Halloween and our passion for holidays

Happy Halloween! Photo: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

One of the defining characteristics of our people is undoubtedly our love of holidays. Our calendar alone has at least a dozen public holidays that traditionally come with a day off. And when you add all the professional observances and special days dedicated to just about everything imaginable, you begin to wonder how we manage to squeeze them all into 365 days. Yet somehow, we still find room to adopt traditions from abroad.

Seriously, who had even heard of Valentine's Day thirty years ago? Back then, hardly anyone knew about it. Today, even if you wanted to forget it, you wouldn't be allowed to.

Halloween has followed much the same path. At first, nobody knew the slightest thing about it. Then, thanks to the video parlors that flourished during perestroika, we discovered that Americans had a day when people dressed up as all manner of evil spirits and monsters. Fast-forward to today, and even schoolchildren show up for class on Halloween looking so grotesque that when you arrive to pick up your child, you find yourself wondering whether you've walked into a public school or stumbled into a nightmare from the horror movie you watched the night before.

Apparently, our own traditions aren't enough for us. Someone else's are always more appealing.

Of course, I realize there will be people eager to disagree with me. And most of their objections will probably revolve around a very fashionable argument: that we belong to the civilized world and should behave accordingly.

Well, I'm not even going to argue. If it's the civilized world you want, then so be it. After all, there are Christians in that world, too. And it is precisely Christians whom I would like to invite to reflect for a moment.

Halloween, then, is essentially a celebration of evil spirits. But before you rush to correct me and explain what the holiday is really about, hear me out.

I know perfectly well the history and meaning of Halloween. None of that changes my conviction that, at its core, it is a celebration of evil spirits – nothing more and nothing less.

Of course, nobody is actually summoning demons, worshiping them, performing ritual orgies, or offering sacrifices on Halloween. Quite the opposite: those celebrating treat the whole subject of evil spirits as a joke.

But that is precisely the worst part.

Perhaps the greatest victory the enemy of mankind has achieved came when secular society stopped taking him seriously. He may exist, but in people's minds he has effectively disappeared. He has become a mythical creature, something harmless and hardly worth fearing.

Hence the Halloween games, the painted faces and costumes, and the tendency to treat spiritual realities as nothing more than entertainment.

And perhaps none of this would matter if the enemy himself took it just as lightly.

But he doesn't.

He knows perfectly well that even seemingly harmless flirtation with evil can lead anyone into a fall. After all, if the enemy is neither frightening nor dangerous, it becomes easy to let down your guard and lose all sense of danger. And he will certainly take advantage of that.

Have you ever noticed, for example, how many of the enemy's tricks Orthodox Christians now accept as perfectly normal parts of life?

“Anger is a natural human emotion.”
“Feeling offended is a normal response when someone violates your personal boundaries.”
“Put yourself first.”
“It's unhealthy to bottle up your feelings and emotions.”

These are just a few of the foolish ideas I've heard from Orthodox Christians or encountered on their social media pages. And people don't merely say or post these things. They actually live by them. After all, how easy life becomes when you no longer resist your passions and can explain away every sin as something perfectly natural.

And we're hardly alone on this path. The much-admired “civilized world” has already traveled it and is now far ahead of us, treating even the most grievous vices and perversions as perfectly natural.

At some point, we were offered a substitute for the truth, and we failed to notice. And how could we have noticed when we so often see nothing wrong even with dressing our own children up to resemble evil spirits?

Meanwhile, without realizing it, we ourselves have set foot on this road. Now our children are following in our footsteps, taking on the outward appearance of demons while we allow ourselves to become enslaved to them inwardly.

For now, the way out is still relatively simple. We need to clear our minds of corrupt and misguided notions and remember that the Orthodox faith is inseparable from ascetic discipline.

Once we return to the Church's ascetic tradition, we will quickly begin to recognize what is truly natural within us and what is foreign, acquired, and sinful.

Our children, meanwhile, need to learn how to stand apart from the crowd.

Throughout history, faith has always demanded faithfulness to God. I believe the time has come to teach our children that this faithfulness matters more than friendships, teachers' assignments, or public opinion.

As for finding the right words to make Halloween lose its appeal in their eyes, that is something each parent must work out for themselves.

Still, however different we and our families may be, everything begins with one simple thing: if we want our children to listen to us, we have to talk to them.

And not just when Halloween is approaching, but all the time.

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