Halloween's creation and recreation

https://calvinistinternational.com/2013/10/30/halloween-creation-recreation/

Face masks

Background:

1. As many know, Hong Kong police have banned Hong Kong protestors from wearing riot gear face masks. However, Hong Kong police are allowed to wear face masks. They're allowed to be anonymous. They don't don their police badges or other identification. In other words, despite the fact that Hong Kong is still ostensibly a democracy, Hong Kong police face no accountability to the law, whereas Hong Kong police want protestors to be accountable to the law. At least "the law" as envisioned by a corrupt Hong Kong police force and a toady Hong Kong government which kowtows to Beijing.

2. Hence protestors decided to wear masks of China's President (for life) Xi as Winnie the Pooh. That's because Xi evidently hates being compared to Winnie the Pooh. In fact, Xi banned his resemblance as Winnie the Pooh in China not long ago. Oh, bother! Silly old bear! Xi sounds more like Eeyore than Pooh to me.

3. All this is during Halloween season. As such, Hong Kong police may have a difficult time telling the protestors from the trick-or-treaters! Of course, considering how corrupt the Hong Kong police have become, maybe they'll simply go ahead and arrest anyone wearing a mask. Maybe they'll wage a campaign of fear against the populace. That'll be a lot of people though since it seems the vast majority of the city supports the protests. Hong Kong itself wouldn't have the prison capacity if the police arrested everyone wearing a face mask, but maybe the police will (illegally) take Hong Kong citizens across the border to China where they'll be made to disappear, never to be heard from again. Can the police (whom I shall dub the HKGB) whisk away thousands let alone millions though?

4. Hong Kong protestors are wearing other face masks too. This includes another Winnie the Pooh character, Piglet, who has become the mascot of LIHKG which is Hong Kong's version of reddit. Also, Pepe the Frog who is a popular internet meme including at places like 4chan, reddit, and Tumblr. And of course the Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta is a symbol against tyranny. For better or worse, modern opposition and resistance to tyranny are very much in sync with the world online. Especially in a tech savvy hub like Hong Kong.

It's that time of year again

Every time Halloween season rolls around, there's a perennial Christian debate about letting your kids celebrate Halloween. 

i) The history of a custom has no particular bearing on its contemporary significance. The past significance of a custom doesn't determine its contemporary significance. 

ii) A boy could wear could wear the costume of an exorcist. That way he's symbolically combatting the dark side.

iii) Wise parents pick their fights. This is not a hill to die on. Parents should avoid making their kids unnecessarily resentful. Save that for real moral issues. A classic mistake many well-meaning, but over-scrupulous Christian parents make is to alienate their kids from the faith by drawing the line over penny-ante issues. There will be real issues like Smartphone usage, social media usage, &c. Drawn the battle lines on serious issues like that.

95 Theses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvOWocILfTo

Memories of Santa

Some random thoughts about Halloween and Christmas. Some Christians oppose Halloween due to its allegedly heathen roots. You also have some Christians who oppose Halloween because it has its historical basis in the dogma of Purgatory and prayers for the dead. A Catholic holiday. 

The basic problem with that line of objection is that the history of a holiday is irrelevant to its contemporary significance. The very fact that some Christians feel the need to give people a history lesson on the real or alleged background of the holiday ironically illustrates the irrelevance of their objection. For if people don't know the history of the holiday, then that has absolutely nothing to do with why they celebrate the holiday. It doesn't factor in their thinking at all. 

And even if they did know about its historical origins, that isn't what motivates them to celebrate the holiday. Halloween has evolved. For instance, there was a time in the second half of the 20C where it was influenced by horror flicks. But currently it seems to be influenced by superhero flicks. Halloween represents whatever the pop culture makes it to be at any particular time. 

Now that's not a reason to celebrate Halloween. That's just debunking a bad reason not to celebrate Halloween. 

Nowadays there are seasonal stores that hawk Halloween paraphernalia. I don't object to professional Halloween costumes. But I can't help thinking back to my childhood when kids had homemade halloween costumes. That's more meaningful than taking the kid to the store and buying something off the shelf. That's something mothers used to make for their kids. It made it more of a family experience. Admittedly today's kids are probably spoiled by professional superhero costumes, so they'd sneer at anything homemade. 

As a kid, I think what I most enjoyed about Halloween was being outside at night. That was exhilarating. Although I have fond childhood memories of Halloween, there isn't much riding on that holiday one way or the other. It's a very thin holiday. 

Then there's Christmas and Santa Claus. Although some Christians oppose Santa Claus, here's an atheist (Louise Antony) on the topic:

I have a very strong opinion about this, one that puts me seriously at odds with some of my very best friends: I think that there are no good arguments for teaching a child to believe in Santa Claus, or for not telling the child the truth the first time he or she asks.  

Prima facie, one shouldn't lie to one's children. More seriously, one has a duty not to try to convince them positively of things that are beyond false–that are preposterous…In the case of Santa Claus, the risk of losing trust in one's parents' testimony is, I think, not trivial. Finally, when a parent actively tries to get a child to disregard perfectly sound arguments against a certain proposition, there's the risk that rationality will itself become devalued and the child will get the message that making sense is not terribly important. "But does a reindeer fly?" "It's magic!" Alexander George, ed. What Would Socrates Say? Philosophers Answer Your Questions About Love, Nothingness, and Everything Else (Potter Style 2007).

i) Although she doesn't quite come out and say so, what do you bet the subtext is her concern that childish belief in Santa Claus conditions kids to believe in (gasp!) God (shudder! shudder!).

