Posted on 20 October 2005 by Tim
What are your views on Halloween? Do you think Christians should participate? What are the Halloween myths? Do you have alternatives? What are your concerns?
Here’s what I’ve written in the past (excuse the spelling)..
A follow-up post will come at a later date…now is your time to weigh in. Comment away…
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October 20th, 2005 at 11:47 am
I have no concerns about Christians participating in Halloween. All Hallows Eve is a historic event, and should be taught as such. While much of the historic meaning has been lost in the consumerism of today, the parent’s should not be afraid to teach the history, the why and what if you will, of the event.
October 20th, 2005 at 11:57 am
When I was little we went trick-or-treating a few times. Then, later, when we found out what some people were really celebrating, we were uncomfortable going. So we got together at a friend’s house and played games. At our church we have a harvest festival where you dress up in costumes and play games, so we are going to do that this year. I don’t think it is necessarily wrong to go trick-or-treating, though. It is harmless in some ways: you dress up (in a good costume) and get candy- what’s wrong with that? But all the things it is associated with, like Satan, and death, are definitely not good! I know that my two little sisters get really freaked out when the trick-or-treaters come in thier ugly costumes. I think it is much better to get involved in a kind of harvest festival, instead, with your church or youth group. Just my thoughts…
October 20th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
I wrote about this too…I’m against Christian involvement. Harvest parties/festivals are fine though (the Jews have one, ordained of God).
My article can be found at: http://theaccount.blogspot.com/2003/10/halloween.html.
October 20th, 2005 at 12:31 pm
Luke,
I think I have a response to you…I’ll post more later.
What does everyone think of David’s article?
October 20th, 2005 at 12:32 pm
Also, here’s what David says:
I don’t see that as “christian” in origin…
October 20th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
I knew some of that, but some I didn’t. Harvest party is sounding better and better….
October 20th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
Halloween is sick. The devil has more than good opportunity to get through to people. Just look at some of the decorations that people have up in their yards. It’s also pretty tacky looking! That’s what I think!!
October 20th, 2005 at 1:45 pm
We don’t celebrate Halloween at all. We’ve never gone trick-or-treating ever. Typically our family goes to a particular friend’s house in the country where there are no trick-or-treaters and we play flashlight tag.
October 20th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
We don’t celebrate Halloween. We have given out candy once or twice, but that is about the limit of it.
October 20th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
For the past 14 years our family has celebrated Family Fun Night on Oct 31. We have tried calling it a Reformation Party, but that just didn’t catch on. We play several family board games, order pizza (a rare occasion at our house) and eat junk food. I knew we had a winning tradition when our oldest drove 230 miles home from college for it.
October 20th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
Thanks for the quote, Tim.
October 21st, 2005 at 10:41 am
I do not believe that it is necessarily wrong for Christians to participate in Halloween. Yes, there are negative origins, and yes some people do take it too far. But Jesus commands us to be in the world but not of it. To me, distancing ourselves from a holiday that demonstrates that people need God even more is not a good idea. We hand out candy to kids, and while we do not go out ourselves, due to the large number of children in our house, we do attend our church’s harvest party. But Halloween, as a current holiday, is not seen as demonic or satanic to the majority of the people who celebrate it. We need to use this holiday as an example of what God’s love means…no death, no pain, no suffering in heaven, but in Hell…
Again, we should not be distancing ourselves from a society that needs us more than ever.
October 21st, 2005 at 11:48 am
You are right that we do not need to be out of the world…we do need to be in it, but not of it. I have heard many anti-Christian debaters use Christian participation in Halloween as a weapon against our “hypocrisy” and “double-mindedness.”
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love…” Halloween is about fear, not about God’s power and love.
October 21st, 2005 at 1:56 pm
“But Halloween, as a current holiday, is not seen as demonic or satanic to the majority of the people who celebrate it.” – Andrew
I think that you are absolutely right. But does that fact that they discount demonic forces in Halloween, and probably in the world in general, make it better? I think it makes it more dangerous.
