Do Nigerians or Africans really need to celebrate Halloween?
This is the dilemma being faced by African parents in the Western world as the Halloween season comes in, they will be forced to explain to their children why it isn’t worth celebrating or they’ll just look the other way. Thanks to Hollywood and Western pop culture, it is spreading like wild fire everywhere.
People tend to oppose Halloween due to its glorification of evil and for having a background of the occult and anti-Christianity. The Vatican spoke against it on the eve of its ritual which falls before the significant Catholic holy day of All Saints. Halloween is largely a secular celebration which has its origins in an ancient festival marking the start of the ‘darker half of the year’.
Liturgical expert Father Joan Maria Canals was quoted in an article entitled The Dangerous Messages of Halloween, as saying: ‘Halloween has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian.’ He urged parents ‘to be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death’. In Spain, the Bishops’ Episcopal Conference slammed the growing popularity of Halloween because they claimed it threatened to overshadow the Christian festival of All Saints’ Day.
Let us now look at the connection between Christianity and Halloween
It a known fact that most of the religions in their early period and up till the present time tend to inculcate some of the prevailing societal cultures into their religious practice, Christianity is not an exception.
This article gave elaborate points on the commonality between Halloween and Christianity. Halloween has a lot in common with All Hallows’ Eve, the is the day before All Saints’ Day. So Halloween and All Hallows’ Eve are the same thing and one has a lot to do with the other. The word “hallow” derives from the Old English halga, which means a holy person or saint, so All Hallows’ Eve must be the day before All Saints’ Day.
The truth is that Halloween does have Christian roots. While it may also have some pagan elements, those have been so intertwined with the Christian tradition over centuries that it will be impossible to disentangle the strands. Due to the success of earlier Christian reformers in driving pagan traditions out of the churches and away from clerics, many of those traditions appear now to be divorced from Christianity.
On the other hand, other historians will disagree and were of the belief that Halloween is purely a pagan culture that was incorporated into Christianity. Historians universally recognize Halloween’s origins as dating back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, in which the ghosts of the dead were said to return to earth for one night.
Truly, the history of Halloween is muddy, but modern Halloween is a likely confluence of many factors; traditions, half-remembered myths, politics and commercialism. Western Civilization is a cultural mix of Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman and barbarian components. The Christian church has a great survival mechanism in the fact it has always adapted to existing traditions and celebrations and Halloween is no exception.
So Why Celebrate Halloween in Nigeria?
Nigeria, due to the omnipresent and unchecked nature of Western pop culture in the country, has overlooked a similar Halloween-like celebration in the South-East. The common mentality (call it colonial or plantation if you like) among our so called civilized and enlightened Nigerians is to disassociate themselves from African traditions and consume everything the West throws at them. Historically, culture is not static but dynamic and any serious society with concern for the future of their offspring will have put in place checks and balances against unwanted destructive foreign imports.
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