A pagan holiday? What to do?

It is the very nature of God to take something that is completely opposed to His way and reconcile it to Himself, so that it begins to reflect Him.  This is a truth that mandates that, as Christians, we attempt to transform culture.  One of the ways this has been done by Christians historically is through holidays.  But with each holiday comes a unique set of issues that people have with that holiday.  I will start by saying that noone should adopt my philosophy on most holidays.  I'm just weird.  I don't really like to celebrate my birthday, I celebrate like crazy some aspects of Christmas and am surprisingly melancholy about others, and I really am a curmudgeon when my wife expects me to want to, reasonably so, celebrate many different holidays.

Needless to say that most of my friends will see that I am writing about a holiday and just pass it off as West being an idiot, which may, in fact, be the case.  And many friends will probably skip the reading of this article, which may be appropriate.  But with that pretty big disclaimer in mind, I will attempt to write about one holiday I love to celebrate.  That Holiday is Reformation Day.  It is October 31, and it is the celebration of the commencement of the Reformation.  Those of us who live today owe a great debt of gratitude to those Christians who came before us and established a church that is anchored in theology and the priesthood of all believers.  One of the reasons we can see so clearly theologically (relatively speaking) is because we are midgets standing on the shoulders of giants.

Most holidays have elements that some people complain about which show the origins being pagan.  These people will say that Christians who celebrate the holiday are making a mistake.  These very actions are, in one respect, a perfect illustration of our Christianity.  The fact that we, as Christians, have taken the Soli Invicti and made it seep into the consciousness of our world that the holiday should be to celebrate the coming of Christ is awesome.  The fact that the Astronomical Vernal Equinox can be used to celebrate the Resurrection in lieu of just being a way to derive your horoscope is phenomenal.  And in at least one of the cases, there is significant doubt as to whether the celebration lines up with the proper season historically.  Nevertheless, these are things where we can take otherwise godless events and turn them into celebrations of our faith.

Almost all holidays have many secular events surrounding them.  Some aspects are terrible, while many others are innocuous.  I don’t want to get into that blame game at all, but I do want to assert that many of the traditions of Halloween are clearly not honoring to the Lord. Wherever the Lord directs your conscience in terms of the other components of Halloween is fine with me, as He is much more qualified to direct your paths than I am.  But I do think that, as Christians, we have neglected our opportunity to turn this holiday into a more Biblically-centered event.  The Reformation is largely the event that allowed us each to have Bibles in our own language and in our own house.  These are worthy of celebration!  The lives of Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, and Calvin, to name a few, have a profound impact on our ability to worship Christ today.

As a huge celebrant of Reformation Day, I think this holiday is our opportunity to seep into the awareness of our culture today that the real meaning behind October 31 is a Christian cause.  Whatever death, skeletons, gore, violence, or viciousness the world might have; people could believe and know that the real meaning of the holiday is one of the recognition of the Priesthood of All Believers.  The test for everything in my life should be, “Does this action further the cause of Christ?”  and “Am I doing this to glorify Christ?”  And I think we could all further the cause of Christ’s fame a little better by our celebration of Reformation Day.