Ep 697 ｜ Revealing the Real Origins of Halloween ｜ Guests： Jeremiah Roberts & Andrew Soncrant (Cultish)
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Summary
On today's episode of Relatable, my friends from The Cultish Podcast, Jeremiah and Andrew, take us through the interesting history of Halloween, and the true origins of Halloween that you probably have not heard before. Your perspective on Halloween might stay the same after this conversation, or it might change. But I guarantee you will learn something that you did not know before.
Transcript
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Should Christians celebrate Halloween? The answer that you're going to get on today's episode of
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Relatable with my friends from the Cultish podcast might surprise you. They are going to take us
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through the interesting history of Halloween, the true origins of Halloween that you probably
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have not heard before. I had not heard it. I learned a lot today. Your perspective on Halloween
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might stay the same after this conversation, or it might change, but I guarantee you will learn
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something that you did not know before. This is not only a fascinating conversation about history,
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but it's also an insightful conversation about the gospel, about Christians' responsibility to be
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a light in the darkness, what that looks like, the difference between paranoia and isolationism
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and being in the world, but not of the world, and living in a way that understands and believes
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that Jesus is really king over all of it. So I know that you are going to love this. Before we
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get into the conversation, a couple things. Shout out to two new stickers that we have. We'll put
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them up on YouTube if you're watching. We've got our Rip Row sticker. We've also got our Vote sticker.
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These are $5. Get them. Pass them out to your friends, especially the voting ones. This could
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be a great conversation starter with your conservative friends who maybe are a little
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bit apathetic. Use this podcast. Use the resources that we provide to educate your friends about why
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politics matters so much. There's so much at stake in all of your areas, in all of your states. Also,
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please, if you love this podcast, leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
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listen. Make sure you subscribe on YouTube as well. As always, this episode is brought to you by our
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friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com slash Allie. Now, here are our friends from Cultish,
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All right, guys. Thanks so much for joining again. Today, I want to talk to you guys about a few things,
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one of them being the origins of Halloween. As you know, there's a lot of disagreement among Christians
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about if Halloween should even be recognized. Should we do trick-or-treating? Should we only do
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fall harvest parties? Can we do Halloween that's not super scary and celebrating death?
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And so tell us first, take us back to what are the actual origins of Halloween? Is it a pagan
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death ritual or not? Well, yeah. Thanks again, Allie, for having us on. It's great to be back
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on Relatable. I think in this discussion, everyone does have those conversations, whether it's okay
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to do a fall festival, whether I can just dress up like something like Super Mario, or if I can not
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dress up gory. But I think a lot of times people don't see the bigger picture. One is that, I think,
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again, this is a polarizing issue. A lot of, it's very, there's a lot of people that we love and have
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a tremendous amount of respect for that really have very different opinions as far as the nature
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of Halloween. So I think before we even get into the conversation about whether or not you should
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quote-unquote celebrate or even participate, it's important to have context, because ultimately as
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Christians, we need to make sure that we are in the pursuit of truth and that we also have integrity
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when we want to look at history. So in the same way how a lot of pseudo-history will make up
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nonsense claims like the Bible was invented at the Council of Nicaea, or that somehow Jesus is a
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copy of the pagan gods, kind of like the film Zeitgeist, or a lot of that was articulated in
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the Da Vinci Code. That's pseudo-history. So it's important that we be, have integrity and we look at
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this issue holistically. So we're really excited to jump into that. Yeah.
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Yeah. Yeah. So if we think about the origins of Halloween, I mean, even the name itself is
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Halloween, uh, not Halloween, Halloween. And it literally means like hallow, holy, you know,
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but the question comes today as people say, well, is this just, uh, a redressed pagan festival? So the
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pagan festival in question that we'd be talking about is pronounce it for me real quick, Jerry.
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Uh, Samhain. Samhain. It's spelled, it looks like Samhain, but it's Samhain. So I always pronounce
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it wrong. It just, it's hard for me to even say it. So let's think of the early origins or the
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historical evidence we even have for Samhain. So people like to make the claims that Samhain is
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some ancient festival that we have this documentation that has been practiced, let's say from the early,
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early medieval times, uh, and then was overthrown by Christianity, but that's actually not
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the case. The earliest documentation we have for Samhain comes from the 11th century. And I don't
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even want to try to pronounce the name of this, uh, this, this work in question, just because it's
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got an Irish pronunciation. Uh, so I can't really do that, but it's also known as the, uh, only jealousy
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of Emer. And it comes from around the 10th or 11th century AD. And it's a recount of this festival,
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but this festival never mentions worship of the dead. It never mentions, uh, things that people
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can state, uh, that Christians stole from pagan practices. Really, uh, it never even mentions
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when it is to be celebrated. So Samhain, or was that, was that right? Yeah. Samhain, uh, really
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wasn't even practiced on October 31st, November 1st, uh, because this, the ancients of this time
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didn't actually use a Gregorian calendar. They base things off more of a lunar cycle. So the date
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when Samhain would be practiced, which was more of an event where they would celebrate the end of the
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year would be something that would change every single year. Whereas our documentation again comes
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from the 11th, uh, 10th century for Samhain, but for all saints day or, uh, the veneration of some of
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the early church martyrs, we actually have documentation that goes all the way back to
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the third and fourth century of early Christianity. And we can go back to, uh, the martyrdom, martyrdom
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of Polycarp, uh, within the second century, there's a work that actually quotes and says,
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we need to look for ways to venerate. Uh, but early or a little bit after that, we have a Christian
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bishop named Ephraim, the Syrian, he mentions all saints day, and this is around 373. Uh, and also,
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I mean, it goes, it goes all the way back from the early third century into the ninth century,
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but it goes from the early Christian church father. They're celebrating, uh, the dead saints
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up to where the Pope initiates a specific day for all saints day and hallows, hallows eve, which would
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have been, uh, October 31st, November 1st, but that wasn't done until around the ninth century.
