Is it Time for Christians to Take Over Halloween?

Major Christian holidays seem to present as many problems as they do joys for true believers these days. The commercialization of Christmas has ostensibly taken much of the reverence and supposed true meaning out of the holiday. Trying to put the real meaning back in Christmas carries a few risks, however. In recent years it has become better known that the whole Christmas tradition was created by co-opting and cobbling together a group of pagan holiday celebrations rooted in Babylon, Rome and northern Europe. The truth is that no one knows the precise day of Christ's birth, but Christmas was established as something of a marketing tool to recruit people who simply liked a good party in the middle of winter. So in some respects, culture has hewn back toward the nature of its original origins.

Yet when it comes to pagan holidays gone out of control, it's hard to beat Halloween. Evolved from an ancient Celtic tradition celebrating the border between life and death, Halloween has blossomed into a giant autumnal holiday that no one group--religious or otherwise-- seems to have control over. What was once little more than an excuse for kids to dress up and go trick or treating has turned into a mega-business retail holiday with an estimated $1.55 billion spent on candy, lavish parties, costumes and decorations.

The Halloween season has become an excuse for millions of Americans to playfully (for the most part) celebrate the macabre by decorating their homes with endlessly gory tributes to the living dead. If some Christian groups choose to protest, they ought to take a look at their own Bible before complaining about depictions of violence, gore, blood and provocative sexual depravity. Because the Bible's got all that and more. Even genocide makes its mark in the Bible-- and not through minor characters--but through leading patriarchs of the faith tradition.

The early kings and leaders of Israel and Judah tended to be bloodthirsty warriors ready and generally willing to pick a fight with anyone God told them to confront. Typically God was jealous of a whole panoply of other gods worshipped by neighboring nations. God's instructions as they have been characterized in the Old Testament were to wipe out these competing nations, right down to the last man, woman and child. Even pregnant women had their wombs ripped open to ensure that no remnant of these cultures were left to infest God's chosen people, Israel.

The man who would rise through the ranks of society to become King David of Israel was particularly efficient in the execution of God's brand of genocide. In 1 Samuel 27:9 we find a description of David's methods: "Whenever David attacked an area, he did not leave a man or woman alive," with the reasons outlined in verse 11, "He did not leave a man or woman alive to be brought to Gath, for he thought, "They might inform on us and say, "This is what David did."

This was calculated genocide, plain and simple. David was not even working on behalf of God during the murderous raids described, but was instead living in exile from Israel and seeking to find favor with the Philistine king named Achish, whom he served as a general. David had been chased out of his own country by Saul, the reigning king of Israel.

David was so good at his job of murder and genocide that King Achish of Philistine figured that David's own people would never want him back. This is what Achish had this to say of his protégé as quoted in 1 Samuel 27:12, "Achish trusted David and said to himself, "He has become so odious to his people, the Israelites, that he will be my servant forever."

Back home among the Israelites, King Saul could not seem to get God's attention (or protection) and was afraid of losing in war. So he turned to a witch for answers. In I Samuel 28:5-9 we find Saul consulting a woman of the occult: "When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart. He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. Saul then said to his attendants. "Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her."

"There is one in Endor," they said.

Now Saul had banned all such mediums in his kingdom by order of the Lord. So ignoring his own dictums, Saul disguised himself and went to the woman. "Consult a spirit for me," he said, "and bring up for me the one I name."

But the woman said to him, "Surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and spiritists from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?"

Saul promises to protect the witch if she will call up the spirit of Samuel, a dead prophet favored by God whom Saul knew in life and feels a need to consult. The witch successfully raises the spirit of Samuel only to realize that the man in disguise who is asking for the séance is actually King Saul himself.

The spirit of Samuel has a rude surprise for Saul, however, and tells him that his failure to carry out the "fierce wrath" of God by committing total genocide against a race of people known as the Amalekites has caused Saul to fall out of favor with God. It's a sad day in Bible Land when you are not willing to kill everyone in the name of God.

The Old Testament is chock full of stories like these, people committing violent acts against each other. It pulls no punches in descriptions of violent gore, as evidenced her in 2 Samuel: "So David gave an order to his men, and they killed them. They cut off their hands and feet and hung the bodies by the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-Bosheth and buried it in Abner's tomb at Hebron."

Judges 19 features an odd, disturbing story about a man who offers shelter to an honored overnight guest only to be confronted by an unruly crowd outside the house claiming rights to abuse the man because he is a stranger in town that showed up too late to deserve protection. Seeking to protect the guest in his home, the man of the house instead offers up his "virgin concubine" to the group of "wicked men of the city" who were surrounding his house. He tells them: "No, my friends, don't be so vile. Since this man is a guest, don't do this disgraceful thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing."

