Happy Halloween: Cultural Borrowings and Religious Syncretism

Happy Halloween: Cultural Borrowings and Religious Syncretism

Today is Halloween. When I first arrived in America three decades ago, I instantly embraced iconic holidays such as Thanksgiving and Independence Day. Not a day passes without my feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all the blessings this outstanding country has bestowed on me.

As for Halloween, however, I had a bit of trouble falling in love with the American version of it. To me, this was a traditional Christian holiday, referred to as All Saints’ Day, which was closely followed by All Souls’ Day. It involved praying for the souls of those departed and visiting the cemetery to pay one’s respects. I couldn’t quite warm up to the idea of watching horror films, dressing up in costumes with morbid imagery, or encouraging innocent children to overeat on high fructose corn syrup.

I have since reformed myself and learned to accept the exhilarating fun and excitement that Halloween represents. I was curious to research the origins of the dark imagery associated with the American celebration of Halloween. A popular explanation is that the scary costumes were meant to ward off evil spirits — it was believed that troubled spirits roaming about on that day might exact vengeance on the living, and so people disguised themselves as ghosts and skeletons for protection purposes.

This interpretation is often associated with cultural borrowings from the Celtic festival of Samhain, which symbolized the end of the harvest and the beginning of the darker part of the year. It featured feasts, bonfires, and scary costumes and guises. Scholars of the leftist persuasion jump for joy every time they discover some pagan influences incorporated into Christian holidays. They use such pagan borrowings to discredit Christianity.

To me, the fact that many Christian holidays may include earlier imagery or traditions by no means detracts from their Christian significance. It is, in fact, a positive phenomenon that certain pre-Christian traditions have been assimilated into various celebrations in predominantly Christian societies. Orthodox Christian liturgy closely resembles ancient Greek mystery cults in some respects. The English word Easter, for instance, derives from a pagan Germanic festival, and so does the Easter bunny, as rabbits symbolize fertility and springtime joviality.

It is better for such cultural traditions to be assimilated in the service of Judeo-Christian values than be preserved as competing religious practices and alternative moral codes. This brings me to another topic that I feel rather strongly about. I believe that Christianity cannot be fully understood and appreciated without acknowledging and honoring its Judaic roots.

That is why it pains me greatly when some individuals who hide behind the façade of Christianity espouse and promote antisemitism even to this day. There have been unfortunate historical examples to this effect, but honorable figures such as Pope John Paul II have clearly condemned such sentiments. The true understanding of Christianity could never and should never be antisemitic.

The Orthodox Church in my native country of Bulgaria is a good example of true Christian values. During World War II, the Church took an adamant moral stance and was instrumental in preventing the deportation of the Jews from the territory of Bulgaria proper. Some high-level clergy officials even announced that they would lie down on the train tracks to stop the planned deportations and, if unsuccessful, they wished to be deported together with their Jewish brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, while all the Jews in Bulgaria proper were protected from being deported (ca. 48,000), ca. 11,000 in temporarily occupied territories in parts of Greece and Macedonia could not be rescued.

For its strong moral position and humane behavior in protecting the Bulgarian Jews and directly opposing the Nazi directives, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was nominated in 2013 for a Nobel Peace Prize, on the 70^th anniversary since the deportations were successfully thwarted. The Church did not receive the prize, presumably since the Nobel committee has been heavily favoring leftist causes in recent decades.

Judeo-Christian values, supplemented by the Greco-Roman Classical tradition, and the Lockean moral philosophy of acknowledging people’s innate rights and the need for limited government, have an unparalleled record of contributing to the best societies in human history. This need not mean that individuals should necessarily be religious to abide by such values — I have numerous libertarian friends who effectively do so, although they do not believe in God.

It is important, however, to acknowledge the existence of objective morality, consistent with the American founding ideals, as opposed to moral relativism, which rejects any firm notion of “good and evil” and “right and wrong.”

So, I wish you all a “Happy Halloween!” and may God bless America!

[Featured image via YouTube]

Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.

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