Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270116
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
If you have, it just might be that the little folks who in past years might have been devils or ghosts or goblins on your doorstep, are now angels or animals or the Apostle Paul in the church basement.
In growing numbers of churches, ``Hallelujah Night'' - or some equivalent of it - is battling with Halloween for the souls of their children.
``A lot of people who are not `churched' believe goblins and demons and Satan are a bunch of fairy tales, but our people take them very seriously,'' said the Rev. John Nadeau, youth minister at Valley Word Ministries.
``We believe Satan has basically perverted this whole thing of Halloween. .. We want to avoid any association with Satan and anything that would have to do with him. We believe we should encourage our children to avoid any contact with any cultic practices or demonic practices'' such as Halloween, he said.
Like an increasing number of congregations, particularly among more theologically conservative Christian denominations, Valley Word offers its youth an alternative to traditional trick-or-treating.
``We'll have Hallelujah Night ... with carnival games, food concessions, teens performing skits. My wife and I are clowns, so we're going to do clown skits. There will be helium balloons, Christian music, a cake walk. And there'll be lots of candy,'' Nadeau said.
Many churches offer activities similar to traditional Halloween fare, but with a Christian twist.
At Nadeau's church, for instance, there will be a costume contest, but ``there are no witches, ghosts, goblins or black cats. Kids are encouraged to dress up, but as Bible characters or anything else as long as it's not `Halloween.' If they come like that, they will not be admitted into the contest.''
New Life Temple Pentecostal Holiness Church also calls its Halloween alternative Hallelujah Night.
The idea is to get rid of the ``garbage that has been fed to them for years about ghouls and goblins and instead use that night as a time to praise Jesus,'' said youth pastor Keith Wingfield.
``Our main message is to celebrate that Jesus is alive."
The New Life event includes supper, games, and ``tons of candy.''
The only acknowledgement of traditional Halloween characters will be a pie-throwing contest at an adult dressed as Satan.
``We want to do things along the lines with what kids are used to doing, but with a true message that Jesus is Lord,'' Wingfield said. ``We want them to know they don't have to give in to what everybody else is doing to have fun.''
One of the aims of the evening at many churches, in fact, is to encourage children to bring their friends to church. Many give prizes to the child who brings the most non-member guests.
Many congregations also encourage parents to join their children for the evening, to see and participate in the activities.
Wingfield acknowledged that he had participated in typical childhood pranks associated with the holiday - such as rolling a house with toilet paper - but is glad that ``parents are having second thoughts about that. I think it's good to see people waking up.''
Although it is ``not a major consideration,'' the issue of how to deal with the holiday comes up for seminarians, many of whom are working as youth pastors or leaders, said Paige Patterson, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
``We encourage the idea of having fun on Halloween, but we discourage activities that would give any kind of credibility to goblins or witches or that kind of thing,'' he said. He prefers a Martin Luther festival, commemorating Luther's nailing of his 95 theses on the Wittenburg, Germany, Church door on Oct. 31, 1517. That is widely recognized as the birthday of the Reformation movement that led to Protestantism.
Though he sees nothing wrong with ``redeeming'' non-Christian holidays by converting them to Christian observances, Patterson has observed an apparently growing concern with ``spiritual misunderstandings'' associated with Halloween.
Objections to the conventional celebration of the holiday focus on its origins.
The holiday's current name comes from the Christian festival of All Hallow's Eve - preceding All Saints Day - which was created, in part, to counter the non-Christian influences of the earlier festivals.
The ancient Celtic people of Britain and Ireland observed the festival of Sambain on Oct. 31, which was also their New Year's Eve. Huge bonfires were lit to scare off evil spirits, and souls of the dead were supposed to revisit their homes.
According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, it was also ``the only day on which the help of the devil was invoked'' for ``divinations concerning marriage, luck, health and death.''
Those associations with Satan-worship worry many of the pastors and youth leaders at the churches that now offer alternative celebrations.
Nadeau said that despite common belief to the contrary, there are still ``occurences on Halloween night that are cultic in nature.'' In his previous home in Winchester, he said, there were law-enforcement investigations of reported animal sacrifices and the painting of demonic symbols on barn doors.
``People can shrug it off, but there is evidence today that there are acting witches,'' including numerous guests on TV talk shows, he said.
Keywords:
SAMHAIN
by CNB