This disgraceful scenario bears similarity to the more famous story of Lot in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. In that event two angels of the Lord arrive at the house of a man named Lot who senses their importance and elects to protect them in his home. To placate the unruly crowd, he offers up his two daughters as ransom. And this passes for morality? If modern day culture devalues women through exploitation as so many are prone to claim, then the Old Testament ought to be banned reading.

The outcome for one of the woman depicted in the story in Judges is grim. The owner of the house chooses to hand over his concubine to the violent band of lustful men as ransom for his protected guest. Apparently the virgin daughter mentioned earlier in the story is spared this dangerous disgrace. But the concubine is to be sacrificed to protect the honor of the man's guest: "So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go."

After suffering an apparently horrific night of abuse, the concubine collapses and dies on the man's doorstep. So what does the owner of the house do? Judges 2:19: 29 describes it thus: ..."he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. Everyone who saw it said, "Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Think about it! Consider it! Tell us what to do!"

This lurid mix of sex (or punishment for it) and violence is rife in the Bible. In Judges 21:11, instructions are given to the Israelites on how to wipe out a neighboring culture in order to secure wives for a group of people called the Benjamites. "This is what you are to do," they said. "Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin. (They) found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan."

Nothing is said about how the killers determine the virginity among their victims. The Bible contains many such instances in which the provocative truth behind a circumstance is apparently exempt from scrutiny or deemed somehow unimportant to the main thread of the story. In a strange scene from Samuel 3:13, King David claims his right to a woman named Michal, demanding, "Give me my wife Michal, whom I betrothed to myself for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins."

Thank goodness the Judeo-Christian tradition did not adopt that type of currency or we might be giving out foreskins for Trick or Treat.

The violent narrative of the Old Testament marches along spiked with stabbings, calculated assassinations and one frightful event in which a woman nails the head of a sleeping king to the floor with a tent stake driven through his temple with a hammer. In another colorful snuff scene a woman named Jezebel is run over by a chariot in the streets. Her blood spatters the walls and her body is left for the dogs, who devour everything but her skull. Thus her punishment for persecuting the Israelites was prophetically fulfilled.

The whole legacy of the Old Testament God seems spattered in blood. Blood sacrifices to God were a required ritual among the Israelites. Entire chapters of the Bible are devoted to the proper practices for the killing and bleeding of goats, cattle and lambs on the altar of God. And whenever the people of Israel wander away from these bloody sacrifice ritutals or fashion themselves a golden calf or two, they are ruthlessly punished by God for their unfaithfulness. God also commands people to stone each other to death for simple offenses such as adultery. Meanwhile kings and nobles marry hundreds of wives and have concubines at will. But if you're not on the rich or favored side of life, it's an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. It seems the model and method for modern politics was established early on.

Mixed with all this wrath and pillage are some conflictingly strange moral messages, such as when God tells the Israelites to set aside specific cities where people who accidentally kill someone can retreat until the offense is forgotten. Old Testament Bible Land is a harsh, confusing reality where seemingly casual offenses can carry great consequences while involuntary manslaughter is forgiven if you run away far and fast enough.

Like all good horror films and holiday traditions there is a bit of humor mixed in with the murder and mayhem as well. When King David sends some of his men to offer a treaty to a group called the Ammonites, the men get abused like a scene from a Monty Python film. "So Hanun seized David's men, shaved them, cut off their garments in the middle of the buttocks, and sent them away." You can guess how David responded. He gathered his army and wiped out the offending party.

In the end however, there is vindication and redemption available to those who repent in the eyes of God. Yet some characters--including King David--do not find total redemption because they were simply too nasty during life even for the Lord to abide. Toward the end of his time on earth, King David suggests building a massive temple to the Lord but God denies the offer because David simply "has too much blood on his hands." First God commands David to kill at will, then punishes the flawed king for his murderous fervor. Instead, David's son Salomon is allowed to build the temple and become the wisest man in the world. The moral of the story is that even if you carry out the full instructions of God, your reward may not be what you expect.

The point in all this is that Christians who might choose to protest the apparent gore-obsessed celebration of Halloween in modern times have little grounds to complain if they consider their own colorfully violent traditions documented in their book of faith. The Bible is the original and perpetual celebration of gore, murder and mayhem. All with God's approval, of course.

Therein lies the hypocritical offense. The violence and death depicted around the Halloween season are supposedly bad because they might be associated with the occult. Yet the violence, death and genocide depicted in the Bible are good because they are supposedly commanded by God.

It seems like we ought to figure this whole violence and murder thing out before we go choosing good guys and bad.

Or, it may just be a matter of time before Christians elect to co-opt the popular Halloween season for themselves as well, just like they did with the pagan holidays we now celebrate collectively during Christmas. Lord knows, they have enough spooky violence in the tradition to go around.