Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 697 | Revealing the Real Origins of Halloween | Guests: Jeremiah Roberts & Andrew Soncrant (Cultish)

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Today we’re joined again by Jeremiah Roberts and Andrew Soncrant, hosts of the podcast "Cultish," this time to discuss the origins of Halloween and how Christians should view the holiday. We look at Samhain, a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season, and its origins and true meaning, as well as how it has historically been linked to Halloween's origins. We also talk about Guy Fawkes Day and the history of trick or treat and ultimately ask the question: Should Christians celebrate Halloween? If so, where is the line between celebrating death and gore and celebrating a kid-friendly festive holiday? We talk about the importance of understanding that we're in a cultural free fall into neo-Paganism and how this might contribute to our understanding and celebration of Halloween. What does good discernment look like in this context? Check out the Cultish website and Instagram! --- Timecodes: [01:11] New stickers! [02:06] Interview with Jeremiah & Andrew begins [14:43] How did Halloween develop into a holiday celebrating death? [20:02] Basing convictions on historical reality [25:31] Satanic panic [30:13] Discernment for the Christian [37:10] Reclaiming Halloween [45:00] Origins of Saimhain's false connection to Halloween --- Today's Sponsors: CrowdHealth — get your first 6 months for just $99/month. Use promo code 'ALLIE' when you sign up at JoinCrowdHealth.com. Hunter Douglas — get your free Style Gets Smarter design guide at HunterDouglas.com/ALLIE today! Patriot Mobile — go to PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE or call 972-PATRIOT and use promo code 'ALLIE' to get free activation! Covenant Eyes — protect you and your family from the things you shouldn't be looking at online. Go to coveyes.com/ALLIE to try it FREE for 30 days! --- Previous Episodes: Ep 666 | Confronting the Occult, Demonic Symbolism & Witchcraft | Guests: Jeremiah Roberts & Andrew Soncrant (Cultish) https://apple.co/3zf0M3P Ep 216 | The Rise of Millennial Witches https://apple.co/3TNMsao Ep 170 | Is It OK to Celebrate Halloween? https://apple.co/3TT6osm --- "R.I.P. ROE" Sticker: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey/products/rip-roe-sticker "Go VOTE" Sticker: https://shop.blazemedia.com/products/vote-sticker?pr_prod_strat=use_description&pr_rec_id=6552e1052&pr_rec_pid=7931910291709&pr_ref_pid=7926489317629&pr_seq=uniform --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed.

You can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Should Christians celebrate Halloween? The answer that you're going to get on today's episode of Relatable with my friends from the cultish podcast might surprise you. They are going to take us through the interesting history of Halloween, the true origins of Halloween that you probably have not heard before. I had not heard it. I learned a lot today. Your perspective on Halloween might stay the same after this conversation or it might change,

but I guarantee you will learn something that you did not know before. This is not only a fascinating conversation about history, but it's also an insightful conversation about the gospel, about Christian's responsibility to be a light in the darkness, what that looks like, the difference between paranoia and isolationism and being in the world but not of the world and living in a way that understands and believes that Jesus is really king over all of it. So I know that you are going to love this. Before we get into the conversation, a couple of things. Shout out to two new stickers that we have.

We'll put them up on YouTube. If you're watching, we've got our Rip Row sticker. We've also got our vote sticker. these are $5. Get them, pass them out to your friends, especially the voting ones. This could be a great conversation starter with your conservative friends who maybe are a little bit apathetic. Use this podcast. Use the resources that we provide to educate your friends about why politics matters so much.

There's so much at stake in all of your areas in all of your states. Also, please, if you love this podcast, leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Make sure you subscribe on YouTube as well. As always, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com slash All right. Guys, thanks so much for joining again. Today, I want to talk to you guys about a few things. One of them being the origins of Halloween. As you know, there's a lot of disagreement among Christians about if Halloween should even be recognized. Should we, do trick-or-treating? Should we only do fall harvest parties? Can we do Halloween that's not super scary and celebrating death? And so tell us first, take us back to what are the actual origins of Halloween? Is it a pagan death ritual or not? Well, yeah, thanks again, Allie, for having us on. It's great to be back on relatable. I think in this discussion, everyone does have those conversations,

whether it's okay to do a fall festival, whether I can just dress up like something like Super Mario or if I can not dress up gory. But I think a lot of times people don't see the bigger picture. One is that, again, this is a polarizing issue. A lot of, it's very, there's a lot of people that we love and have a tremendous amount of respect for that really have very different opinions as far as the nature of Halloween.

