This week, we celebrate a fun day, October 31 – it’s Halloween & Trick-or-Treat time!
It’s fun to go around and collect free candy, but what most people don’t know is that originally the celebration on October 31 was something more serious and had a greater impact than the collection of candy.
So what is the historic meaning of October 31?
Well, it is Reformation Day, the celebration that Martin Luther translated the bible into German, and hence made the writings available to everyone, so that even common peasants were able to live freely and not under the bible’s interpretation of the Catholic church.
A friend of his staged an abduction of Martin Luther in a time he was wanted by so many people! Once he brought Luther to his castle in Wittenberg, Luther was safe, and there translated the bible.
Martin Luther sparked a revolution, and his act of translating the bible truly showed how much he believed in the cause, that nobody should be ruled by the Catholic Church, also shown by his famous act of pinning the 95 thesis on the church door.
One of the main points the Catholic Church made citizens believe, was that they could protect loved ones from hell by buying indulgences, and go up the stairs of churches with those indulgences, praying ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ on each step. Doesn’t sound too bad, but only poor people’s relatives would go to hell, and so the already poor had to pay the Church to ‘save’ their relatives from hell – a concept made up by the Catholic Church to create income. Luther strongly opposed this concept, and didn’t care if he made a target of himself by opposing these ideas.
Why do some choose fun and free candy over recognizing a contribution to our personal freedoms? Where does Halloween even come from?
I grew up in a family that respects the religion and the bible, and even though we do go out and collect candy, as well as hand out candy ourselves, we hand out candy whose wrappers have Martin Luther on them, to honour what made all our countries freer, especially impacting the freedom of religion.
Reformation Day also is a greater religious celebration (not just a day to remember Martin Luther and his translation and 95 thesis on October 31), celebrated on October 31, if it is a Sunday, or on the Sunday just before October 31.
If you want to learn more about Martin Luther and all he did, make sure to check out the 2003 movie “Luther’!