Believer’s Magazine – October 2021
English | 38 pages | pdf | 7.29 MB
The light associated with autumn is, arguably, the best of any season in the temperate regions of the north. Golden, mellow, rich sunlight shines through leaves that so recently were green and plentiful, but which are now thicker on the ground than on the trees, and it casts long shadows, reminding us that the sun is lower on the horizon and winter is coming. As the temperature begins to fall, farmers finish bringing their crops home to the barn, and gather up the straw bales in readiness for winter. To the observant eye of any who enjoy a woodland walk, it is not only the farmers who are busy. Here, a squirrel is busy rummaging amongst the oak leaves, searching for acorns, perhaps competing with a hungry jay.
There, a tiny field mouse is feasting on the last of the wild blackberries for, throughout the animal kingdom, there is an innate understanding that time is short. The golden light is indeed lovely, but it is the harbinger of an ever-increasing darkness. Autumn is a time of change, lovely for the moment as it rounds off the balmy days of summer, but bringing a chill to the air as it portends darkness, cold and storms.
We need hardly wonder that our forebears, centuries ago, had a dread of the season they termed ‘the fall of the leaf’. (‘Fall’ is the original English term for the season: ‘autumn’ was borrowed from the French ‘automne’ in the 17th century.) Ignorant of the workings of the solar system and, more regrettably, bound by the superstitions of paganism and Romanism, the eyes of our ancestors were not drawn to the beautiful light of autumn, but to the ever-darkening skies and approaching storms. Without the medical assistance that we enjoy, many of them saw only too clearly that the change in the season was a metaphor for approaching death.
The cold and damp of winter, perhaps accompanied by hunger, would see some of them pass swiftly from time into eternity. Urged on by the profiteering priests of their false, dark religions, those poor people held many pagan festivals as autumn took hold. In Ireland and Britain, as well as other parts of Western Europe, the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain has a history dating back to the 10th century. As the people gathered their sheep and cattle from the hills in readiness for winter, they sacrificed some of them to invoke the protection of their gods through the winter months. Samhain was one of the so-called ‘liminal’ festivals, because it was believed that the barrier between the physical world and the ‘Otherworld’ was reduced to the point where spirits, demons, fairies and the souls of the dead could cross into the temporal realm. The resultant horror and fear in the hearts of those poor, superstitious folk were often drowned with drunken revelries, accompanied by every sort of moral wickedness, that went on for days.
How bitterly ironic, that such a festival must have done much to ruin whatever health and wealth the people had, just when they needed them most.
Soon, the pagan Samhain, ‘christianised’ by Rome and dedicated to ‘all saints’, will be upon us again. But ‘Hallowe’en’, dear Christian, is not a harmless bit of fun with spooks and spiders – it is one of the “works of darkness” to be “cast off” (Rom 13.12). “We are not of the night, nor of darkness” (1 Thess 5.5), and we should “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works
of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Eph 5.11). If it be argued by Christian parents, moved by the tears of their children as they are told that they cannot join their friends in ‘trick-or-treat’ frivolity, that “sure, it’s only a bit of harmless fun”; remember, “ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils” (1 Cor 10.21). Certain things are wholly incompatible: Hallowe’en and Christian living are of that kind.
By the grace of God, and through the power of the Gospel, believers have been “delivered … from the power of darkness” (Col 1.13), and are now “the children of light” (1 Thess 5.5). We are to live as such, and not compromise our calling through sentimentality or ignorance. “For … what communion hath light with darkness?” (2 Cor 6.14).
Phil
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