So I think before we even get into the conversation about whether or not you should quote-unquote celebrate or even participate, it's important to have context because ultimately as Christians, we need to make sure that we are in the pursuit of truth and that we also have integrity when we want to look at history. So in the same way, how a lot of pseudo-history will make up nonsense claims like the Bible was invented, ethnic council of Nicia, or somehow Jesus is a copy of the pagan gods, kind of like the film Zykeguise. Or a lot of those are articulated. in the Da Vinci Code, that's pseudo history. So it's important that we be have integrated and we look at this issue holistically. So we're really excited to jump into that.

Yeah. Yeah. So if we think about the origins of Halloween, I mean, even the name itself is Halloween. Not Halloween, Halloween, and it literally means like hallow, holy, you know. But the question comes today as people say, well, is this just a redressed pagan? festival. So the pagan festival in question that would be talking about is pronounce it for me real quick, Jerry. Salon. Sowan. It's spelled. It looks like Sam Hain, but it's Sowan. So I always pronounce it wrong. It just, it's hard for me to even say it. So let's stick at the early origins or the historical evidence we even have for Sowan. So people like to make the claims that Sallon is some ancient festival that we have this documentation that has been practiced, let's say, from the early, early medieval times.

and then was overthrown by Christianity. But that's actually not the case. The earliest documentation we have for Sowan comes from the 11th century. And I don't even want to try to pronounce the name of this work in question just because it's got an Irish pronunciation. So I can't really do that. But it's also known as the only jealousy of Emer. And it comes from around the 10th or 11th century AD.

And it's a recount of this. festival, but this festival never mentions worship of the dead. It never mentions things that people can state that Christians stole from pagan practices. Really, it never even mentions when it is to be celebrated. So, Sowan, or was that, was that right? Yeah. Sowan really wasn't even practiced on October 31st, November 1st, because the ancients of this time didn't actually use a Gregorian calendar, they base things off more of a lunar cycle. So the date when Sowan would be practiced, which was more of an event where they would celebrate the end of the year, would be something that would change every single year. Whereas our documentation again comes from the 11th, 10th century

for Sowan, but for All Saints Day or the veneration of some of the early church martyrs, we actually have documentation that goes all the way back to the third and fourth century of early Christianity. And we can go back to the martyrdom of Polycarp. Within the second century, there's a work that actually quotes and says, we need to look for ways to venerate. But early, or a little bit after that, we have a Christian bishop named Ephraim the Syrian. He mentions All Saints Day. And this is around 373. And also, I mean, it goes, it goes all the way back from the early third century into the ninth century. But it goes from the early Christian church father. They're celebrating the dead saints up to where the Pope initiates a specific day for All Saints Day and Hallows

Eve, which would have been October 31st, November 1st, but that wasn't done until around the 9th century. Okay. And that's one of the things that was really interesting just from us, just looking strictly at the historical origins. Because again, this is a very emotionally charged conversation. Right. And even for me personally, I don't participate in the modern day celebration of Halloween. That's just my own personal decision, my own personal convictions. So maybe that has been helpful for me to try and just look at the actual history of it. Because everyone kind of, it's very easy to, if you have confirmation bias, to try and immediately Google Halloween evil. or Halloween Christian, whatever your confirmation biases are. What I found really interesting is even when you go back to the original core, the idea behind All Saints Day was that during the time when Christians were being persecuted by Rome, you have people who are very famous, like Polycarp, like you mentioned, and even his story is incredible about how he gave his life for Christ.

But you have really thousands of Christians, many who are unnamed, who died because they would not give us. pinch on the incense to Caesar. So what you really end up seeing is that in the same way we have the tomb of the unknown soldier, like the All Saints Day was almost a commemoration to all the saints who laid down their lives for Christ and where most of them were killed either by the lions or in the Coliseum or they were killed by Nero, which is a very, very interesting history. So I think that's one of the things too is that when you look at the formulation of All Saints

Day, that was actually formulated. way before Salon. And what the argument is that people trying to say it distinctly came from Salon, the only problem is that you have a huge gap, several thousand years, in between the two holidays. Yeah. And I think it's important to understand as well is that what we see happen within at least the modern era or even during the Enlightenment period is we have people, for example, Jeffrey Keating, who wrote folklore, right, on Irish mythology, but it has been recently discredited that this folklore was more of a fake lore. And most recent historians have shown, one name specifically would be Ronald Hutton,

who is an early Britain and pre-Christian era of Britain historian, has shown that most of these folklore claims from the 18th and 19th century of what was actually occurring in Sam Hain, there's, there's, all of them are pretty much debunked. So there's a difference between the folklore and the fake lore that was created. Sam Hain is Sallin, right?

