The only horror I’ve written has been accidental, parts of stories that I just churned out and then a reader or two asked why I was making horror.
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In preparation for the hordes of small humans this evening I have blocked both gates to my yard. Moving the trash can full of rainwater was a horror.
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Here in Finland, a group of Christians have started to collect signatures for an initiative that wants to stop the celebration of Halloween in elementary schools and kindergartens. If the initiative gets the signatures of 1% of all voters within six months, the parliament has to handle the initiative and vote if the citizens’ initiative will be accepted or not.
The initiative is a counterreaction to what happened recently in one elementary school. The school had agreed with a group belonging to the Lutheran church that they will arrange a happening in the school. The happening should have been suitable for all children but there was one song about Jesus and probably also something was said about Jesus. The (non-religious) parents of one child became upset when they heard about it. When the case was handled in the National non-discrimination and equality tribunal, the tribunal concluded that the case was discrimination against the non-religious child. The school had to pay a small compensation for the child because of the ‘discrimination’.
If any singing or telling about Jesus by believers is not allowed in elementary schools and kindergartens, many think that celebrating a festival with questionable values is worse. What Halloween teaches is against many of the official principles and goals of teaching in elementary schools. Because the Halloween has become popular during the last decades, all children need to participate in the Halloween happenings in the school or kindergarten. If some family does not like Halloween, the only way to avoid the Halloween events is to keep the child away from the school or kindergarten during those days. This can be compared to the situation where even one family can prevent the singing about Jesus in an elementary school because such songs would be ‘discrimination’. Not fair.
I am still thinking whether I should sign the initiative. Maybe I will.
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Christians have borrowed elements from various cultures to their celebrations (probably even the dates of many events are borrowed from pagan celebrations) but that does not make the events with pagan origin somehow ‘Christian’. Although Halloween and All Saints Day happen during the same time of the year, they are not the same celebration. It would be like claiming that the celebration of Sol Invictus (invincible sun) in the ancient Rome and the birth party of Christ (Christmas) are the same celebration.
An alternative to the Halloween celebration is to celebrate a Christian event, for example All Saints Day if you like it. People would see that you are also celebrating but in a very different way. That will raise curiosity and give a possibility to explain why you act in a different way. No aggressivity, hostility or straight-laced condemnation of people to hell. Instead, a friendly alternative to the pagan celebration.
The Christian position towards pagan celebrations like Halloween is a question of contextualization. How much should believers contextualize their teachings and habits to the local culture?
I read just the biography of a man who turned from being a muslim to being a follower of Jesus and a well-known evangelist in some muslim countries (Harun Ibrahim, or Aaron Ibrahim as he is known in Finland). In the book, he discusses about the challenges of contextualization in muslim countries, using a scale proposed by John Travis in the year 1998. The scale is from C1 to C6, where the C comes from ‘Christ-centered community’ or Contextualization). C1 means that the believers use a foreign language (like English) in their services and follow foreign habits, like copying the models how Christians behave and worship in Europe or USA. C5 is the opposite end where the faith in Jesus as the Savior is mixed with the everyday life of the muslim community - using the local language and expressions, local habits, celebrating local feasts, even regularly visiting and praying in the mosques. C6 is the phase where a new believer hides her/his faith to avoid persecution and potential death.
Harun Ibrahim argues that the alternatives C5-C6 are not ok because some of the local beliefs cannot be unified with the teaching in the Bible - there is an irreconcilable conflict between the teachings.
I associate that discussion and the scale C1-C6 with our attitudes towrds the local (non-Christian/pagan) habits and the teachings in our societies. Usually, we use the local language and the services follow our local habits. The question is how far we are willing to blend in the habits of the surrounding community when the habits seem to be in conflict with the teachings of the biblical scriptures? That is a question we have to answer individually. The way of life shows what is my answer.
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A holiday or an event can only be pagan or Christian if you actively celebrate it as such. I don’t celebrate a single religious holiday. Not even Easter or Christmas have anything to do with any religious beliefs for me. Likewise, Halloween is not a pagan festival or a Christian festival.
For example yesterday which was Halloween where I lived I woke up at 130am. Went to work at 3am. Got off work at 2pm. Went grocery shopping. Finished a horror novel which is a folk body horror creature feature called “The Haar” and rode my bicycle 31 miles with two other friends. Went to a party at a Bar for about 15 minutes and got a candy corn vodka shot thing they had. A friend who was the DD for the group brought me back home. I only live 1.5 miles away. Watched half an hour of the Blob and went to sleep. Nothing was pagan or Christian about the whole day. Even though today is 01nov this evening I’m going to a nature park with a handful of friends and we are cooking veggie dogs and burgers and taking marshmallows to cook on a fire and are all listening to the last 2 episodes of a horror podcast together that we’ve been listening to whenever for the last few weeks except these last two episodes. Many will dress up still I’m sure.
On Christmas Eve me and the same basic group of friends will have a meal together at night, then all load up into one van and spend about 2 hours driving through 3-5 neighborhoods that have good decorations while listening to a Christmas horror story. Often it’s whatever Strange Xmas has playing. Any mailbox that is open with a candy cane inside of it we exchange it for an assortment of candy that we have. My friend sets this little tradition up. It’s never to many. Just like 25 people total do it but she dresses up like a deer elf and beeps the horn. It’s funny because you always see the little kids watching from the windows. It’s not a religious experience for any of us and one is a Muslim woman from Indonesia, there are atheists, agnostic, Christian, and Wiccan type people.
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Your comment made me think about the various holidays, the common attitudes towards and ways to live the holidays.
One observation was that old traditional holidays are treated in a more neutral way than new ones - Xmas or Passover are parts of old cultural tradition and these have been incorporated to the life in western countries, whether you believe in God or not. They have religious significance for some but are just traditional holidays for others.
Halloween is a relatively novel imported event here, so many are still wondering what is this Halloween about? That makes people watch what happens with critical eyes and some try to find out the history of Halloween. When watched with critical eyes, Halloween includes elements that are not positive. That makes many reject Halloween. If Halloween would be an old tradition, people would not pay attention to the unwanted features of the day, it would just be one traditional holiday among others.
Halloween has scary elements but also other holidays may include such elements. My daughter (now 21) told that she was more scared about Father Christmas (Santa) and his Christmas gnomes than any Halloween character she met in the kindergarten. These modern Christmas characters combine features of a Christian person (Sanctus Nicolaus), the ‘Coca-Cola Santa’ originating from USA, and pre-Christian characters that were not nice. Still a century ago, the traditional Finnish Father Christmas (‘Joulupukki’) resembled the ‘Nuuttipukki’ character: a person having a grey fur coat, a goat mask with horns and rude manners, often demanding alcohol and something tasty to eat. Scaring and threatening children that had not been nice was part of the manners. Some kind of Halloween version of the Santa
.
Nowadays, the ‘Nuuttipukki’ (sometimes translated as the New Year Buck) tradition is more clearly associated with the Saint Knut’s Day: ‘Joulupukki’ (Christmas Buck) brings the Christmas, ‘Nuuttipukki’ takes the Christmas away. ‘Nuuttipukki’ originates from pre-Christian times when ‘pukki’ (male goat) was associated with fertility. ‘Nuuttipukki’ was also supposed to scare away the spirits of dead, which was the reason why people welcomed such a bad character.
Christmas gnomes are a version of pre-Christian secret police that monitors the behaviour of children around the clock and reports all unwanted behaviour to the head character that can withdraw benefits or punish. Not nice.
Anyhow, nice that you have friends that gather with you during holidays.
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