While a few right-wing groups are using Halloween this year to put on "Hell Houses" which torture attendees with graphic portrayals of gay people dying of AIDS and women suffering from abortions, many Religious Right figures have called on people to stop celebrating Halloween altogether. Back in 2009, Jacksonville city councilwoman and past CBN commentator Kimberly Daniels warned that Halloween candy is under a demonic curse as a result of Satanic orgies, and last week Christian radio commentator Linda Harvey said that celebrating Halloween is cheating on Jesus with ‚"our spiritual enemy." Pat Robertson warned Christians earlier this month that‚ "Halloween is Satan‚Äôs night; it's the night for the devil. It's All Hallow's Eve but it's time when witches and goblins."
But according to Christian researcher Jill Martin Rische, who co-authored The Kingdom of the Occult with her father, the evangelist Walter Ralston Martin, Halloween actually has Christian roots. While Rische laments what the holiday has become in contemporary America, she told Christian broadcaster Janet Parshall earlier this month that the day is not in fact from the occult:
Rische: I started searching for what Halloween was and oh, ran across some very fascinating thing, the most fascinating of all is, recently, over the last ten to fifteen years, secular historians’ views of Halloween have changed. They used to promote the fact that this was a pagan holiday and that the Church took it over to wipe out what the pagans were doing and you’ll find this all over the place, all over the net, all over different sites, a lot of information that says this is a pagan holiday that was taken over by the Church. But in reality, you have these scholars now, some from Harvard and other places that have gained a lot of respect, big names, saying that this is not true. They’re saying that there is no historical evidence whatsoever for the witches’ holiday of Sowan. None.
It was the Church actually, there was more evidence for the Church, and this relates to All Saints Day. Now as far as being celebrated all over the world, there were different feasts that were celebrated and there is evidence that there were feasts celebrating the beginning of winter when animals were killed and there was a lot of partying, but again there is no evidence for what went on during that time. None. So it’s all kind of been lumped together under something bad but really All Hallow’s Eve, which comes before All Saints Day the First of November, was meant to be a great time of celebration, celebrating the lives of those who have really lived for Christ and often have given their life.
