Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?

Halloween is an annual celebration, but just what is it actually a celebration of? And how did this peculiar custom originate? Is it, as some claim, a kind of demon worship? Or is it just a harmless vestige of some ancient pagan ritual?

In North America, the yearly observance of Halloween amounts to a multi-billion-dollar industry, second only to Christmas...selling costumes, candy and food items, party supplies, greeting cards, tours of so-called haunted houses, and other forms of entertainment. But what is the history of this particular day? The story may surprise you.

More than two thousand years ago, a people called the Celts (Kelts) lived in what is now Ireland, Great Britain, and France. Among the Celtic people was an elite intellectual class known as the Druids, who served as religious priests, judges, lawmakers, and scientists. They had an elaborate pagan religious festival, along with certain rituals. Chief among these was the Fire Festival called Samhain (pronounced sow-en), observed at harvest time to mark the Celtic New Year.

The Celts believed that on this night the barrier between the natural world and the supernatural was removed, and the spirits of the dead were able to move freely among human beings. Samhain was the most solemn and important night in the Celtic year.

After the Roman Catholic Church came to the Celtic peoples in the seventh century, some of their traditional folk customs were adopted by the church. In 835 A.D. Pope Gregory IV moved the church’s "Feast of All Saints" from the spring to November 1st to replace the observance of Samhain. All Saint’s Day, still observed today by many, honored believers who had died. The night before, which featured a sacred vigil in church, became known as "All Hallow’s Eve," or Halloween. But the old practices of the Druids died hard and were denounced by the church as witchcraft. This is how Halloween became known as a witch’s holiday. We really should think of it as Helloween!

Dressing in costumes and going door-to-door comes from a much later tradition in the British Isles, a practice not restricted to Halloween. Masked players would go from house-to-house, putting on a simple drama or musical performance in return for food and drink. Often these performances had Christian themes.

The "trick-or-treat" custom we know today is thoroughly American in origin. In the nineteenth century, when Irish and Scottish immigrants brought their Halloween traditions to North America, the night became an occasion for pranks and mischief. Vandals would go through the night, soaping windows, overturning outhouses, and pulling gates from their hinges. These pranks were playfully said to be the work of witches and ghosts, but by the 1920s the joke wasn’t funny anymore. The damage to neighborhoods was mounting.

To counteract Halloween vandalism, community clubs like the Boy Scouts began to organize alternatives that are safe and fun. Children were encouraged to go door-to-door and receive treats from homeowners and merchants, keeping the troublemakers away. By the 1930s, the practice was popular nationwide and young voices crying, "Trick or treat!" were echoing through neighborhood streets.

In this way, a combination of pagan, Christian, and civic elements formed the Halloween celebration we know today. In recent decades, however, a renewed interest in the old pagan beliefs has blossomed in North America. Popular entertainment, including television shows like "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer," and even "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," make occult themes and witchcraft seem fun and acceptable. The result is that Halloween today has become strongly associated with the occult and a preoccupation with the dead—two influences that Scripture and the church have always warned against.

You see, Satan is not a joke. He’s real. Though the Bible clearly states that God is the world’s highest authority, He gave Satan a certain amount of power. With God’s permission, the evil in this world is under Satan’s control. This is why the apostle Paul said in Ephes. 6:12 “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Satan was the first one in history to openly defy God. He also started a way of life that was self-centered and rejected God’s authority. That marked the birth of sin, which is nothing more than rebellion against God. Today sin affects the entire human race. We are all guilty, and therefore all deserve sin’s penalty. "For the wages of sin is death...."

Halloween is rooted in paganism, but this is not the main reason I discourage its celebration. If you want to, you can tie many of our modern practices back to ancient pagan practices…Good grief, pagans had a holiday in which they gathered around a tree, similarly to Christmas, but we don’t throw out our trees because of that ancient connection…don’t throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater…He is the present, dominant association of Christmas however you celebrate it. But there’s much better Biblical reasons to avoid Halloween than just its pagan roots, for it continues in the ancient traditions it was founded in.