The real danger for the majority of people in the world is not that they are going to turn into human sacrificing Satanists, but into apathetic followers of whatever comes along, believing it to be harmless. That is what I think Satan delights in, deceiving people into thinking that everything is okay.
A group of teenagers may not think that a Ouigi (spelling??) board really has the power to conjure demons, but its opening the door to demonic power. To dismiss this is to dismiss the supernatural forces that we see clearly evident throughout the Bible.
October 21st, 2005 at 6:40 pm
Good point Justin…
October 22nd, 2005 at 10:47 am
Andrew said: “We hand out candy to kids, and while we do not go out ourselves, due to the large number of children in our house, we do attend our church’s harvest party.”
Same here. I think that’s a good thing to do.
“But Halloween, as a current holiday, is not seen as demonic or satanic to the majority of the people who celebrate it.”
Have you seen the decorations on people’s houses? Hmmmm…for some reason I have a feeling that people know that it’s about demons and evil and death. They’re celebrating something…maybe they don’t know they are, but in all reality they are celebrating something. The question is “what are they celebrating?”
“We need to use this holiday as an example of what God’s love means…no death, no pain, no suffering in heaven, but in Hell…”
Our church does something like that. It’s a trail that shows what happens if you don’t have Christ when you die…scary…but at the end, you see what will happen if you have Christ in your life. Not really “scaring you to Christ” but showing that hell isn’t a place you want to go, and the reasons for going to hell–sin.
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:52 pm
Hehe…one church in the Pittsburgh has what they call “HellStop” – very effective. There’s a newspaper story from a local paper about it HERE.
October 22nd, 2005 at 8:11 pm
David, I’ll address your comment first.
“I have heard many anti-Christian debaters use Christian participation in Halloween as a weapon against our “hypocrisy” and “double-mindedness.”
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love…” Halloween is about fear, not about God’s power and love.”
Note, I did not say that we should CELEBRATE Halloween, only participate in it. The very fact that Halloween is about fear and is not of God is reason enough for us to get involved. Christians are active in the Marriage debate, but Gay marriage is not of God. So by your argument, we shouldn’t be involved in that either.
Justin, I am not suggesting that at all. What I am suggesting is that indeed, these people HAVE become apathetic followers of society. That means that it is even more important that we stay involved in the world’s celebrations and such activities. The church has already caused society to put up barriers around us, and we don’t need another reason for them to do so.
Tim, just because people put up scary decorations does not mean that they know what those decorations represent. I would be willing to bet that in a converstation with the majority of the population, you would not hear the word Demon or Satan come out once. Most people simply do not realize that what they are putting up is related to that sort of thing. Some Christians do not even realize it. The point that most of them do not realize what they are celebrating makes it even more important that we stay involved and participate, just do it with the purpose of glorifying God and spreading His word.
The two examples of HellPaths, as I’ve come to call them, is extrememly correct. Celebration is different than participation.
October 22nd, 2005 at 8:56 pm
Note, I did not say that we should CELEBRATE Halloween, only participate in it.
And note that I didn’t use the word “celebrate” but the word “participate.” THAT is what the lost use against us!
The very fact that Halloween is about fear and is not of God is reason enough for us to get involved. Christians are active in the Marriage debate, but Gay marriage is not of God. So by your argument, we shouldn’t be involved in that either.
Not at all…my logic can’t be used that way because it is the God-ordained institution (marriage) that is being attacked and, if we apply your reasoning, then Christians would have to participate in “gay marriage” – which we most certainly WILL NOT DO.
Most people simply do not realize that what they are putting up is related to that sort of thing. Some Christians do not even realize it.
That means we need to educate them, not join them!
October 23rd, 2005 at 1:45 am
Okay, I agree. Gay marriage was a bad example. Here’s the point I was trying to make. Participation does NOT mean that we have to do everything they do. We don’t have to put up the decorations, we don’t have to Trick or Treat necessarily, though my family did when we had less kids. But we DO still have to be involved. That means maybe handing out candy. That means maybe making a “haunted house” with purpose, something like a HellPath. That means maybe Trick or Treating with some unsaved friends. You’re right, we DO need to educate them. But who wants to listen to someone who doesn’t participate in the activity? I have several friends that participate in Halloween, allowing them to witness to their friends by their costume, attitude, and decorations.
