On All Saints' Day

On Christmas, we see Santas and nativities.  On Easter, we see bunnies and crosses.  On Halloween, we see witches and pumpkins...  Wait!  No memorial candles or martyrs?  Whatever happened to celebrating All Hallow’s Eve?  Why doesn’t that Christian celebration have equal footing with the secular or pagan ones?

It may help to understand that All Saint’s Day dates from the early 600s (Wikipedia, “Halloween”), perhaps originating as a Christianized harvest or pagan festival—though not Samhain or Calan Gaeaf, as is commonly supposed, which are first recorded in the 10th century and from which we get a lot of our current Halloween practices of dressing up and extorting treats from others (Wikipedia, “Samhain”).  

The Catholic church still celebrates deceased saints during All Saint’s Day on November first, followed by All Souls' Day on November 2nd.  The former is a Holy Day of Obligation (a day other than Sunday when Catholics must attend mass).  The Eastern church, however, commemorates the saints on the first Sunday after Pentecost, and has done so since the late 800s (Wikipedia, “All Saint’s Day”).  Protestants, if they observe it at all, remember saints both past and present.  
As the United States is peopled with more Protestants and unbelievers than Catholic and Orthodox Christians, perhaps it's no wonder most Americans do not observe All Saint's Day or see advertisements in churches and stores.  Maybe we’d hear of All Saint’s Day more if we were Catholic or lived in a country that had it instituted as a national holiday, but for most, All Saint’s Day seems no more than a footnote in the history books.  A few Christians might buy flowers to put on graves.  The rest either stay at home with the porch light off, visit the local Judgement House, or gear their children or grandchildren up as princesses or superheroes to gather goodies from the neighbors.

It’s hard to say why the secularized pagan elements of Halloween have remained and the Christianized elements have just about disappeared, unlike at Christmas and Easter.  I suspect it may have to do with the way dressing up and collecting candy is a lot more fun than remembering all the loved ones we’ve lost.  

If Christians insist on observing such secular practices, I do wish more would dress up like penguins or Totoro instead of ghouls or criminals.  Why don’t more people decorate their yards with benevolently smiling pumpkins and shiny unicorns instead of scary fake corpses and large spiders?  *Shudder*

Though as for that, should Christians celebrate such a secular—and previous pagan—holiday at all?  Sure, few people still engage in pagan worship on Halloween, but how innocent are the secular practices, really?  Should we urge our brothers and sisters in Christ to celebrate All Saint’s Day instead?  Or would it be better not to celebrate either one?  

Scripture never tells us to remember the dead—nor Christ’s birth nor death, for that matter.  Scripture doesn’t forbid non-biblical celebrations, either.  We like to have things to celebrate and to mix up our routine.  If it’s wrong to celebrate a secular Halloween, is it also wrong to celebrate such events as Thanksgiving and Veteran’s Day and Talk Like a Pirate Day?  If it's wrong to celebrate All Saint's Day, is it also wrong to celebrate Christmas and Easter and Pentecost?

I believe this falls under the “disputable matters” category Paul spoke of in verse one of Romans 14.   He states in verses 5-11, 

“One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.  For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself... we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

“Why do you pass judgment on your brother?  Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written ‘every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God’” (ESV).

and later,

“For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died… So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding… [W]hatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (v 15, 19, 23b).

I suppose that the real questions, then, are “Does my style of observing a particular holiday glorify God?”  “Do my actions trouble or edify my brothers and sisters in Christ?" and "Do my actions present outsiders with an accurate view of the Truth?”  

How would you answer?  Put your comments down below.

On History

As schoolchildren, we form loose, disconnected impressions of history—mental pictures built largely on paintings, photos, and movies of the American Civil War, the Middle Ages, the Wild West, the Victorian Age, the Oregon Trail, prehistory, the Space Age, and so forth.  We have no idea how or in what order these events or eras connect—or perhaps even that they connect at all.  However, as our minds mature, if we properly pursue our studies in history, we start to make connections and see, for example, that the treaties made in the years before 1914 led to the “Powder Keg of Europe” and the Great War, and that decisions at the end of the first world war led to the second, and so on.  And then, at some point along the way, some students of history receive an epiphany; their brains  become able to envision history—not as a list of names and dates, but as a fully interwoven tapestry of human stories.  At that point, music history, political history, technological history, geographical history, and all the rest becomes one: a huge, streamlined, moving force of persons and cultures, causes and effects flowing on from Creation till now, shaping our present in numerous ineffable ways.   It’s a glorious—and somewhat frightening—vision.

 Whether we reach this interconnected vision of history or not, our worldview affects our conception of history, and our conception of history forms a large part of our comprehensive worldview.  That is to say, depending on the perspectives or philosophies we bring to our vision of history, we may conceive of ourselves and humanity in any number of ways, between seeing our place in history as insignificant and the value of a few lives as miniscule compared with either the Good of Mankind or an eternal existence—or on the other hand, seeing each life as a heavenly gift of equal, high value, capable of affecting history, and the future, as (in the much-quoted metaphor) the smallest stone can still send ripples through a pond.  From this worldview (which changes over time on the basis of new information and ideas), we think and act accordingly in all facets of our lives.  For example, those who believe in an evolutionary view of history, feel that some peoples are more evolved than others, and see natural selection as a desirable event may, as Hitler and Margaret Sanger did, actively participate in genocide, abortion, and other forms of unnatural selection, which someone with a religious or humanistic view of history would see as morally and ethically abhorrent.  Our worldview, then, can be affected—and preferably improved—by our understanding of history.  The same is true vice versa.

Reluctant students of history would be best off matching their historical studies to their non-historical interests.  For example, someone interested in technology could study great inventors and inventions of the past.  Someone interested in sports could read sport histories and biographies of famous players.  Someone interested in stories could read books like Rifles for Waite and Pride and Prejudice.  Someone interested in movies could watch films like Luther and Memoirs of a Geisha.  Matching what we learn to our interests in the beginning will counteract initial aversions to “history,” and a little exposure to the past may lead to curiosity about related matters.  For instance, a movie lover watching Downton Abbey might become curious about the business with the household’s new telephone, which may lead to them Googling information about telephone history, which may lead to a study of Alexander Graham Bell, which may lead to aeronautics and then perhaps the legend of Icarus, and so on.  For younger generations, the format of sites like Wikipedia lends itself well to their casual, episodic study habits, for they can easily click links to related terms and thus expand their knowledge based on their own curiosity rather than the dictates of the pre-selected material in a textbook.  Once students have laid a basic historical foundation in their minds and kindled an interest for certain areas of history, students may be open to more reliable, sequential, academic sources of information and willingly choose to increase their knowledge thereby.

In brief, the study of the world’s history is relevant and valuable for all people.  Historical knowledge makes it much easier to place historical references in context, to interpret current events in light of their historical context, and to compare current events to similar historical events so we can learn from past mistakes, extrapolate probable outcomes, and thus plan better for the future.  Our goal, I feel, should be a mature, integrated vision of history, which provides a framework for inserting new information.  As time goes on and we learn more—intentionally or incidentally—our historical vision will gain color and fullness, making us more self- and culturally-aware and better prepared for the future.  Best of all for those turned off by such a dry, useful-sounding description, learning history is FUN!  It's like reading a novel with an infinite number of volumes and abridgments to choose from; you'll never be bored with the right story in hand, and you're not likely to run out of reading material anytime soon.