Yes, yes. Yeah. See, I did it again. I always say, well, I just want to make sure for people listening that they knew that you're talking about the same thing. Yeah,

that's my, 21st century American. 10 hours yesterday from Utah. So, yeah, I'm a little jumbled. But the point is, is that we have also within the 20th century, we have a rebirth of neo paganism and we have people trying to make claims that aren't necessarily true in order to bolster their own presupposition.

So that's what actually has been happening within modern era. And then we have the fault of Christians today actually believing some of this fake lore that has no historical evidence. Yeah. And also what's really interesting, and I'll let you jump in with what questions you have is that a lot of There's a huge distinction between the ancient history behind, and there's no doubt that people did, there's pagan throughout all eras of history that were tapped into things that are tangibly real. We talk about that extensively. We're trying to really sound the alarm bill, because culturally right now, we are on a free fall into neo-paganism. We are going from a fundamentally Christian society built on Judeo-Christian principles, where we are

currently on free fall into neo-paganism. So that's really important to understand. But when you actually look at, there's a distinction, though, between ancient history, but also and even All Saints Day, but even the modern day celebration. One thing that's very, very interesting is that one of the main connections, and we can provide some more resources, too, for those who are interested in checking us out at a later time. but one of the real valid holidays, which I was really, my mind was really blown about, was actually Guy Fox. There is a, he was known, infamously known, it was kind of articulated in the movie V for Vendetta. He had something known as the gunpowder plot, where in the 1500s he attempted to blow up London Parliament. That plot was foiled.

So around the 5th of November, you would actually have Guy Fox Day. And that was primarily celebrated that eve, that the time of Guy Fox, it was, uh, evening where there would be a bunch of bonfires. That's where the idea of people wearing masks came from. And there would be also would be a lot of elusive pranks. So what ended up happening is that as we know, America is a melting pot. And it's a mixture of a lot of syncretistic ideas. And so what ended up happening is that when the people who celebrated Guy Fawkes Day,

they immigrated over here to America. They carried over those traditions. So when you look at the bonfires doing pranks around, that time. And also, yeah, bonfires wearing masks around that time, that carried over to the United States. And that actually had a huge influence on how it developed in the early 1900s. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news

of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day's show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. My next question is how did it then develop in the United States in the 20th century into this dark and almost kind of, for some groups, really kind of like a satanic worship ritual and where we are

not just honoring the death of martyrs of Christians, but people are really celebrating death and gore and things that we genuinely, no matter where you land on this, you don't really want your kids seeing and celebrating that. And so, like, how did that happen? Yeah, and that's a great point, Alan, and I think as Christians, It's very important that we always adhere to the sanctity of human life. And that's also, you know, you had Christians in the first century that were doing that. You had families that would put out babies that were unwanted outside their house to leave to die. And Christians would go out in the middle of the night to scoop these babies up because they knew every single person was image bearer of God with unique dignity, value, and worth.

So I think that's also one of the things that a lot of Christians rightfully bring up the objections to the modern day celebration of Halloween, because that does come out a lot, especially. But one thing is to note, when we just talk about the historical, we need to make sure we understand, is that Halloween is always, it's very syncretistic, but it's also a dim mirror to the current culture at the time. And so how it essentially came about, and again, we can provide some resources

that people want to look at it further, is that in the early 1900s, it was really the celebration or the kind of the continuation or just the celebration with almost a disconnect from Guy Fawkes, just doing the pranks, bonfires, wearing masks. And so you really had young boys and just young children who would go out around the 31st, around that time,

and they would do all sorts of pranks and mischief. And it got to a point where it was kind of known as Halloween, but that was really what it was known for. Young people going out doing pranks, mischief, mayhem. But it ended up being a point to where it got so out of hand. There were several states that were actually considering banning Halloween. just because the pranks were getting out of hand. It was getting people were getting injured.

And so what came as a byproduct is that people just naturally wanted to figure out a way to quell what was happening. They want to say, you need to do a curfew, need to do a lockdown. We all know about those given the last couple of years. So the idea was to like, let's give these young people treats as a way to barter them, sort of barred with them, not to do these excessive pranks. And that's really where the idea, the moderate American idea of trick or treat came from. It said, hey, don't do these pranks. Here's some candy. Behave yourself, right?