Just because the lost say that we are hypocrites for doing something, does that mean that we should stop? Not necessarily. I’m curious how many people have said that to you, as I personally have never heard that said to me or anyone I know.
The bottom line is this. We are empowered by Jesus Christ to go to the unreached. Jesus and his disciples went into the areas where the most sinners were, ate dinner with sinners, talked with them. But Jesus never sinned, and for the most part, the disciples went in with the intent to do good, and were therefore able to withstand the evil and the temptations.
Celebrating Halloween, to the majority of the population, is nothing but dressing up and getting candy. To some, it means scaring themsleves and others. And to a few, it means celebrating the devil and his demons.
Celebration would mean accepting Halloween as okay. Participation merely means being involved. And that’s what we need to be.
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:30 pm
I see nothing wrong with celebrating All Hallows Eve in its Christian sense. The idea of celebrating all saints goes back to the times of the Church Fathers. In 615 Pope Boniface IV made May 13 the Feast of All Martyrs in commemoration of the dedication of the Pantheon to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints. By 844, the feast had become All Saints and Pope Gregory IV transferred the feast to November 1. Pope Sixtus IV made All Saints a holy day of obligation, and gave it the vigil of All Saints (All Hallows’ Eve). Whether the date was moved for pilgrims’ convenience or to Christianize pagan holidays is another matter, but Pope Gregory I in the sixth century said that it was easier to convert pagans by allowing them to keep some of their outward practices, as long as they are no longer for their pagan gods. Instead, they would be celebrating the true God. Just because a Christian holiday coincides in the calendar with a pagan holiday, that doesn’t make the Christian celebration evil. Easter and Christmas occur around pagan celebrations, but few sound minded people accuse us of paganism in those instances. Some similarities have been brought up. So what? Let’s look at Christmas. Date? Within days of Yule and Saturnalia. What did people have during Yule? Christmas trees. What did people do in ancient Rome during Saturnalia? They exchanged gifts. Similarities don’t mean we can’t celebrate the old Christian holidays. We can also use these holidays to remember that there are wicked practices out there, and we can pray for their conversion.
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:31 pm
I’m not going to respond to all of your post because I don’t have the time, however I will answer your question:
I’m curious how many people have said that to you, as I personally have never heard that said to me or anyone I know.
Too many to count. Just Kidding. Actually, I was once part of a debate board and even when it wasn’t the issue, “Christian participation” in Halloween always came back to bite. Now, on that board, there were 10 Christians (including myself), half of which said it was okay to celebrate Halloween. There were nearly 200 other people – Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, and Satanists (maybe 5 of those) and they kept pointing it out – every one of them. That’s one example of quite a few on the net (overally, probably close to 2,000 people have pointed it out directly to me).
I’ve met plenty of those in real life – maybe 50 or 60…
It’s really a widespread argument and I haven’t included articles and rants written by them.
October 23rd, 2005 at 9:13 pm
As far as Christmas goes, I’d rather celebrate it during the actual time of Jesus’ birth – during the festival of Sukkot! (this is hinted at in John where it says that “the Word became flesh and _tabernacled_ among us”
As for Easter, it’s really just coincidence that Passover and the festival of “Astarte” occured at the same time. The fact that European pagans kept their own name for it is just different. Personally, I’d much rather that the resurrection was celebrated during Passover…
October 24th, 2005 at 11:39 am
David, I’ll be writing an article on Genelution about this within the next couple of days. Hopefully, I’ll be able to be a bit more clear. Sorry about all the confusion.
October 24th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
Atheist participate in Christmas, what’s the difference.
October 31st, 2005 at 2:39 pm
I think why would a christian want to celebrate a holiday that has such a satanic meaning behind it. God us from the darkness into the light and people just go right beck into the darkness.