By Jordan Carroll
Jack T. Chick tracts are the way to go
If you’ve never read a Jack T. Chick tract, you’re missing out. You’ve overlooked an entire species of paranoia and ironic fun. Through comic strips, Jack T. Chick presents a world rife with conspiracy, religion, and ham-handed moral messages. You can find them in gas station bathrooms or in church handouts all throughout the Bible belt, but it is easiest to find them online. Among the Chick cartoons, I’ve always had an affinity for the ones about Halloween. There’s just something about a frothing fundamentalist demonizing trick-or-treaters that makes me smirk.
Jack T. Chick believes that Halloween is a sinful and corrupt holiday. Once it was a pagan celebration, and pagans still secretly practice it in America. The costumes, pumpkins, and festivities all simply aid these “Satanists” in their worship. In one comic, “The Poor Little Witch,” witches are depicted slaughtering a baby, drinking blood, worshipping Satan, and killing a teenage girl.
He’s both right and wrong. Halloween did originate as a Celtic holiday. It was the end of summer, known as Samhain, and the following day marked the beginning of a new year. Since it was the death of summer and the onset of winter, the world of the living and the dead became confused. Ghosts returned to earth, for good or for ill. The Celts wore animal skins and made bonfires in celebration of this day. When the Romans conquered the Celtic lands, their customs and festivals were combined. Many of these customs, both Celtic and Roman, involved scaring off or appeasing spirits. There were only later assimilated and made Christian as All Saint’s Day, or Hallowmas.
He is wrong, of course, in his assertion that Halloween is a front for more sinister practices. At least some of the Druids did, in fact, practice human sacrifice. This has been proven through preserved bog bodies that show obvious signs of ritual slaying, religious artifacts of the period, and contemporary accounts of the Druidic religion. However true this is, the Druid’s religion died out long before their customs. There is no unbroken thread between the ancient pagan cults and trick-or-treating.
Jack T. Chick’s portrayal of “witchcraft” is simply wrong. The witches of the middle ages and beyond are more a fabrication of paranoid minds than anything. Even if medieval accounts are true, they seem to suggest isolated pockets of dissidents with no connection or tradition. They were simply in need of empowerment and a stolen communion wafer or a handful of graveyard dirt was all they thought they needed. It is doubtful that they practiced baby killing or ritual murder. It is ironic that these are the same accusations that have been leveled against Jews and Christians in the past. Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic provides a far more accurate description of witchcraft.
Actual Neo-Paganism has little or nothing to do with the ancient druids or the “witches” of the middle ages. Any claims towards long-lived traditions are, more than likely, false. The image of paganism as a unified pre-Christian religion is bad anthropology perpetrated by Margaret Murray and others. To say “Paganism” is a single religion is like saying “Monotheism” is a single religion. It is a catchall term filled with thousands of different belief systems. As such, there is no reason to believe that the pagans of two thousand years ago reflect the pagans of today.
The trappings of Halloween itself have become increasingly secular over the past century. A modern, neutral interpretation has replaced even the Christian interpretation. We are now many, many degrees separated from the original celebration. The only “evidence” that Halloween is anything but a good time comes from the “recovered memory” craze of the 1980s and urban legends spread by people like Jack T. Chick. I know I’m going to be slinging candy this Thursday. Still, if you’re looking for a good laugh or want to know why Baphomet is really behind the Freemasons, Jack T. Chick tracts are the way to go.