And if you continue to behave yourself, we'll give you more treats. But then naturally, they wanted to get, they kind of, it was really a children's holiday where it was just children going from door to door. If you look like, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Like that was the initial spirit. It had a very like norm rock, like Saturday evening post. Norm Rockwell aesthetic to it. That's really how it came about. And also, one of the primary things is that you have syncretism. You also have this children's holiday came about that was connected to Guy Fawkes. But a big part of it, honestly, is capitalism. I mean, even if you look at right now, the most

amount of commercial, the most commercially industrial, commercially industrial holiday besides Christmas is Halloween just because of the merchandise, the yard decorations, the candy that gets put out. And so really it was just capitalism a lot of small businesses that, hey, people are going to door to door. They're doing this activity. It organically just became something that was celebrated in every state, this people going door to door. And people are saying, hey, let's start making candy specifically marketed to this day. Let's start making costumes that are specifically marketed to that day. And what is interesting because everyone's will say, well, what about all the gore, you know, all the darkness that we see it in a lot of today's,

celebrations. Again, it's a continually a marking of the culture. And so what you end up seeing is that as society progresses, you saw this in the 1970s, especially during the sexual revolution, that's where adults started to participate in it. You also have the explosion of the new age movement in the 1970s. Also, Halloween just took on a darker aesthetic. You had the satanic panic of the 1980s. But you also had a huge amount of influence of the ideas of Halloween being reshaped because you had movies like Halloween

by John Carpenter or like Friday the 13th. A lot of the 80s horror actually came about that was what's interesting, this would be another subject, but a lot of the 1970s, the sexual revolution, a lot of the 80s horror films were actually a direct byproduct of those initial films. And so the impression, the ideas behind that got continually a lot darker

in the 1980s, that was kind of really with a Norm Rockwell. And it's an idea of Halloween from Miss the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown turned into a lot. It just, I really believe it came a lot darker around that time. Yeah. Do you have anything to add to that? One thing I think that's important to understand is we need to base our convictions as Bible believing Christians on things that have a historical reality. It's okay to have a conviction about.

not celebrating Halloween because of the moral indignations that are going on today in our society. I get that, but we can't as Christians base our convictions off of historical inaccuracies if we are not ignorant about them anymore, like saying Halloween has pagan origins. It's absolutely false. The preconceptions for Sowan, it was a fear-based festival, which we know barely anything about in which that things would be offered to these spirits in order to keep them happy. It was a fear-based celebration, whereas All Saints Day and Hallows Eve was a celebration of Christ's victory, right? There was a public spectacle of mocking the forces of evil. Christianity is not a dualistic religion.

Like, Satan is not at the same level as Jesus. Jesus is Lord of all. He created Satan. And he conquered Satan. And that's what the celebration originally was. And what happens within our culture within the 20th century is when Christians are no longer being engaged in the culture, we allow celebrations like this to get taken from their roots and turn them into something else. And one of the reasons why Halloween is so dark as it is, is it wasn't around the 60s and 70s to where paganism tried to blend some of their beliefs with our Gregorian calendar that we have today. and they actually went out of their way to choose October 31st specifically as the day for Salin,

when it's not historically accurate. That's called an anachronism. So what we need to understand as Christians is we need to base our convictions in something that is actually historically accurate. But also, as Christians, we can't go and say, yeah, I'm celebrating Halloween as a Christian and dressing up as some, and not doing it in the Christian way. You see what I'm saying? Because it goes on both sides of the question. point. Yeah. Go ahead. Do you have a question now? Well, you finish your thought because it might kind of take us in a little bit of a different direction. Oh, okay. Yeah. And this, and again,

we have some tech issues that happened prior to this. So we're trying to really capture everything and the time that we have. But what it would really, when you go back even to All Sainstain, what the spirit was, I guess you say, pun intended, behind the initial, all hell was Eve and even right next to all same stay you think of like modern you think about a meme you think about satire like when you did like when alley when you did that video which i thought was hilarious uh sort of doing a parody of aOC when she is pretending to be getting handcuffed so really what you saw it was emulated the heart behind it was emulating uh in colossians but talked about how christ has made a public mockery and spectacle over all principalities and powers now so that

the initial intent when people were sort of dressed in these dark and on some of dark and spooky, it was almost satirical in nature. So when you think about the devil costume, like the red devil with a pointy tail with the ears, there's no Christian scholar or anybody who would agree that's what the devil looks like. So the heart behind a lot of even when you look at even some of the older pictures, there is still a dark aesthetic to it. but even that came from this idea of making a public spectacle. I mean, we can have the discussion whether or not even that was something right for the church to do at that time.