Of course, one obvious problem with the implied analogy is that all kids outgrow belief in Santa Claus, whereas there's no correlation with regard to kids outgrowing belief in God. Indeed, some kids are raised in a secular environment, but then grow into faith in God as adults. 

ii) In fairness to Antony, I agree with her that if a kid expresses doubts about the existence of Santa, it's a mistake to argue with them. It's a good thing that they doubt his existence. That should be encouraged, not discouraged. 

iv) I don't agree with her that we should simply tell them the truth the first time they ask. Rather, I think it's more useful to draw them out. Ask them why they have doubts about Santa. Discuss their reasons with them. If they have a good reason, explore it and commend it. If they have a bad reason, explain why that's a bad reason. Don't co-opt their reasoning process, but help them to clarify their reasoning process. 

A Christian objection I've run across is that Santa Claus is a godlike figure. A figure with divine attributes. So it's a short step from losing faith in Santa to losing faith in God. However, that's a bad objection for a couple of reasons:

i) It's an argument from authority–parental authority. That's fine for young kids, but teenagers need to have a better reason for believing in God than faith in their parents' opinion. 

ii) It's a very bad analogy. I remember, as a very young boy, sitting at a little table in my grandmother's little kitchen, asking her where God was. She exclaimed that God was everywhere. So, pointing to the teaoit on the table, I asked her if God was in the teapot. She assured me he was.

Much as I adored my grandmother, even at that age I didn't believe God was in the teapot. I never confused God with Santa. I never thought of God as that kind of being. I didn't view God as an embodied being. To me, God existed outside our world. 

iii) I don't think parents have a duty to inculcate the Santa narrative. Although I think it's harmless, I don't see much value in that. I think both opponents and proponents make the issue more important than it is. 

Redeeming holidays

http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=23974

Concerning Halloween

http://americanvision.org/9630/halloween/#sthash.m1GsVrS7.dpbs

Halloween: Its Creation and Recreation

http://calvinistinternational.com/2013/10/30/halloween-creation-recreation/

Should Christians celebrate Halloween?

Every year Halloween rolls around, there are competing posts on whether or not Christian parents should celebrate Halloween. (By "should," I don't mean to suggest that Christian parents have any sort of duty to celebrate Halloween. Rather, it's a question of whether that's morally or theologically permissible.)

i) Let's begin with a bad reason to oppose Halloween. Some opponents invariably resort to a history lesson. They contend that Halloween is discredited by its allegedly pagan or Catholic origins. 

Ironically, that's a superstitious objection to Halloween. Christians who deploy this objection act as though the historical origins of a current practice cast a spell over the practice. As if the modern-day observance of Halloween is hexed or cursed by something that happened in the distant past. They resort to a superstitious rationale to oppose superstition. Somehow the past exerts a malign, invisible influence on the present–reaching out from the grave. But if you think a jack-o'-lantern is demonic, aren't you yourself buying into a pagan outlook? If you allow yourself to be spooked (pun intended) by ancient associations, aren't you guilty of the same mentality you profess to deplore? The devil is real, but a pumpkin is not the devil in disguise. 

The only relevant consideration in assessing Halloween is how it's practiced and understood today. What it means to current celebrants, not long-dead celebrants. 

Incidentally, I notice that popular articles about the allegedly pagan roots of Halloween aren't written by historians. They lack documentation. Different articles reproduce the same catch phrases, same stock examples. So this is a thirdhand narrative that gets copied and recopied.  

ii) Some Christians oppose Halloween because of the occultic elements. They quote OT prohibitions against witches and necromancy. That objection has more potential merit, but it needs to be sifted.

a) We're dealing with Hollywood make-believe "ghosts" and "witches." Don't confuse fantasy with reality. Don't correlate OT prohibitions with something that isn't the same thing. 

b) At the same time, by glamorizing the occult, Hollywood is lowering resistance to the real thing. So it might be prudent to avoid Halloween costumes of ghosts and witches.

c) Horror films have also spawned vampires, werewolves, mummies, and zombies. Unlike witches, devils, and ghosts, this are purely fictional characters. It's "occultic" in the Hollywood sense, not the Biblical sense. You might object to it on the grounds that it's decadent. But that's a different kind of objection. Same thing with serial killer costumes. It's morally dubious, but not occultic. 

iii) Little boys dressing up as comic book superheroes, or little girls dressing up as a Disney princesses, has nothing to do with the occult. So let's be discriminating about different types of costumes.

iv) Some churches host Halloween parties, to preserve the celebration, but avoid the occultic detritus. That's one reasonable compromise. 

Some churches host Hell House mockups. but that's so campy that it backfires.

v) You could also oppose Halloween on economic grounds, viz. it's a waste of money to buy loads of overpriced candy. 

vi) Christian parents need to pick their battles with discernment. There are kids who turn their back on the faith because their parents were legalistic killjoys who refused harmless recreation. Make sure you draw the line where it matters. Don't mistake appearances with genuine piety.