Halloween, Is it for Real?

by Harold Myra, Harold Myra

Halloween is an odd mixture of creepy creatures, costume parties, and harvest festivals. It is also a confusing time for those hesitant to celebrate a holiday that traces its roots to pagan practices and beliefs. Written by Harold Myra, President of Christianity Today, Inc., this trustworthy story is accompanied with fun, whimsical illustrations.

Genres: Halloween, Picture Books, Childrens

32 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1982

About the author

As a leader of Christianity Today International, Harold has been instrumental in creating an extremely successful nonprofit organization. Behind his leadership CTI has vastly expanded the number of magazines it publishes and the audience it reaches. The CTI website explains that more than 2.5 million readers currently receive the organization's 11 publications that include Christianity Today, Leadership Journal, Campus Life, Today's Christian Woman, Marriage Partnership, Christian History & Biography, Your Church, Today's Christian, Books & Culture, Christian Parenting Today, and Men of Integrity. In addition, CTI reaches additional people with these online offerings: PreachingToday.com, BuildingChurchLeaders.com, and the Christianity Today online magazine.

Reviews

[Charley Rains · Rating 1 out of 5]

A religious book about Halloween... waste of my money

[Sherry Scheline · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is on the shelf at the Library. It’s garbage. Don’t worry I did not weed it out because of my own bias. Now that I’m posting this it probably can NEVER get weeded because someone will think it’s my bias. :). First Halloween 🎃 Is it for Real?????? What does that even mean????
The illustrations are super cute. That is my say something nice about every book I read.

“Should parents encourage the celebration of a holiday that traces its roots to pagan practices and beliefs?”
Christmas Tree 🎄
Easter Bunny 🐰
May Day 🌷
Summer Solstice 🌞
All the good holidays are rich with pagan practices.

The author then in his opening says “The challenge for Christian parents is to teach our children to use this holiday to celebrate God’s victory over evil and evil spirits. It is my hope that this book will help.”

It doesn’t!!!
First the only people calling this “the devil’s holiday” are Christians. No one calls it the devil’s holiday! That being said if you call it that why? If you are a Christian why would you EVER give the devil 👿 that much power. Don’t give him a day! Stop saying that and stop telling your children that!
“People died in cruel ceremonies”. YES they did, but why are we having that discussion with our children. The Bible talks about in great length about the need for sacrifice. Animal rituals and animal sacrifice is not just tied to Halloween or satanic rituals.

Halloween is a Celtic celebration to honor Samhain. Samhain is a festival to usher in “the dark half of the year.” Those who practice Wicca still celebrate Samhain. this the ties to Witches.

All Saints day was created by Pope Boniface the IV to honor Christian martyrs. It was a “harvest feast” to honor the dead.

Here though is where it gets tricky… children semantics.
“they’re not really dead. They’re alive with Jesus.”
Truth is NO a they are REALLY dead! They can be dead and alive with Jesus, but the truth is they are REALLY dead. Don’t take the moment and completely mess up your child’s thinking. “They’re not really dead.” THEY ARE REALLY!!!


Here is the one part of this book I like from a Christian perspective. “God did not give us a spirit that makes us afraid. He gave us a spirit of power and love.’ (2 Timothy 1:7)”
That right there is a great Halloween 🎃 take away. He gave us power over our fears whatever they may be and he gave us the spirit of love. Teaching your child to not be fearful is wonderful. This is a beautiful time. Harvest is a time to share and show love.

I think teaching your kids about Halloween from a Christians perspective is important, but this is not the book I would choose.

[Fyo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found this while cleaning up my books so I thought I'd give it a look before I passed it on. Honestly, it isn't /as bad/ as I expected, but it's not very useful in explaining Halloween. Mostly because, well, there isn't a lot of accurate information on the origins of Halloween. For an overview of theories of precursors and also a discussion on how the holiday evolved in the 20th century, I recommend Hypnogoria's longrunning series on Halloween.

Obviously this is influenced by the popular idea that Halloween comes from a pre-Christian pagan holiday of some kind (usually identified as Samhain, not named here because ~~pagan~~ is a culture all its own in this worldview). The dad answering questions in the book claims "People believed that a lord of death sent evil spirits into animals to play terrible tricks on people. To escape them, people wore disguises." I don't know what, if any, real historical thing this references. I'm guessing it isn't something that actually happened. "People died in cruel ceremonies," the dad says, and then Christians turned this all into a celebration of joy.

Or mayyyybe Halloween is a synthesis of multiple cultures' traditions of remembering the dead and having fun. As Mr. Jim Moon explains in his podcasts mentioned above, Halloween wasn't a particularly super spooky horror time for a lot of the early 20th century, many sources portray it as a lighthearted time to spend with a significant other. Again I reiterate that there's basically no information about pre-christian celtic religion beyond what was written by outsiders like the Romans and later Christians after christianization, so we don't know a whole lot about if they, you know, actually had wicker men. But it's easier to portray the past as a barbaric evil time, even when these people may not have conceived of evil and fear in the same way we do now.

I give it two stars because it does explain that All Hallows Eve/Halloween is a time for remembering our deceased loved ones and the saints, which is correct, so at least it doesn't completely trash the holiday. It just isn't super accurate on anything else really, so I don't recommend it.

[Katherine Bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has some longer sentence, with a few bigger words so it may be hard for young children to read on their own. However, this is a great book for parents to read with their children as it leads to the conversation of whether halloween is good or not. This book was written by a Christian and he wrote it with the purpose of explaining what halloween was really about and to help Christian families decide if they should celerbrate it or not. Due to this being what the book is about the author did a great job making it something that kids could understand and a good way for parents to have this conversation, the illustrated also did a great job helping this cause by making the pictures enjoyable.

[Peacegal · Rating 2 out of 5]

LOLz. This is a very of-its-era book directed toward a Christian audience, exploring the themes of Halloween. I don't agree with its perspective, but it certainly could be worse. It doesn't stoop to the level of a Chick tract, and at at least the children in the family were able to share their differing perspectives on Halloween without being immediately scolded by their parents. The kids don't go trick-or-treating, but they are allowed to dress in costumes and have a party with friends at their house, which all things considered, isn't so bad. At least they get to participate in some aspects of the holiday.

[Pamela · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is terrible!!! The cover was cute, but content required censoring: "I've heard that it is called the devil's holiday," "People died in cruel ceremonies," "Saints aren't ghosts."

If you're looking to turn your children into religious fundamentalists, this title might be for you.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking for something to read to my grandchildren. I didn't feel the story was well written, and the art work was so so. It's a book to teach Christian children a more positive meaning of Halloween, which is a worthy goal.

[Dolly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book explains the pagan origins of Halloween festivities and the way in which people have connected it to religion. The narrative is okay, but not very memorable. The illustrations are colorful and cartoonish and attracted me to the book more than the story itself.

Meh.

[Little Champs]

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