What are your thoughts on Halloween in a Christian household? How could we celebrate in a respectful, God-honoring way?
If it truly a Satanic day, there is no way to honor God with it other than not participate. The imitation activities such as dressing as Bible characters and having a Jesusween party have become a laughing stock.
Now, NOT worshipping Satan and handing out candy, wearing costumes and having fun one night of the year is not, IMO, a problem and a good way to meet neighbors and form friendships. Plus, no one will toss toilet paper in yours trees. 
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I don’t, but for more practical reasons. The concept of “Trick or Treat” is not much more than legalized extortion: “Give me a treat or I’ll play a trick on you.” Making it “legal” one day a year doesn’t make it right. Also, encouraging children to knock on a stranger’s door in this day & age is not a good idea. (Side note: I don’t know why, but I really dislike the concept of driving a kid to a different neighborhood to do trick or treating.)
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Halloween brings up a lot of questions for Christians, especially when we want to honor God in everything we do. Some of us feel uneasy about the origins and traditions, while others see it as a chance to connect with neighbors and share kindness. The key is to seek God’s wisdom and ask, “How can I reflect Christ on this day?”
Whether you choose to participate or not, let’s make sure our actions and decisions glorify God and draw others closer to Him. If you’re wondering about the history and meaning behind Halloween, this article might help: Is Halloween Pagan in Origin?.
It’s almost that time. Thought it was a good idea to bring up this topic again. Should Christians celebrate Halloween?
Personally, I don’t see the harm in allowing kids to dress up as long as it’s none of the satanic or violent stuff. Who says Christians can’t have fun?
^^^ Some ideas for celebrating Halloween in a God-honoring way. I love the community-gathering nature of Halloween. It’s one of the few times of year we interact with our neighbors for more than a simple hello.
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I don’t know that people celebrate Halloween. Kids just like to get candy.
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My church is doing a Trunk or Treat this year, and I’m torn about whether I should sign up. It seems like a good way to connect with our community, but I’ve also heard Christians make good points about avoiding Halloween altogether.
How would you approach it? Is a church Trunk or Treat different to you than celebrating Halloween, or do you consider those basically the same thing?
I don’t think anyone celebrates Halloween. Kids just like candy.
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My dad loved Halloween. He walked in God’s Love as a Christian when I was too blind to see it. The only reason he looked foward to this day was seeing the little children. The man really lit up when they came to his front door for candy. He never cared for Halloween except for this.
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14.
Celebrate what? Evil? Halloween is a dumb holiday and has nothing to do with the Lord. So it should be ignored. Don’t dress up. Don’t let the kids dress up. Don’t buy no candy.
When we come to understand what halloween is, and how satanists and witches “celebrate” it, often with human sacrifice, there is no way to “celebrate it in a respectful, God-honoring way.” It is a demonic holiday.
Many people think this is a good time of the year to actually talk to their neighbors…wait, what? How did the Great Commission turn into the Great Suggestion…
Blessings.
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In the strictest and most literal sense, Halloween IS a Christian holiday. Or more specifically, it is the eve of a Christian holiday: The Feast of All Saints is on November 1st. On October 31st it is the Eve of All Saints.
The word “Halloween” is one part archaic English and one part contraction. If one wants to nitpick, the proper spelling is Hallowe’en, as the “e’en” is a contraction for the word “evening”. The word “hallow” is an archaic English word that means “holy” or “saint”, think of the traditional wording of the Lord’s Prayer, where we pray, “Hallowed be Thy Name”. Hallowe’en simply means Hallow’s Evening, and is short for All Hallow’s Eve[ning]. Or the Eve of All Saints Day.
What is All Saints Day/the Feast of All Saints?
From the most ancient days of Christianity it became a common practice for Christians to remember the lives of the martyrs, of those Christians who suffered and died for the cause of Jesus. Many men, women, and even children were made to suffer, and many were killed, for their faith in Jesus in the early centuries of the Church, as the Roman Empire carried out acts of cruelty and injustice against the Church. The worst period of persecution came during the reign of Emperor Diocletian, whose persecution resulted in the injury, imprisonment, suffering, and deaths of hundreds of Christians. Even to this day, the Egyptian Christians (The Coptic Church) uses a different calendar than the rest of Christianity, they use a Year of the Martyrs, from Diocletian’s reign, as their starting point, rather than Christ’s birth in 1 AD (using Dionysus Exeguus’ calendar reckoning, adopted by most Christians).