Right. But it's objective historic history. Like, this is what took place. And that's why you see a lot of that darkness there. And that does lead to the question that I had, which was about satanic panic. We talked about on the last interview that we did about, about. Stranger Things. And the last season of Stranger Things was kind of about this satanic panic in the 1980s. And spoiler alert for people who haven't watched it. But the satanic panic in this area kind of led them to

try to hunt down this guy that they thought was committing murders because he was part of something called the Hellfire Club. And so they just assumed that because he was kind of an outcast, it kind of different, that he was the one committing these murders. And he wasn't. So even though that's fictional. Like we could see how something that is superstitious and paranoid and is actually not even grounded in like good theology could lead people to make rash and bad and undiscerning judgments based on fear and not on faith in God. Can you, can one of you talk about like the distinction between the kind of satanic panic that leads to paranoia and the wise decision to say, you know what, whatever the origins of Halloween were, and we should look at that historically,

I still maybe a parent says don't want to participate in this because of what it has become, because maybe they look at Philippians 4-8 and they say, you know what, there's really not anything that I'm seen that's excellent and praiseworthy. Or they're looking at, gosh, is it Ephesians 4 or 5 that says, you know, you are no longer children of darkness, you are children of light. And so walking what is good and right and true. and who say, you know what, I'm just not going to be a part of this. Can you kind of tell us the difference between that kind of paranoia and proper discernment when it comes to Halloween? No, absolutely. Thank you, Al. And first thing I want to say is that a satanic SRA, or which is an abbreviation for satanic ritual abuse, is 100% real.

I've ministered to people who are victims of SRA, and it's like staring right into the eye of Mordor when you hear about what actually happened to them. And even people, they, in this particular case, it was someone, this victim, the people were actually using the Bible to say that it was okay for her to be abused in this way. So it's 100% real. And so there's two sides of the equation. And there was real. Sorry to interrupt. But they're just to add another example to that. I'm pretty sure they were as the church or temple of Satan.

I'm not sure which state it was, if it was in Texas or Arizona, trying to say that because their religion requires. abortion as a satanic sacrifice, then the First Amendment should protect their right to abortion. That happened just in the past year or so. So anyway, I just wanted to add on to that, that that is actually something that's happening. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And just, you know, too, there's a distinction between the Satanic Temple and the Church of Satan by Antaul Lave. Those are two distinctive organizations. Oh, didn't even know that. Okay. Yeah. The Satanic Temple are the ones when you see them arguing under the First Amendment that abortion should be a right because it's a religious right. That comes for the satanic temple. They're the ones who are really trying to enact

legislation. I think there is a video in the last year where they're trying to even articulate statues with the satanic commandments, I think it is. And so you definitely see, I mean, it should be very eye-opening for that is that one neutrality is a myth. That's for sure. And so that's how we are approaching this as well, too. So when it comes to like the satanic rich, so SRA is real, but also you had a lot of paranoia where there's false accusations that came about. There's a book called Erasing Memory, which was written by Lawrence Wright, who also wrote Going Clear Scientology in the Prison of Unbelief, who talks about this guy named Robert Ingram, who was a sheriff. These two of his daughters went to a Christian camp, and they uncovered these memories of satanic ritual abuse. and they ended up accusing their father.

And because of that, because he was somebody in law enforcement who was the sheriff, it became a matter of internal affairs. And then the dad had no recollection of this, Robert Ingram did. But as he began to do his own memory process, he started conducting memories. And not only was he a high satanic priest, but he started indicting other people within his other people law enforcement. So a lot of people went to jail because of this one accusation.

And he later retracted his memories, but because he had made this confection, there are a lot of people who went to jail. So you have two sides of the equation. You had real satanic ritual abuse, but you also had a lot of cases where false memories were conjured up, which people later retracted. So when it comes to the, like, why is Halloween happening?

Like, it is getting a lot darker and a lot gory. And I think when the conversation, I think honestly, and again, it's up to every person to practice a sermon. And I wanted to maybe backtrack. as well too. And I'll, Andrew, I'll let you jump in here as well, too. In Colossians 4, the Apostle Paul says this amazing passage. One of my favorite verses when it comes to evangelism, it says, conduct yourself with wisdom towards outsiders, making the most of every single opportunity, but let your speech be seasoned with grace and with salt, so you may know how to talk to each person

in every situation. But you realize the context of that letter of Colossi, he is writing to a city that is just a carnival festival of ancient neo paganism. It was really like a 24-7 burning man on steroids. So in this situation, there are people, I would say, who might be very, very sensitive. And even people who do come out of the new age, I think a lot of times what happens is that they have this realization that all this knowledge that they had was all this that was all rooted in satanic power. but then they look at the world around them, the current modern day celebration of Halloween,

and absolutely understandably, they want nothing to do with it. But also, I think it is an opportunity, there is a time where this is where families, they go door to door. I mean, it's one of the very few times

where people have an opportunity to go out and create relationships with your neighbors. I think it's a matter of, you need to figure out, how can I live out that verse in Colossus to the best of my ability? Andrew, what are your thoughts? Yeah, so for wise discernment, for the Christian parent out there, I'm a parent myself, is we need to not be ruled by our emotions.