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Okay. And that, and that's one of the things that was really interesting just in us, just looking
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strictly at the historical origins. Cause again, this is a very emotionally charged conversation.
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Um, and like, even for me personally, I don't participate in the modern day celebration of
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Halloween. Uh, that's just my own personal decision, my own personal convictions. So maybe
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that has been helpful for me to try and just look at the actual history of it. Cause everyone kind
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of, it's very easy to, if you have confirmation bias to, uh, try and immediately Google Halloween
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evil or Halloween Christian, whatever your confirmation biases are. Uh, what, what I found
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really interesting is even when you go back to the original, uh, core, uh, the idea behind, uh, all
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saints day was that during the time when Christians were being persecuted by Rome, you have people who
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are very famous, like, uh, Polycarp, like you mentioned, and even his story is incredible about
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how he gave his life, uh, for Christ. But you have really thousands of Christians, many who are unnamed
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who were, uh, who were, who died because they would not give a pinch on the incense, uh, to Caesar.
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So what you really end up seeing is that in the same way we have the tomb of the unknown soldier,
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like the all saints day was almost a commemoration to all the saints who laid down their lives,
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uh, for Christ. Uh, and we're, we're, most of them were, were killed either by the lions or
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another horrific ways in the Coliseum, or they were killed by Nero, uh, which is a very, very
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interesting history. So I think that's one of the things too, is that when you look at the
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formulation of all saints day, that was actually formulated, uh, way before Salon. And what the
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argument is that people trying to say it distinctly came from Salon. The only problem
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is, is that you have a huge gap, uh, several thousand years in between the two holidays.
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Yeah. And I think it's important to understand as well, is that, uh, what we see happen within at
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least the modern era or even during the enlightenment period is we have people, uh, for example, Jeffrey
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Keating, who wrote, uh, folklore, right on Irish mythology, but it has been recently discredited
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that this folklore was more of a fake lore. And most recent historians have shown, uh, one name
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specifically would be Ronald Hutton, who is a early Britain and pre-Christian era of Britain historian
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has shown that most of these folklore claims from the 18th and 19th century of what was actually
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occurring in Sam Hain. There's, there's all of them are pretty much debunked. So there's a difference
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between the folklore and the fake lore. Sam Hain is Salon, right? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. See, I did it
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again. I always say, well, I just want to make sure for people listening that they knew that you're
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talking about the same thing. Yeah. That's my, uh, 21st century American hours yesterday from Utah. So
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yeah, it might be a little jumbled, but the, the point is, is that we have also within the 20th
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century, we have a rebirth of neo-paganism and we have people trying to make claims that aren't
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necessarily true in order to, order to bolster their own presuppositions. So, uh, that's what's
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actually has been happening within modern era. And then we have the, the fault of Christians today
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actually believing some of this fake lore that has no historical evidence. Yeah. And, uh, and also
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what's really interesting now, and I'll let you jump in with what questions you have is that, uh, a lot
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of, there's a huge distinction between the ancient history behind, uh, and there's no doubt that people
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did, there's pagans throughout all years of history that were tapped into things that are tangibly, uh,
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real. We talk about that extensively. Uh, we're trying to really sound the alarm bell because
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culture, culturally right now, we are on a free fall into neo-paganism. We are going from a, uh,
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going from a fundamentally Christian, uh, society built on Judeo-Christian principles where we are
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currently on free fall into neo-paganism. So that's really important to understand. Uh, but when you
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actually look, uh, at, there's a distinction though, between ancient history, uh, but also, and even all
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saints day, but even the modern day celebration, uh, one thing that's very, very interesting is
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that, uh, one of the main connections, and we can, we can provide some more resources too,
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for those who are interested in checking us out at a later time. But one of the real valid holidays,
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which I was really, my mind was really blown about was actually, uh, Guy Fawkes. Uh, there is a, uh,
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he was known, infamously known, he was a kind of articulate in the movie V for Vendetta. Uh, he had
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something known as the gunpowder plot where in the 1500s, he attempted to blow up, uh, London parliament,
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that plot was foiled. So around the 5th of November, you would actually would have a Guy
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Fawkes day. And that was primarily celebrated that even that the time of Guy Fawkes, it was a evening
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where there would be a bunch of bonfires. That's where the idea of people wearing masks, uh, came
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from. And there would be also would be a lot of elusive pranks. So what ended up happening is that
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as we know, America is a melting pot and it's a mixture of a lot of syncretistic ideas. And so what
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ended up happening is that when, uh, the people who celebrated Guy Fawkes day, they immigrated over
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here to America, they carried over those traditions. So when you look at the bonfires doing pranks around
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that time, uh, and also, uh, yeah, bonfires wearing masks, doing pranks around that time that carried
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over to the United States. And that actually had a huge influence on how it developed in the early 1900s.
