations, to scary masks and costumes, to special foods offered to the dead. Much can be said about this, but I will refrain - except, perhaps to note that none of this has much to do with Christianity, and the Church has usually discouraged such practices, but that the Irish heathen celebrations are not unique in that respect.