Our emotions cannot allow us to believe things that may historically be inaccurate if we base our convictions on them. Jeremiah 179 says, the heart is deceitful above all things desperately sick. Who could know it? And me personally, as a Christian, I think that we need to have more Holy Day celebrations in terms of how Christian. are the people now that have been redeemed, purchased with a price by the Son of God who took on flesh and died on the cross for our sins every single day should be a holiday celebration. I don't think that Christians should shrink back from celebrating something on Halloween because there's a group of people who have done something that is now historically different

than how Halloween was celebrated in the past. Instead, we need to go out there and reclaim it. We need more holy days. These things do not belong to the people who are not the people of God, in the terms of the sense that they are redeemed and purchased and bought with the price. Jesus Christ is already won. We celebrate a day of rest every single day because I celebrated in Jesus Christ. My thought would be, let's have more holy days and let's do them to the glory of God and show the people of the world what it really means to be someone who celebrates those days. Like it even says in the beginning of Genesis, I think it's chapter one.

It states that the stars were created to measure time and for, sacred days. Like we have the ability as people redeemed by Jesus to worship Christ with holy days. Let's make more of them. Let's reclaim the culture, guys. That's what we need to be doing. And especially just one thing I'll just add to is that as we are practicing a sermon, and it's not just Halloween. It's everything right now. Even with a lot of the stuff that you cover, Ali, just with the explosion of transgenderism. And so a lot of times when you look even at the popular accounts like lives of TikTok. A lot of it is just people looking at somebody using the old utilizing their pronouns saying they, them. And everyone's getting mad and upset or even mocking them. But they're losing fact

of the bigger picture that that's really an indicative of the free fall into neo paganism. So you don't need to be super conspiratorial about it. All you have to do is look at Romans chapter one. When he's talking about how people worship the creation rather than the creator, the immediate byproduct is that there's a willful distortion of God's created order, namely between the masculine and the feminine. And that's really the heart and spirit behind, and the zeitgeist behind a lot of that cultural aspect. So it's not just the current, again, Halloween, again, our historical research, it's always been a mere, a mere reflection of the culture at large. So given that we're seeing this explosion of paganism everywhere, it's no surprise that this, the modern day is very, it's very dark. I think it's going to continue to get darker.

And think about this, too, for the Christians who are listening to this. I was listening to a podcast recently called Sword and Staff, and they were going through some of the historical origins and development of Halloween. And one of the people on the podcast, his name is Richie. He actually used to celebrate Sowan for what it was. And he made a really good point. He says, Christians, if we're not celebrating Halloween the way it can historically and should be celebrated as Christians, we're actually contributing to Sowan.

because if we think about the origins of Sowan in terms of it being something fear-based, where you're offering these things in order to keep these spirits at bay, Christians, if we're afraid of Halloween and we're not going and reclaiming the culture, we're essentially recreating that dead pagan festival in our fear. And that was really powerful to be, very palpable. Tell us a little bit more. And I know you both have kind of mentioned what you think it looks like for Christians to kind of reclaim this. but tell us a little bit more tangibly what it looks like.

And I know it could be different for, you know, every family. I'm not saying that you have to lay out the exact rules on there or out there. But, you know, there does seem to be a little bit of a fine line. Like, which houses? Do you allow your kids to trick or treat at? Like, how scary do you allow the decorations to be? What is the line of costumes and things like that? And can you really say that Christians are reclaiming the culture of all we're doing?

is basically following around the secular people, but in a little less scary way. So what does that look like? Yeah. So I'd say first it starts in the home and in the church, right? This is how Martin Luther did it. He nailed the 95 Theses on October 31st for a very specific reason, right? That's reclaiming Halloween. It starts at first in the home. And the reality is, is historically, some of these costumes in terms of mocking the devil was something that the early church, but that's what Christians had practiced. But really, it just starts with celebrating and honoring God where you're at.