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My next question is how did it then develop in the United States in the 20th century into this dark
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and almost kind of, for some groups, really kind of like a satanic worship ritual and where we are
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not just honoring the death of martyrs of Christians, but people are really celebrating,
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uh, death and gore and things that we genuinely, no matter where you land on this, you don't really
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want your kids seeing and celebrating that. And so like, how did that happen?
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Yeah, that's a, and that's a great point, Allie. And I think as Christians, it's very important that
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we always adhere to the sanctity of human life. And that's also, you know, you had Christians in the
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first century that were doing that. You have, you had families that would, uh, put out babies that
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were unwanted, uh, outside, uh, their house to lead to die. And Christians would go out in the
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middle of the night to scoop these babies up because they knew every single person was image
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bearer of God with unique dignity, value, and worth. So I think that's also one of the things that
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a lot of Christians rightfully bring up the objections to the modern day, uh, celebration of
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Halloween, because that does come out a lot, especially. Um, but one thing is, is to note when we just
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talk about the historical, we need to make sure we understand is that Halloween is always,
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it's very syncretistic, but it's also a dim mirror to the current culture at the time.
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And so how it essentially came about, and again, we can provide some resource that people want to
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look at it further is that in the early 1900s, it was really the celebration or the kind of the
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continuation or just the celebration with almost a disconnect from Guy Fawkes, but just doing the
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pranks, bonfires, wearing masks. And so you really had, uh, young boys and just young children who'd
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go out around the 31st around that time. And they would do all sorts of pranks and mischief.
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And it got to a point where it was kind of known as Halloween, but that was really what it was known
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for young people going out doing pranks, mischief mayhem. Uh, and, but it ended up being a point to
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where it got so out of hand, there were several States that were actually considering, uh, banning
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Halloween just because the pranks were getting out of hand. Uh, it was getting, people were getting
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injured. And so what, at what came as a by-product is that people just naturally wanted to figure out
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a way to quell, uh, what was happening. They want to say, Oh, you need to do a curfew. You need to do
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a lockdown. Maybe we all know about those given the last couple of years. So the idea was to like,
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let's give these young people treats as a way to barter them, sort of bargain with them,
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not to do these excessive pranks. And that's really where the idea, the moderate American idea
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of trick or treat came from. It said, Hey, don't do these pranks. Here's some candy,
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behave yourself. Right. And if you continue to behave yourself, we'll give you more treats.
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But then naturally they wanted to get, they kind of re it was really a children's holiday where it was
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just children going from door to door. If you look, uh, like it's the great pumpkin, Charlie Brown,
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like that was the initial spirit. It had a very like Norm Rockwell, like Saturday evening post
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Norm Rockwell aesthetic to it. Uh, that's really how it came about. Even like, and also one of the
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primary things that you have syncretism, uh, you also have, uh, this children's holiday came about
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that was connected to Guy Fawkes, but a big part of it honestly is capitalism. I mean, even if you look
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at right now, the most amount of commercial, the most commercially industrial, commercially industrial
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holiday besides Christmas is Halloween just because of the merchandise, uh, the yard decorations,
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the, uh, candy that gets put out. And so really it was just capitalism. A lot of small businesses
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that, Hey, people are going to door to door. They're doing this activity. It organically just
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became something that was celebrated in every state. Uh, this people going door to door and people
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are saying, Hey, let's start making candy specifically marketed to this day. Let's start making, uh,
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costumes that are specifically marketed to that day. And what is interesting, cause everyone's
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saying, well, what about all the gore, uh, you know, all the darkness that we see in a lot of
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today's celebrations. Uh, again, it's a, it's a continually a marking of the culture. And so what
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you end up seeing is that as society progresses, you saw this in the 1970s, especially during the
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sexual revolution. Uh, that's where adults started to participate in it. Uh, you also have the
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explosion of the new age movement in the 1970s. Um, also Halloween just took on a darker aesthetic.
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You had the satanic panic of the 1980s and, but you also had a huge amount of influence
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of the ideas of Halloween being reshaped because you had movies like a Halloween by John Carpenter,
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like Friday the 13th, a lot of the eighties horror actually came about. That was what's interesting.
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This would be another subject, but a lot of the 1970s, the sexual revolution, the, uh, a lot of
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the eighties horror films were actually a direct by-product of those initial films. And so the
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impression, the ideas behind that got continually a lot darker, uh, in the 1980s, that was kind of
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really where the Norm Rockwell innocent idea of Halloween from this, the pumpkin is the great
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pumpkin, Charlie Brown turned into a lot. It just, I really believe it came a lot darker around that
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time. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have anything to add to that? Um, I, one thing I think that's important
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to understand is we need to base our convictions, uh, as Bible believing Christians on things that
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have a historical reality. It's okay to have a conviction about not celebrating Halloween because
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of the moral indignations that are going on today in our society. I get that, but we can't as
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Christians base our convictions off of historical inaccuracies. If we are not ignorant about them
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anymore, like saying Halloween has pagan origins, it's absolutely false. Uh, the preconceptions for
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Samhain, uh, it was a fear-based festival, which we know barely anything about, uh, in which that things
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would be offered to these spirits, uh, in order to keep them happy. It was a fear-based celebration.
