Halloween’s pagan origins are pretty much undisputed, and can be traced as far back as the time of the Celts and the festival of Samhain (pronounced “sow en”), a three-day annual event from October 31 to November 2 set aside to celebrate the harvest and the onset of winter. The Celts believed that the spirits of the dead were able to interact with the living during that time, which naturally gave rise to all kinds of various superstitions.

Some of the remnants of these superstitions are still around today. For example, the practice of dressing up in a costume came from the idea that humans could deceive evil spirits into leaving them alone if they looked like one of them. The popular jack-o-lantern arose from a similar idea. People believed that by carving a grotesque face into a pumpkin and illuminating it with a candle that the evil spirits would be frightened away and not bother them. Even the practice of trick-or-treating came from these superstitious thoughts. The Celts believed that the spirits of the deceased would be stuck on earth unless they were sent off to the afterlife in a proper manner. Thus, these spirits would be “treated” with food, money, or something else of value, and those that were not would “trick” those who had ignored them.

As Christianity spread across Europe and collided with these pagan ideas, converts often found it difficult to abandon their customs due to the influence of the culture around them. To solve this problem, the church, under Pope Gregory IV, came up with an ingenious way to directly challenge these traditions by moving a Christian holiday near a pagan one.

In this case, the holiday was All Saints Day. Originally celebrated in May as a day of remembrance for Christian martyrs, it was also known as All Hallows or even Hallowmas. The word “hallows” comes from a Greek word which means “holy,” like in the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Mt 6:9). A closely related Greek word is often rendered as “saints,” like in Romans 1:7.

The church took All Hallows and moved it from May to November 1, its current date, right in the middle of the Samhain festival, and October 31 became known as All Hallows Eve. Over the years the phrase was shortened into what we know it as now: Halloween.

As superstition gave way to enlightenment, Halloween became a time of revelry, characterized by young people going house to house collecting food and drink for their parties and playing “tricks” on stingy homeowners who refused to give them anything. Eventually, Halloween spread to America in the late nineteenth century by immigrants from England. Despite the superstitions that surrounded it, most people were attracted to the aforementioned mischievous aspects of the holiday and began adopting customs from it without reference to its pagan origins. Thus today, Halloween is largely an American, secular holiday, and has become highly commercialized, raking in over three billion dollars a year in sales.

As a child, my parents let us participate in Halloween. For me, dressing up in a costume was the one chance out of the year that I could pretend to be somebody else and have fun doing it: One year our entire family went as the Smurfs; during the 2000 presidential election I went as George Bush while my friend went as Al Gore; and last year, my wife and I went to a small gathering with our family and dressed up as bacon and eggs. I will let you guess who was who.

Admittedly, it was also fun to go around trick-or-treating. The biggest fears we had were not from evil spirits, but from some malicious person who might poison our candy. So my parents always inspected every piece that we brought home, and they tried to limit our consumption as well.

I remember going to spook houses (haunted houses) with my dad and being scared. As I got older, I started going with my friends. Eventually I grew out of that when they ceased to frighten me and spending $10 for admission seemed like a waste of money more than anything else.

Overall, I never looked at Halloween as anything satanic, and I never saw any inherent evil in these things. However, as I have gotten older, Halloween has helped remind me that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against . . .  the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). I can turn on the news and see that there is evil in the world, but Halloween is a visible reminder that that evil is not some impersonal force, but the active, concerted effort of the devil and his fallen angels.

Some Christians, like me, see no harm in participating in Halloween, while others will choose not to participate at all. “One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind” (Ro 14:5). So regardless of these different feelings about Halloween, it should be a time when all believers shine the light of the gospel into the darkness around us.

Ultimately, the world is not going to know that we are Christians based on whether or not we dress up in silly costumes or pass out candy to little kids in the neighborhood. They will know we are His if we have love for one another (Jn 13:35). If we do this, then All Hallows Eve may be just what its name implies.

I have also come to appreciate that seeing movies is a practical amusement. In times past, books were the major diversion for most people; but in a day and age where people are constantly on the run and busy with family, church, and school commitments, reading seems slow and laborious. A person can see in a couple of hours in a movie what might take them a month to read in a book.

Aside from the entertainment and escape that movies provide, they are also an excellent gauge of the culture in which we live. This may be what I love the most about film. In fact, it is almost impossible for me to see a movie anymore without critiquing it afterward or engaging someone in a discussion about it. This view of culture in the movies can be seen not only on the screen, but in the theater itself.

It should come as no surprise then that yesterday I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot of the Planet of the Apes series. The original 1968 film, Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, and James Whitmore, is still just as entertaining and provocative today as it was back then. And who does not remember Charlton Heston’s famous line in that movie? See the film if you do not know what I mean.

In many respects, this latest movie parallels the subtext of the original, highlighting the folly of man in pursuit of his own ambitions. Whereas the backdrop for the original was the Cold War and the danger of global nuclear war, the latest film uses corporate greed and biomedical technology as its basis. Of course, this is not the first film to use those ideas. A few years back, I Am Legend used a medical premise as the basis for its storyline, as did Steven King’s The Stand. And of course, the denunciation of greed, particularly corporate greed, is a longstanding theme in Hollywood, from Alien to Avatar.

The folly of man is not the only theme in Planet of the Apes. The 1968 movie is also a disturbing and unsettling look at what happens when the natural roles of man and animals are reversed and twisted. Seeing humans hunted, killed, and locked up by apes is enough to bother anyone, and every time I watch that movie I am relieved because I know that this is not the way the world is. And nobody feels sorry for the apes either; they are always viewed as the antagonist. This is because of an inescapable truth: man is made in God’s image, and no matter how foolish he is or how much he messes up the world, nothing can take him away from the rightful place that God gave him to “rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Ge 1:28).

This latest film portrays the apes quite differently. In fact, a good portion of it is dedicated to building sympathy and compassion for them, and even begins to blur the distinction between man and animal. All this takes place before the apes become the aggressors, prepping the audience to side with the animals against the humans. I noticed more than once during the movie that people in the theater reacted negatively whenever an ape was killed, even if it was killed to protect human life. And I am sure that at least once when the apes won a victory over their human aggressors I heard cheering in the crowd.

I say all this only as an observation, not as a criticism. This latest film has many positive elements in it and is both thought-provoking and entertaining. But one should not overlook the evolution that has taken place in our culture over the past 40 years since Planet of the Apes first hit the big screen.

So if you are looking for a fun movie to see this coming weekend, Rise of the Planet of the Apes may be for you. And if you have some extra time, check out the original movie as well. If nothing else, these films are sure to raise some interesting questions, the answers to which can be found in the pages of God’s Word.

And if you leave the movie disturbed, then take comfort in knowing that it is just a movie.