I mean, personally, we do, I take my kids trick-or-treating, but at the same time, I also celebrate Reformation Day in venerating what had happened in the past when we took the Bible back from the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, right? we as in Protestant Christianity, not me in general, I'm not 300, 400, 600. How long ago is that? It was a while back. Yeah. This is not a math podcast, so we won't judge you.

Yeah, but even for myself, like I said, I have my own personal convictions where I don't see myself in the near future celebrating the modern day or participating in the modern day version of Halloween. The one thing for sure that, you know, I'm getting married in about a month, which is very excited about it. Oh, congratulations. Yeah, but especially with my children. Like the one thing I think it's family worship, and we talk about self-government, is that I would never want to just say, hey, guess what?

You can't dress up just because I said so. You can't dress up in a handout candy or whatever. Like, I want to be able to disciple my children and explain to them, one, who Jesus is, but also explain who Jesus is in relation to the principalities and powers that he made a public spectacle over. and then because I think by the time my children is the way the culture is, you know, six, seven years from now, or whenever they're of that age where they start being aware of what's going on, people going door to door, it's probably going to be a lot darker. So I think one thing is that you need to be able to not be paranoid about it, but at the same time you can't stick your head in the sand. Like I want to be able to explain to my children the gospel through that avenue for sure. and I think everyone needs to really think about this because a lot of these ideas are a lot of these things are not coming out of a vacuum even in spirit Halloween for example I went there a couple of my friends did a little scavenger hunt and we found a lot of things that were not just costumes of a fireman like there's an explosion just in the marketing of Halloween as of recently of just Ouija boards different objects that are they only have one purpose that is to tap into the unseen realm in a forbidden way that God says don't do because you have no control of what comes out the other side.

And that's not to be paranoid. That's just the reality of what God says in Scripture. And God's not a kill joy. I mean, God says in your presence, there's fullness of joy. In your right hand, there's pleasures forevermore. And what the new age and the occult does, they try and offer a counterfeit version of that. But all of a sudden, when – and this is why people who come out of the new age, like our friend Angela Uchi, who was just on Michael Knowles not too long ago. when she was on our podcast.

Like, Jesus is everything to her because she spent just countless amount of time trying to find satisfaction, wholeness that could be. You only found in Jesus through all these other false principalities and powers. And also,

one thing when it talks about walking with a sermon and understanding the nature behind, like, how do we actually deal with Halloween, is that we need to make sure, one, we don't sensationalize it, but also that just because,

even as dark, as a certain organization, a person may be, it doesn't give us a precedent, doesn't give us a license to misrepresent that person. So like one example real quickly, there's a quote that gets shared around on Christian websites everywhere. There's people who, there's even people that I love and respect that quote this. This is a quote by Anton LeVay that says, and he was the head of the Church of Satan. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, I said, I'm really glad that, I'm really glad that children at least get one night out of the year to worship the devil. Yeah. That quote, there's no original sources of where that quote comes from.

Every Christian website out there all quotes each other saying that he said it to the point where the Church of Satan actually did a tweet saying that we don't know, like he never said this. We have no resources on our end. Now, given it's the Church of Satan, yeah, okay, you could argue you could take what he says with a grain of salt. But the reality is that there's no resources that we have been able to find. And we've asked, it's that, hey, if you can, if you know the actual source of an interview or somewhere where he wrote this down, great. But it's not there. So I think what's important is that we always try and accurately represent who we are talking about.

We do that with Coltish with all the research we do. There's actually a famous incident with Walter Martin where he was on stage with a ministry partner of his. and but this ministry partner said something, they're talking on Mormonism. They said something about Mormon, this partner said something about Mormonism that was historically inaccurate and Walter Martin publicly rebuked him on stage because he was that committed to having integrity. Now, is Mormonism a false gospel? Is it a false gospel that can't save?

Absolutely. But that doesn't give us a precedent to make up something fake about Joseph Smith or any of that. That's right, man. As Christians, we need to develop our convictions or even the thing. that people say on the on the independent line of two to three independent testimonies right like that's not what happened with that Anton LeVay quote so therefore Christians we shouldn't be engaging in gossip essentially because it's a big gossip fest which then creates this idea that this thing is a is this real

quote when there's actual no no historical sources for it just as in there's no real historical sources saying that Halloween is a recreation of Sowan a pagan festival that's from neo pagan fake lore. We don't want to live, we want to live in reality as Christians. We don't want to live. Yeah.