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Whereas All Saints Day, uh, and Hallow's Eve was a celebration of Christ's victory, right? There
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was a public, there, there was a public spectacle of mocking the forces of evil. We're not a,
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Christianity is not a dualistic religion. Like Satan is not at the same level as Jesus. Jesus is
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Lord of all. He created Satan. He conquered Satan. That's what the celebration originally
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was. And what happens within our culture within the 20th century is when Christians are no longer
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being engaged in the culture, we allow celebrations like this to get taken from their roots and turn
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them into something else. And one of the reasons why, uh, Halloween is so dark as it is, is it was,
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wasn't around the sixties and seventies to where, uh, paganism tried to, uh, blend their, some of their
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beliefs with our Gregorian calendar that we have today. And they actually went out of their way to
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choose October 31st specifically as the day for Samhain when it's not historically accurate. That's
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called an anachronism. Uh, so what we need to understand as Christians is we need to base our
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convictions in something that is actually historically accurate, but also as Christians, we can't go and
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say, yeah, I'm celebrating Halloween as a Christian and dressing up as some, and not doing it in the
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Christian way. You see what I'm saying? Cause it goes on both sides of the coin.
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Well, um, you, you finish your thought because it might kind of take us in a little bit of a different
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direction. Oh, okay. Yeah. And this, and again, uh, we have, we have some, uh, tech issues that
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happened prior to this. So we're trying to, trying to really capture everything and the time that we
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have, but what it was really, when you go back even to all same stain with the spirit was, I guess
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you say, pun intended, uh, behind, uh, the initial all hell is Eve and even right next to all same stay.
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You think of like modern, you think about a meme, you think about satire, uh, like when you did,
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like when you, Allie, when you did that video, which I thought was hilarious, uh, sort of doing a
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parody of AOC when she was pretending to be getting handcuffed. So really what you saw, it was
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emulated. The heart behind it was emulating, uh, in Colossians, when it talked about how Christ has made
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a public mockery and spectacle over all principalities and powers now. So the initial intent when people
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would sort of dress in these dark and on some of dark and spooky, it was almost satirical in nature.
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So when you think about the devil costume, like the red devil with a pointy tail with the ears,
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there's no, there's no Christian scholar or anybody who would agree that that's what the devil looks
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like. So the heart behind a lot of, even when you look at even some of the older pictures, there is
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still a dark aesthetic to it. But even that came from this idea of making a public spectacle. I mean,
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we can have the discussion whether or not even that was something right for the church to do at that
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time, but it's objective historic, like history, like this is what took place. And that's why
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you see a lot of that darkness there. And that does lead to the question that I had, which was
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about satanic panic. We talked about, um, on the last interview that we did, um, about stranger things
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and the last season of stranger things was kind of about this satanic panic and the 1980s and spoiler
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alert for people who haven't watched it, but the satanic panic in this area kind of led them to try
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to hunt down this guy that they thought was committing murders because he was part of something called
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the hellfire club. And so they just assumed that because he was kind of an outcast and kind of
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different that he was the one committing these murders and he wasn't. So even though that's
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fictional, like we could see how something that is superstitious and paranoid and is actually not
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even grounded in like good theology could lead people to make rash and bad and undiscerning judgments
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based on fear and not on faith in God. Can you, can one of you talk about like the distinction between
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the kind of satanic panic that leads to paranoia and the wise decision to say, you know what,
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whatever the origins of Halloween were, um, and we should look at that historically. I still,
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maybe a parent says don't want to participate in this because of what it has become because maybe
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they look at Philippians four, eight, and they say, you know what, there's really not anything that I'm
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seeing that's excellent and praiseworthy, or they're looking at, gosh, is it Ephesians four or five
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that says, uh, you know, you are no longer children of darkness. You are children of light. And so walk in
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what is good and right and true. And you say, you know what, I'm just not going to be a part of this.
00:24:03.120
Can you kind of tell us the difference between that kind of paranoia and proper discernment when
00:24:08.260
it comes to Halloween? No, absolutely. Thank you. And first thing I want to say is that a satanic
00:24:13.040
SRA, or which is an abbreviation for satanic ritual abuse, uh, is a hundred percent real. Uh,
00:24:18.840
I've ministered to people who are victims of SRA and it's, it's like staring right into the eye of
00:24:25.500
Mordor when you hear about what actually happened to them. And even people, they, in this particular
00:24:30.060
case, it was someone, this victim, uh, the people were actually were using the Bible to say that it
00:24:35.140
was okay for her to be abused in this way. Um, so it's a hundred percent real. And so there's two
00:24:41.500
sides to the equation. Sorry to interrupt, sorry to interrupt, but they're just to add another example
00:24:46.360
to that. I'm pretty sure they were as the church or temple of Satan. I'm not sure which state it was,
00:24:51.680
if it was in Texas or Arizona, trying to say that because their religion requires abortion as a
00:24:59.840
satanic sacrifice, then the first amendment should protect their right to abortion that happened just
00:25:07.020
in the past year or so. So anyway, I just wanted to add onto that, that that is actually something
00:25:12.060
that's happening. Oh yeah, absolutely. And just, you know, too, there's a distinction between the
00:25:16.440
satanic temple and the church of Satan by Anton Levy. Those are two distinctive organizations.