One of the ways Christians remembered the lives of the martyrs was to mark the days of their deaths. It may seem odd to use the death-date as a celebration, but for the early Christians bodily death, for Jesus’ sake, was not seen as a tragedy, but as the victory against the world: Jesus promised His disciples, His Church, that they would experience hardship and tribulation, and so to immitate Jesus in His suffering–even to the point of death–was not a tragedy, but a triumph of faith. For the martyr had received his or her holy crown, they had run the race, they had fought the good fight, and in the end they now were with the Lord in glory, in the hope of the resurrection to come.
Over time these remembrances and celebrations of the lives of the martyrs evolved to formal remembrances. Local Christian communities would gather on these days, and worship God, and give thanks to God for the lives of His saints, who were put forward as examples to follow (recall Hebrews, “We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses”–the saints are there, in heaven, cheering us on, as we ourselves now pursue Christ the Author and Finisher of our faith).
Over the centuries many of these became formalized. That’s how we came to get the Feast Day of St. Patrick, or the Feast Day of St. Valentine, two saints’ days that are remembered even among the secular folks of the western English-speaking world: St. Patrick’s Day and St. Valentine’s Day.
But Christians also always knew that there were more martyrs, more saints, that had not been remembered formally. There are not just a handful witnesses, but many whose names we will never know–but nevertheless they are God’s precious saints, His people, and deserve to be honored. So it became common, throughout the Christian world, to set aside one day of the year to celebrate and honor the lives of all the saints.
Now, not all Christians, in all places, celebrated this day on the same day. And throughout the Christian world there were many different days chosen to hold this feast, depending on time and where you lived.
Eventually Pope Gregory IV, based on a growing custom following Pope Gregory III’s dedication of a chapel to all the saints, to mark November 1st as the official date all Christians would celebrate the Feast of All Saints. It didn’t happen over night, but would eventually spread across the entirety of Western Europe. However, the Eastern Church followed a different tradition, and still do even today, were the Feast of All Saints is always on the first Sunday after Pentecost.
As was common, on Feast Days the eve before was a time dedicated to prayer, marking the Hour of Vespers, one of the times of prayer. This is also why churches still hold evening prayer services on, for example, Christmas Eve. So the Eve of All Saints was the Vespers service, coming before the Feast of All Saints.
Eventually, in the Western Church, the Feast of All Souls would show up on November 2nd. Thus creating a liturgical triduum, or a three-day observance. And this would be known as the he Triduum of Hallowmas (“Hallowmas” follows the same structure as Christmas, the “Mass of All Saints”) or Allhallowstide (Ccmpare to Christmastide).
So, from a very specific and literal perspective, Halloween is an explicitly Christian observance.
This, however, doesn’t even remotely get us to how the secular observation of Halloween occurs today in the United States (which, through American mass media has been slowly exported to other parts of the world). That’s a very different story, one involving capitalism and trying to get teenagers from doing mischievous things.
If anyone here thinks it has to do with druids, Samhain, or pre-Christian pagan practices. I hate to burst everyone’s bubble. But that’s all a load of hooey that, while popularly repeated in popular culture, has zero historical credibility. Also, if you think Satanists or witches are sacrificing people or animals to Satan, then you are unfortunately a victim of the 1980’s in which mass hysteria, and terrible American journalism, left a lot of people duped by a lot of silly nonsense.
I hope this helps.
Actually, it is not a Christian holiday, if you go back to its inception by the Catholic church, it was their way of trying to side-track paganism in Europe.
They tried…but the paganism won out.
Regardless of how it started, people lose their lives on halloween because it is a satanic holiday that both satanists and witches celebrate in unabashed wickedness. What many of you probably do not know, is that many of your local Sheriff’s departments have a satanic task force in place, and in the months before halloween are their busiest season. More people (children especially) are kidnapped before halloween than any other time of the year in most places, and they are never seen again unless they are found dead at satanic ritual cites.
The ONLY thing Christians should be doing on holloween is praying that God would move and help the victims escape being sacrificed.
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Nope. Sorry. I’ve actually done my homework. If you read what I posted I provided the actual historical information–though it was highly abbreviated.