Aloudi, disillusioned. And then just one last thing, and I'll just say one last thing, too, is that most of the new age pseudo history, if you look at the film Zitegeist, where they make up stuff, that Jesus is a copy of the pagan gods and that, you know, Horace is born on December 25th. And therefore, you know, we celebrate Christmas on December 25th, so therefore Jesus is just this pageant.

pagan copy of the gods. They pride them, the newies prized themselves and think of that somehow this is ancient wisdom and they're tapped into something. But the reality is almost all aspects of current modern day new age that you see articulated on channels like on the Gaia network and a lot of those areas. It's all pseudo history that's based on people in the 19th century with really no historical credentials. And so Andrew, just tell them really quickly about that's actually where the arguments that

Halloween was connected to Salon developed and that had to do with their invention of the calendar. Tell them, explain that real quickly. Yeah, we talked about it just a little bit in the beginning, but it wasn't around the 18th and 19th century when there was certain people who have now had their own, the methods that they used to interpret history have now been debunked by more modern forms of historians saying that the analytical methods that they were interpreting history through were more of a biased in nature. I named some names earlier in the episode.

You can go back to that. But the main point is that the actual history we have as Sowan is from at least the 11th and 10th century, whereas the documentation that we actually have of All Saints Day dates all the way back to the third century and onward. Even with the date, for example, of celebrating All Saints Day and Halle's Eve on the 31st and the first predates that of the information we have on Sowan. and how they even celebrated Sowan to begin with. So what I'm understanding,

what I've gotten from all of this is what a lot of historical knowledge that I did not know that I think is really interesting, is that this, like in so many things for Christians, it requires a lot of humility. It requires some effort to understand the real origins, to separate facts from fiction, to discern between a paranoia-driven kind of isolationism, from maybe cultural routines like Halloween versus discernment in making sure that we are following the

Lord and walking in the light. And so there's a lot of discernment. There's a lot of, I don't like to overuse this word because I do think it's overused, nuance and freedom and wisdom and humility required in understanding what Halloween is and how Christians can be a representative of Christ within Halloween. Is that correct? Yeah, I'd say that's correct. Yeah, I think, and I think if there's so, they're just, again, I think nuance does, again, that can be almost a pejorative, but I think that is, it really, there's no real clean way to cut this cookie of sorts just because, I mean, we, we, we, we know even by even talking about this or kind of just stating this, it might be polarizing for some people. And our, and honestly, we understand, again, I don't, I hope, I don't really believe I have a

whole lot of prejudice given that I am, I don't see myself participating in it. but I think one thing I would want to state, even for Christians who state that they're just doing it, you know, this is just the guise of like Mike, my own Christian liberty and all that, and I'll leave it up to that person's conscience. But I think it's very important to understand where people in the new ways, especially the ex-New agents are coming from in their opposition and even their argumentation is that they're tapping into things. Again, I've never been there. I've never, thank God, I've never been a position where I've had to tap into the occult. I had friends at a very young age who were 11 years old who were playing around with Ouija boards. I just knew instinctively they were tapping into something that I shouldn't be involved in. But you need to understand is that a lot of them have actually seen things that the Bible says don't go there.

This is kind of like seeing that no trespassing sign, violators will be shot. You know, seeing the fence where that sign is, but all of a sudden realizing you're in the middle of that property, and then you realize there's a huge difference if you're on the other side coming out of it. And I think that's something that is very, very important to at least understand where people who are ex-new agers that we love and respect are coming from. So, yeah, it definitely cuts both ways. And I think everyone needs to honestly, really, this is, this really comes down to the matter of self-government. You know, it's your responsibility to train up your children in the way that they should go to understand where the culture is head in, why it is the way that it is. I mean, given all that you cover on your show, Alan, we know that there's a such a huge.

push to really try and indoctrinate our children, everything from the drag queen, you know, events to all the books that are coming out, you know, all the things that parents are finding out at their school boards of what children are trying to be fed. There's definitely a huge, huge agenda out there. I think it's very, very important. It's not just Halloween, but every single aspect we make not just, we don't just want to protect our kids, but we need to be able to disciple them and really make them better than us. because our children are going to be growing up 20 years from now and something that I don't think we aren't even going to recognize today.

Yeah. Let your convictions be wrought by the Holy Spirit and not by your emotional impulses, I guess, is what I would say. Yes, that was great. That's a great way to end. Thank you so much, guys. This was fascinating for me. I learned a lot.

I know my audience is going to love this. So thank you so much. Everyone, check out the Coltish podcast. They've got lots and lots and lots of good content that you're going to learn from. I'll have to have you back on and talk to you about UFOs, because that was another thing I wanted to talk about today. We didn't get to it, but we will in the future. So thank you guys so much.

Thanks, Allie. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

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