00:25:21.000
I didn't even know that. Okay. Yeah. The satanic temple are the ones when you see them arguing
00:25:25.500
under the first amendment that abortion should be, uh, should be a right because it's a, it's a
00:25:29.980
religious right that comes from the satanic temple. They're the ones who are really trying
00:25:33.740
to enact legislation. I think there was a video in the last year where they're trying to even
00:25:38.380
articulate statues, uh, with the satanic commandments. I think it is. And so you definitely
00:25:44.060
see, I mean, obviously it should be very eyeopening for that is that one neutrality is a myth.
00:25:48.800
Uh, that's for sure. And so that, that's how we are approaching this as well too. Um, so when
00:25:54.700
it comes to like the satanic, which the SRA is real, but also you had a lot of paranoia
00:26:00.180
where there's a false accusations that came about, there's a book called erasing, uh, memory,
00:26:06.080
which was written by Lawrence Wright, who also wrote going clear Scientology in the prison
00:26:10.340
of unbelief, who talks about this guy named Robert Ingram, who was a sheriff. These two, uh,
00:26:14.880
two of his daughters went to a Christian camp and they uncover these members of these memories
00:26:20.280
of satanic ritual abuse. Uh, and they ended up accusing their father. And because of that,
00:26:25.320
uh, because he was somebody in law enforcement, who was the sheriff, it became a matter of internal
00:26:29.620
affairs. And then the dad had no recollection of this. Robert Ingram did, but as he began to do his
00:26:34.880
own memory process, he started conducting memories. And not only was he a high satanic priest, but he
00:26:40.520
started, uh, indicting other people within his, uh, other people law enforcement. So a lot of people
00:26:46.380
went to jail because of this one accusation and he later retracted his memories, but because he had
00:26:52.160
made this confection, there are a lot of people who went to jail. So you have two sides of the
00:26:56.200
equation. You had real satanic ritual abuse, but you also had a lot of cases where false memories
00:27:01.380
were conjured up, which people later retracted. Um, so when it comes to the, like, why is Halloween
00:27:08.580
happening? Like it is, it is getting a lot darker and a lot gory. And I think
00:27:12.760
when the conversation, I think honestly, and again, it's up to every person to practice a sermon
00:27:18.520
and I wanted to maybe backtrack as well too. And I'll, Andrew, I'll let you jump in here as well
00:27:23.060
too. Uh, in Colossians four, uh, the apostle Paul says this amazing passage. One of my favorite
00:27:29.760
verses when it comes to evangelism, it says, conduct yourself with, with, with wisdom towards
00:27:33.860
outsiders, making the most of every single opportunity, but let your speech be seasoned
00:27:39.720
with grace and with salt. So you may know how to talk to each person and every situation. So,
00:27:46.220
but you realize the context of that letter of Colossi, he is writing to a city that is just a
00:27:53.700
carnival festival of ancient neo-paganism. It was really like a 24 seven burning man on steroids.
00:28:01.500
So in this situation, there are people I would say who might be very, very sensitive and even
00:28:07.840
people who do come out of the new age. I think a lot of times what happens is that
00:28:11.060
they have this realization that all this knowledge that they had was all of a sudden that was all
00:28:17.480
rooted in satanic power. But then they look at the world around them, the current modern day
00:28:23.840
celebration of Halloween and absolutely understandably, they want nothing to do with it.
00:28:27.980
But also I think it is an opportunity, there is a time where this is where families, they go
00:28:34.080
door to door. I mean, it's one of the very few times where people have an opportunity to go out
00:28:38.820
and create relationships with your neighbors. I think it's a matter of, you need to figure out
00:28:44.100
how can I live out that verse in Colossians to the best of my ability? Andrew, what are your thoughts?
00:28:49.040
Yeah. So for wise discernment for the Christian parent out there, I'm a, I'm a parent myself,
00:28:54.240
uh, is we need to not be ruled by our emotions. Our emotions cannot, uh, allow us to believe things
00:29:02.360
that may historically be inaccurate. If we base our convictions on them. Jeremiah 17, 9 says the
00:29:06.920
heart is deceitful above all things, desperately sick. Who could know it? Uh, and me personally,
00:29:11.780
as a Christian, I think that we need to have more holy day celebrations in terms of how Christians
00:29:18.920
are the people now that have been redeemed, purchased with a price by the son of God who
00:29:23.720
took on flesh and died on the cross for our sins. Every single day should be a holiday celebration.
00:29:28.200
I don't think that Christians should shrink back from celebrating something on Halloween because
00:29:33.700
there's a group of people who have done something that is now historically different than how Halloween
00:29:38.700
was celebrated in the past. Instead, we need to go out there and reclaim it. We need more holy days.
00:29:43.820
These things do not belong to the people who are not the people of God in the terms of the sense that
00:29:50.540
they are redeemed and purchased and bought with the price. Jesus Christ is already one. We celebrate a
00:29:55.240
day of rest every single day because I celebrated in Jesus Christ. My thought would be, let's have more
00:30:00.580
holy days and let's do them to the glory of God and show the people of the world what it really means
00:30:06.120
to be someone who celebrates those days. Like it even says in the beginning of Genesis, uh, I think
00:30:11.840
is chapter one. It states that the, the stars were created to measure time and for sacred days.