The “pagan origins of Halloween”, just like the “pagan origins of Christmas” and the “pagan origins of Easter”, is total and complete poppycock.
These are the lies of the various conmen and charlatans of the 1970’s and 1980’s created, and which unfortunately many Christians continue to believe even though those very conmen were outed decades ago.
Mike Warnke and John Todd were charlatans.
Please educate yourself.
What you call lies are not lies…you really need to re-educate yourself, sir.
I worked in law enforcement for 35 years, sheriff’s department, when I said that many sheriff’s departments have satanic task forces, I did not just pull that out of my…ears. Your ignorance of real world goings on is astounding (that is not mean as an insult, it is just a fact).
We used to have a mountain in the middle of Arkansas called Sugar Loaf Mountain, because it is flat on top. Every so often you could see fires up there and by the time the SO got up there, because it was out in the middle of a thick forest, all they would find was the pentagrams scratched into the dirt, melted black candles, and the dead bodies of those who were sacrificed.
When I lived in California…same thing. We found a spot used for satanic sacrifices, pentagrams, black candles, no fingerprints (ever)…and the severed hands of the victims.
No, you speak out of ignorance of the real world, I speak from experience. No insult intended, but again, you really need to re-educate yourself.
Blessings.
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You, personally, witnessed the butchered bodies of victims? Or is this a game of telephone you were on the receiving end of?
No, I personally never went to the crime scenes, I was in a different department; but I saw the crime scene photos and knew many of the Investigators.
It got so bad at the indoor mall, that from August to the first of November, the mall had to hire extra security officers, because people tried grabbing children right out of the mall. I have no pleasant memories in law enforcement during that season.
“Telephone,” yer funny.
Blessings.
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I’m sorry. I just don’t buy it. Not when, it’s been proven, that this was all, almost entirely, made up. And, in the lies, lots of innocent people were accused of some pretty horrific crimes–for which there was no evidence, but their names were dragged through the mud.
In the same way that, when I was a child in the 80’s, there were all sorts of urban legends about razor blades in apples, or cans of Coke. All of which turned out to be just that–urban legends, modern myths.
Now, do I think human beings are capable of some pretty horrible things? Oh yes. I have no doubt that there are hundreds, thousands, of horrible acts of violence committed against people.
But that there are cabals of Satan worshipers practicing human sacrifice on Halloween, and that’s why Halloween is demonic? No–that’s nonsense. It was nonsense 40 years ago. It’s nonsense today.
Especially if what you’re trying to do is scare-monger Christians into not, what, dressing up in costumes and eating candy because if they do that then what? They’re secretly in league with the devil? No. Sorry–that’s horse manure.
The modern secular observation of Halloween is not Christian (nor did I say it was). But it has nothing to do with Satanism or witchcraft. It has to do with the commercialization of a holiday. American Halloween did not exist outside of North America for a long time. Most Europeans over the age of 30 or 40 never had Halloween as Americans knew it as children. Carving pumpkins? That’s uniquely American. Dressing up in costumes? American. Trick or Treating? American.
I’ll even give you the benefit of the doubt: Let’s say there were some really awful, deranged people committing heinous acts–with pentagrams, the whole works. That STILL would have nothing to do with Halloween.
So even if your stories are true, it’s actually irrelevant.
If there were people dressing as Santa Clause, and then committing all sorts of horrible crimes. I’m still going to get gifts for people on Christmas. I’m still going to have a Christmas tree. I’m still going to sing both Jingle Bells AND O Holy Night.
Because my life is not defined by what evil people do. Nor do I live in fear of the devil.
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." - 2 Timothy 1:7
I am well aware of Warnke…yes, he lied; but to then turn around and say that nothing of what his ministry did in dealing with satanic abuse was also all lies, you need to be more careful of what you say and check it out if you can. Yes…he lied about his past, and that is unfortunate because it destroyed what his ministry was doing when his lies finally caught up with him.
That situation is no different than Jimmy Swaggart.
My point here, is that what I described is real world, not lies that I made up or that someone told me, I have seen the carnage, I have run into satanists growing up, I have been cursed by a witch (well, you know…she believed she cursed me). I have real world experiences that attest to the truth of what goes on…not comic book nonsense.
Basically, what I am saying, is that it is not smart to toss the baby out with the bath water.
Blessings.