I've been nervous about wearing skulls because I don't know if it is evil or not. I used to love all things dark and scary, but now I don't. I threw away my horror movie collection and violent video games. I don't even celebrate halloween anymore because I don't want to be influenced by things that are not of God. But I still would like to wear skulls. The kiddie kind with the bows on them. But I'm afraid I will be representing evil instead of good. Is there any wrong in these kind of skull shirts? The cutesy kind? Or is it still evil? Or does it really even matter? Thanks. Sorry if this is in the wrong category btw.
There's nothing evil about skulls.
And there's nothing wrong with Halloween. Did you know that Halloween's origins are explicitly Christian?
The name "Halloween" is derived from [All] Hallow's Evening, shortened to Hallow's E'en, and finally Halloween. It's the evening, the Eve, of All Saints Day (November 1st). A Christian feast day that was intended as a time to remember and celebrate the lives of all God's people who have come before us.
The English word "hallow" is archaic, most of us probably only know it from old translations of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name". The word "hallow" is related to "holy". That which is hallow is holy, sacred. The English word "saint" is a word ultimately of Latin origin borrowed into English, it comes from the Latin word
sanctus, meaning "holy".
So Halloween is, at its core, nothing more than the evening before the Christian Feast of All Saints. Another traditional name for All Saints Day is Hallowmas. In the same way that Christmas is "Christ's Mass", that is the day we as the Church come together to honor the birth of Christ; Hallowmas is "Hallow's (Saint's) Mass", a day to celebrate and honor the saints of God who have come before us.
Also, you might be surprised to learn that virtually everything associated with modern Halloween is a very modern invention. Trick or Treating didn't exist until the early 20th century, it was the invention of American shop owners who were tired of kids playing pranks on their shops during this time of year. So they decided to organize and hand out candy. Dressing up soon became part of the fun, because costumes are always fun.
Pumpkins are ubiquitous in North America during autumn. That's why pumpkins, including carved pumpkins, are a thing.
The "spooky" stuff is basically all down to modern cultural innovation. In the Northern Hemisphere the autumn period is a time when the days get shorter, winter is getting closer, and people really like telling spooky stories. Over time these things just added up.
Halloween didn't begin as a spooky time, it slowly became a spooky time in America, and American Halloween then got slowly imported to other parts of the world. In most countries Halloween is still considered distinctively American, but one which non-Americans have embraced because of the fun of it.
If you've heard that Halloween is evil, or related to Paganism or Satanism, then unfortunately you are a victim of misinformation. Unfortunately even otherwise decent information outlets get this wrong, simply because it has become something so many people have said over and over again, a lot of people--including really smart people who should know better--never bother to stop and find out for themselves if the information they are reading is correct.
Halloween, like Christmas and Easter, have been victims of a misinformation campaign that, sadly, has only gotten much, much worse since the invention of the internet.
You'll probably find lots of articles and comments from people talking about the "Pagan origins" of Halloween, going back to the time of the Irish Druids and the Celtic festival of Samhain.
The big problem with that is there's no evidence of that whatsoever. There is nothing to substantiate that claim in the historical record. We actually know incredibly little, next to nothing, about the ancient druids. Virtually all of our sources about the druids come from hostile, biased sources, such as Julius Caesar's account.
The second big problem with that is we actually know when, where, how, and why about all these things. In the 8th century a Pope gave a homily to celebrate the opening of a church dedicated to "all the saints", it just so happened to be November 1st. Over the next hundred years it became quite common for Christians around Rome to celebrate All Saints on November 1st, in memory of the dedication. And within a couple centuries November 1st eventually became the official day on the Western Christian calendar to celebrate All Saints.
Prior to this, the Church celebrated a day to remember all the saints at different times of the year, usually in spring, between April and June. The most common month was May. Even today this remains the case for the Eastern Church, which celebrates All Saints Sunday as the first Sunday after Pentecost. It is only in the West that this feast was moved to November 1st.
And it had nothing to do with the Irish, with druids, or with pagan harvest festivals.
-CryptoLutheran