00:30:19.900
Like we have the ability as people redeemed by Jesus to worship Christ with holy days. Let's make
00:30:26.700
more of them. Let's reclaim the culture guys. That's what we need to be doing. And especially
00:30:30.380
just one thing I'll just add too, is that as we are practicing the sermon and this, it's not just
00:30:34.600
Halloween, it's everything right now. Uh, even with a lot of the stuff that you cover, Ali, just for the
00:30:39.080
explosion of, uh, transgenderism. And, uh, and so a lot of times when you look even at the, uh,
00:30:45.240
popular accounts, like libs of tech talk, a lot of it is just people looking at somebody using the
00:30:50.320
utilizing their pronouns saying they, them, and everyone's getting mad and upset or even mocking
00:30:55.620
them. But the losing factor, the bigger picture that that's really an indicative of the free fall
00:31:01.220
into nato paganism. So you don't need to be super conspiratorial about it. All you have to do is look
00:31:06.560
at Romans chapter one, uh, when he's talking about how people worship the creation rather than the
00:31:11.880
creator, the immediate by-product is that there's a willful distortion of God's created order, namely
00:31:17.580
between the masculine and the feminine. And that's really the heart and spirit behind and the zeitgeist
00:31:23.160
behind a lot of that cultural aspect. So it's not just the current, again, Halloween, again, our
00:31:29.700
historical research, it's always been a mere, a mere reflection of the culture at large. So given that
00:31:35.360
we're seeing this explosion of paganism everywhere, it's no surprise that this, the modern day is very,
00:31:42.460
it's very dark. I think it's going to continue to get darker. And think about this too, for the
00:31:47.280
Christians who are listening to this, I was listening to a podcast recently called sword and staff, and
00:31:51.000
they were going through some of the historical origins and development of Halloween. And one of
00:31:55.440
the people on the podcast, his name is Richie. He actually used to celebrate Samhain, uh, for what it
00:32:00.620
was. And he's, he's, he made a really good point. He says, Christians, if we're not celebrating
00:32:06.180
Halloween, the way it can historically and should be celebrated as Christians, we're actually
00:32:10.840
contributing to Samhain. Because if we think about the origins of Samhain in terms of it being something
00:32:15.840
fear-based where you're offering these things in order to keep these spirits at bay, Christians,
00:32:21.220
if we're afraid of Halloween and we're not going and reclaiming the culture, we're essentially
00:32:25.880
recreating that dead pagan festival in our fear. And I, that was really powerful to me, very palpable.
00:32:43.400
Tell us a little bit more, and I know you both have kind of mentioned what you think it looks
00:32:48.120
like for Christians to kind of reclaim this, but tell us a little bit more tangibly what it looks
00:32:53.740
like. And I know it could be different for, you know, every family. I'm not saying that you have
00:32:57.340
to lay out the exact rules on there or out there, but you know, there does seem to be a little bit
00:33:03.040
of a fine line. Like which houses do you allow your kids to trick or treat at? Like how scary do you
00:33:09.840
allow the decorations to be? What is the line of costumes and things like that? And can you really
00:33:17.080
say that Christians are reclaiming the culture if all we're doing is basically following around the
00:33:23.240
secular people, but in a little less scary way. So what does that look like?
00:33:28.460
Yeah. So I'd say at first it starts in the home and in the church, right? This is how Martin Luther
00:33:33.400
did it. He nailed the 95 Theses on October 31st for a very specific reason, right? That's reclaiming
00:33:40.420
Halloween. It starts at first in the home. And the reality is, is historically some of these,
00:33:46.540
these costumes in terms of mocking the devil was something that the, not the early church,
00:33:51.200
but the, that's what Christians had practiced. Uh, but really it just starts with celebrating and
00:33:57.520
honoring God where you're at. I mean, personally we do, I take my kids trick-or-treating, but at the
00:34:04.040
same time, I also celebrate Reformation day, uh, and venerating what had happened in the past when we
00:34:09.940
took the Bible back from the hands of the Roman Catholic church, right? Uh, we, as in Protestant
00:34:16.080
Christianity, not me in general, I'm not 300, 400, 600. How, how long ago is that? That was like
00:34:21.580
600, 400. It was a while back. Yeah. This is not a math podcast, so we won't judge you.
00:34:26.960
Yeah. But even for myself, like I said, uh, I have my own personal convictions where I don't see myself
00:34:32.140
in the, like in the near future, celebrating the modern day or participating in the modern day
00:34:35.960
version of Halloween. The one thing for sure that, um, you know, I'm getting, uh, married in about a
00:34:40.740
month, which is, um, very excited about. Yeah. But especially with, with my, uh, children, like
00:34:46.980
the one thing I think it's family worship. And we talk about self-government is that I would never
00:34:52.180
want to just say, Hey, guess what? You can't, you can't dress up just because I said, so you can't
00:34:57.960
dress up and hand out candy or whatever. Like I want to be able to disciple my children and explain to
00:35:02.900
them one who Jesus is, but also explain who Jesus is in relation to, uh, the principalities and powers
00:35:10.000
that he made a public spectacle over. And then, because I think by the time my children is the
00:35:15.100
way the culture is, you know, six, seven years from now, or whenever they're at that age where
00:35:19.520
they start being aware of what's going on, people going door to door, it's probably gonna be a lot
00:35:24.420
darker. So I think one thing is that you need to be able to not be paranoid about it, but at the same
00:35:30.020
time, you can't stick your head in the sand. Like I want to be able to explain to my children the
00:35:33.780
gospel through that Avenue for sure. And I think everyone needs to really think about this because a lot
00:35:39.960
of these ideas are, a lot of these things are not coming out of a vacuum. Even in spirit Halloween,
00:35:44.220
for example, uh, I went there, a couple of my friends did a little scavenger hunt and we found
00:35:49.160
a lot of things that were not just costumes of a fireman. Like there's an explosion just in the
00:35:55.480
marketing of Halloween. As of recently, I've just Ouija boards, uh, different, uh, objects that are,
00:36:01.480
they only have one purpose that is to tap into the unseen realm in a forbidden way that God says,
00:36:08.140
don't do because you have no control of what comes out the other side. And that's not to be
00:36:12.300
paranoid. That's just the reality of what God says in scripture. And God's not a kill joy. I mean,
00:36:17.280
God says in your presence, there's fullness of joy in your right hand. There's pleasures forevermore.
