To celebrate Halloween or not to celebrate Halloween – that is not the question!

If this post looks familiar to a few of you, it is because it is a repeat from last October.  However, with Halloween on Wednesday, it’s just as applicable this year . . . and every year!!

So, it’s fall.  And with fall comes a lot of great things… turning leaves, some cooler weather (and this year seems to be MUCH cooler weather), kids back to school (it’s a great thing for some!  Sorry kids!), and eventually Thanksgiving (with turkey and stuffing and all those yummy things we get to eat).  And let’s not forget, the anticipation about Christmas!  But before we get to Thanksgiving and eventually Christmas, we have that “tricky” little holiday that seems to become more and more prevalent As a major holiday in society.  You know…the one that is always a problem for Christians… HALLOWEEN!  Now this isn’t going to be another blog about all the dangers of celebrating Halloween, with all the Christian reasons why you shouldn’t do it. It’s also not going to be a blog about all the reasons we should go ahead and celebrate it, nor all the ways we can “Christianize” it so that we don’t feel guilty participating (like handing out tracts instead of candy)!  All of those arguments have some good points.  Personally, when our kids were little, we dressed them in fun costumes and took them door-to-door to get some candy from the neighbors and family, and they don’t seem scarred from it, and…they love the Lord!  If anyone does have a negative side effect from it, it is probably a few extra pounds I still carry from the candy I ate out of their bags over the next few weeks! (We won’t mention how long ago it’s been since they went trick-or-treating!)

But one argument Christians use in support of celebrating Halloween is that Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter, both which we “took over”  from the pagans, and “made Christian”.  I’m not going to advocate doing THAT either, but it does lead to an interesting point… Protestant Christians already DO have something to celebrate on that very same day as Halloween…The Protestant Reformation!!!  And that is really the point I wanted to get to. When I was growing up we didn’t really talk about the reformation much, except in history at school. But, if you are a Christian, it’s an important part of history that you should know something about!  So here’s a mini version of it’s start:

During the medieval era (AD 500-1500), the church in Rome and the pope possessed immense spiritual and political authority. They used a Latin translation of the Bible called the Vulgate, and access to the Bible was extremely limited (mostly to clergy, and some wealthy individuals) because most people could not read Latin, books were rare, and they were expensive because they were produced by hand. The church in Rome taught that it had sole authority to interpret the Bible.  Translations of the Bible other than the Vulgate were banned.

In the 1380s, John Wycliffe’s complete English translation of the Bible was finished, and around 1450 the Gutenberg printing press was developed, allowing for faster and cheaper book production.  (Is some of this coming back to you from history class???)

Martin Luther, a German monk, challenged the church in Rome’s authority. Luther came to believe that the Bible, not the church, was the highest spiritual authority. He wrote Ninety-Five Theses, arguing that the pope did not have the authority to issue indulgences for the forgiveness of sins for the living or for souls in purgatory.   On October 31, 1517 Luther nailed these 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, hoping to stir some controversy and soul-searching amongst his Christian brothers. This document, and Luther’s reputation and writings, spread throughout Europe, sparking the Protestant Reformation.

So, grab a cup of coffee, dust off your history books, and google Martin Luther and the Reformation!  It is, after all, the 501st anniversary of this history-changing, life-changing  event!