00:36:22.080
And what the new age and the occult does, they try and offer a counterfeit version of that.
00:36:26.780
Uh, but all of a sudden when, and this is why people who come out of the new age, like our friend,
00:36:31.520
Angela Ucci, who was just on Michael Knowles, uh, not too long ago when she was on our podcast,
00:36:36.020
like Jesus is everything to her because she spent just countless amount of time trying to find
00:36:42.620
satisfaction and wholeness that could be only found in Jesus through all these other false
00:36:47.120
principalities and powers. And also one thing when it talks about walking with a sermon and
00:36:51.920
understanding, uh, the nature behind, like, how do we actually deal with Halloween is that we need
00:36:58.860
to make sure one, we don't sensationalize it, but also that just because even as dark as,
00:37:05.500
you know, a certain organization, a person may be, it doesn't give us a precipice. It doesn't give us
00:37:10.620
a, uh, a license to misrepresent that person. So like one example, real quickly, there's a quote
00:37:18.240
that gets shared around on Christian websites everywhere. There's people, there's even people
00:37:23.100
that I love and respect that quote, this, uh, this is a quote by Anton LaVey that said, and he was the
00:37:29.840
head of the church of Satan. He said, I'm paraphrasing. I said, I'm really glad that children
00:37:35.240
at least get one night out of the year to worship the devil. Uh, that quote, there's no original sources
00:37:42.100
of where that quote comes from. Uh, every Christian website out there all quotes each other saying that
00:37:47.540
he said it to the point where the church of Satan actually did a tweet saying that we don't know,
00:37:53.600
like he never said this. We have no resources sources on our end. Now given it's the church
00:37:59.480
of Satan. Yeah. Okay. You could argue, you could take what he says with a grain of salt. But the
00:38:02.880
reality is, is that there's no resources that we have been able to find. And we've asked, it said,
00:38:08.260
Hey, if you can, if you know the actual source of, of an interview or somewhere where he wrote this
00:38:14.320
down, great, but it's not there. So I think what's important is that we always try and
00:38:20.500
accurately represent who we are talking about. We do that with cultists with all the research we do.
00:38:25.880
There's actually a famous incident where the Walter Martin, where he was on stage with a ministry
00:38:30.160
partner of his and, but this ministry partner has said something, they're talking on Mormonism.
00:38:35.060
They said something about Mormon. This partner said something about Mormonism that was historically
00:38:38.880
inaccurate. And Walter Martin publicly rebuked him on stage because he was that committed
00:38:44.000
to having integrity. Now, is Mormonism a false gospel? Is it a false gospel that can't save?
00:38:49.740
Absolutely. But that doesn't give us a precedent to make up something fake about Joseph Smith or any
00:38:55.860
of that. That's right, man. As Christians, we need to develop our, our convictions or even the things
00:39:01.100
that people say on the, on the independent line of two to three independent testimonies, right? Like
00:39:06.400
that's not what happened with that Anton LaVey quote. So therefore Christians, we shouldn't be
00:39:10.780
engaging in gossip essentially, because it's a big gossip fest, which then creates this idea that this
00:39:16.600
thing is a, is this real quote when there's actual, no, no historical sources for it. Just as in, there's
00:39:23.020
no real historical sources saying that Halloween is a recreation of Samhain, a pagan festival. That's from
00:39:31.520
neo-pagan fake lore. Uh, we don't want to live, uh, we want to live in reality as Christians. We don't
00:39:38.800
want to live, uh, not allowed. He disillusioned. And then just one last thing. And I'll just say one
00:39:44.500
last thing too, is that most of the new age pseudo history, if you look at the film Zeitgeist, where
00:39:50.340
they make up stuff that Jesus is a copy of the pagan gods and that, you know, Horace is born on December
00:39:55.380
25th. And therefore, you know, we celebrate Christmas on December 25th. So therefore Jesus is just this
00:40:00.880
pagan copy of the gods. They pride them. The new age prize themselves and think of that somehow this
00:40:06.460
is ancient wisdom and they're tapped into something. But the reality is almost all aspects
00:40:12.480
of current modern day new age that you see articulated on channels like guy on the Gaia
00:40:17.340
network and a lot of those other areas, it's all pseudo history that's based on people in the 19th
00:40:22.940
century with really no historical credentials. And so Andrew, just tell them really quickly about
00:40:27.640
that's actually where the arguments that Halloween was connected to Salem, uh, developed and that had
00:40:33.860
to do with their invention of the calendar. Tell them, tell them explain that real quickly.
00:40:36.960
Yeah. We talked about it just a little bit in the beginning, but it, it wasn't around the 18th and
00:40:43.160
19th century when there was certain people who have now had their own, the methods that they use to
00:40:49.700
interpret history have now been, uh, debunked by more modern forms of historians saying that the
00:40:55.760
analytical methods that they were interpreting history through were more of a biased in nature.
00:41:01.180
I named some names earlier in the episode. You can go back to that. But the, the main point is,
00:41:05.300
is that the actual history we have a Samhain is from at least the 11th and 10th century.
00:41:10.520
Whereas the documentation that we actually have of all saints day dates all the way back to the third
00:41:15.820
century and onward, uh, even with the date, for example, of celebrating all saints day and
00:41:22.980
Hallow's Eve on the 31st and the 1st predates that of the information we have on Samhain and
00:41:28.620
how they even celebrated Samhain to begin with.
00:41:42.400
So what I'm understanding, what I've gotten from all of this is what a lot of historical knowledge
00:41:47.320
that I did not know that I think is really interesting is that this, like in so many things
00:41:51.320
for Christians, it requires a lot of humility. It requires some effort to understand, uh, the real
00:41:58.580
origins, to separate facts from fiction, to discern between, um, a paranoia driven kind of isolationism
00:42:08.600
from, um, maybe cultural routines like Halloween versus discernment and making sure that we are
00:42:16.820
following the Lord and walking in the light. And so there's a lot of discernment. There's a lot of,
00:42:21.960
I don't like to overuse this word because I do think it's overused, nuance and freedom and wisdom and
00:42:29.760
humility required in understanding what Halloween is and how Christians can be a representative of Christ
00:42:40.900
Yeah. I think, and I think if there's, so they're just, again, I think nuance does, again, that can
00:42:45.580
be almost a pejorative, but I think that is really, there's no real clean way to cut this cookie of
00:42:51.460
sorts just because, I mean, we, we, we know even by even talking about this or kind of just stating
00:42:56.920
this, it might be polarizing for some people. And our, and honestly, we understand, again, I don't,
00:43:01.540
I hope, I don't really believe I have a whole lot of prejudice given that I am, I don't see myself
00:43:06.160
participating in it. But I think one thing I would want to state, even for Christians who state that
00:43:12.700
they're just doing it, you know, this is just the guise of like my, my own Christian liberty and all
00:43:16.620
that, and I'll leave it up to that person's conscience. But I think it's very important to
00:43:20.480
understand where people in the new way, especially the ex new agers are coming from in their opposition
00:43:25.740
and even their argumentation is that they're tapping into things. Again, I've never been there.
00:43:32.100
I've not, thank, thank God I've never been in a position where I've had to tap into the occult.
00:43:36.480
I had friends at a very young age who are 11 years old who were playing around with Ouija boards. I just
00:43:40.900
knew instinctively they were tapping into something that I shouldn't be involved in. But you need to
00:43:46.580
understand is that a lot of them have actually seen things that the Bible says, don't go there.
00:43:51.180
This is kind of like seeing that no trespassing sign, violators will be shot. You know, seeing,
00:43:56.460
seeing the fence where that sign is, but all of a sudden realizing you're in the middle of that property.
00:44:01.140
And then you realize there's a huge difference if you're on the other side coming out of it. And I
00:44:06.380
think that's something that is very, very important to at least understand where people who are ex new
00:44:10.900
agers that we love and respect are coming from. So yeah, it definitely cuts both ways. And I think
00:44:15.900
everyone needs to honestly, really, this is this really comes down to the matter of self government.
00:44:21.420
You know, it's your responsibility to train up your children in the way that they should go to
00:44:26.280
understand where the culture is headed and why it is the way that it is. I mean, given all that you
00:44:32.300
cover on your show, Alan, we know that there is a such a huge push to really try and indoctrinate
00:44:38.840
our children, everything from the drag queen, uh, uh, you know, events to all the books that are
00:44:45.680
coming out, you know, the, all, all the things that children, parents are finding out at their
00:44:50.100
school boards of what children are trying to be fed. There's definitely a huge, huge agenda out
00:44:54.880
there. I think it's very, very important. It's not just Halloween, but every single aspect we make,
00:44:59.360
not just, we don't just want to protect our kids, but we need to be able to disciple them
00:45:03.340
and really make them better than us because our children are going to be growing up 20 years from
00:45:09.040
now and something that I don't think we aren't even going to recognize today. Yeah. Let your
00:45:13.060
convictions be wrought by the Holy spirit and not by your emotional impulses, I guess is what I would
00:45:17.720
say. Yes, that was great. That's a great way to end. Thank you so much, guys. This was fascinating
00:45:22.820
for me. I learned a lot. I know my audience is going to love this. So thank you so much, everyone.
00:45:28.040
Check out the cultish podcast. They've got lots and lots and lots of good content that you're going to
00:45:32.460
learn from. I'll have to have you back on and talk to you about UFOs because that was another thing
00:45:37.100
I wanted to talk about today. We didn't, we didn't get to it, but we will in the future. So thank you
00:45:41.520
guys so much. Thanks, Allie. Thank you. Thank you.