Christians and pagans and Halloween, oh my

Halloween, evangelicals' favorite holiday, is coming up! That means that some of you are probably already picking out trick-or-treating costumes; some of you are probably breaking out the Gospel tracts that you'll hand out instead of delicious candy ("We're celebrating Reformation Day, not Halloween!")... and most of you are probably doing something in between.

We have this conversation every year in October, but it's a fun one to revisit: what's your take on Halloween? Harmless and fun? Spiritually dangerous? Feel free to share your Halloween thoughts in the comment section below, and take the poll off to the right.

To get you thinking, here are a few favorite Halloween-related links we've collected (and mentioned here) over the last few years. Enjoy:

  • The Scariest Tract of All: Joe Carter's excellent take on Jack Chick tracts and the Christian attitude to Halloween. (The post has some formatting issues, but the content is great.)
  • No Halloween would be complete without a mention of Christian Hell Houses, those ever-controversial evangelistic haunted houses. I recall a lot of chatter about these several years ago; anybody know if they're still a serious phenomenon? (Anybody's church doing one?)
  • An article from two years back about Halloween evangelism in general. A decent summary of why some Christians object to in Halloween, and why others don't.

Share your thoughts! And if anybody can recommend a particularly cute Halloween costume for my one-year-old daughter, that'd be great—we're wavering between Pirate, Cowgirl, and Giant Bee.

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Comments (48)

I have never let my kids do Halloween, nor do we answer the door, or even go to church for the "Harvest Party". There is more than enough bad influences out there that introduce evil and satanic things to our young children, and I just feel that we don't need to encourage our kids to explore that avenue. There really is people out there parading evil on kids and animals. Personally know a young lady who became a wiken. She told me of horrible things they would do. This "Holiday" is celebrated in honor of evil today wheter people want to believe it or not. I really don't understand why parents think it's fun to have their kids scared to death anyway from things jumping out at them. To me, that's just not fun. I told my kids they could play dress up 364 days of the year, just not that one. And find me one reason that we should give our kids more candy than they already get. When my kids were dress up age, I would wait until the day after halloween and go buy them dress up clothes on clearance. We also prayed for the safety of the kids out on the street and for the truly evil folks out there I would pray for their "joy" to be ruined and that they would see the light some day.
While I have been relatively indifferent about Halloween in the past, I am a father for the first time this Oct 31st. My wife and I decided not to do the trick-or-treat thing with our kids when the time came, but a few weeks ago I came home from work and she had bought a costume for my son. I was okay with having a costume for him to wear on Oct 31 or to take photographs in.

The problem I had was that the costume was a jack-o-lantern. I am uneasy about celebrating Halloween itself; it's just too antichrist for me. My wife understood my point and subsequently bought a sock-monkey costume (I've never heard of a sock-monkey, but apparently the were popular in the early 20th century).

Above all, I want my son to know that Jesus is Lord of all, and that the secular ideas that come out from the secular realm during this holiday do not glorify God; in fact they do just the opposite.

Thanks for reading.

Danny
www.theophilux.com
I hate Halloween too. Not for any religious reason; costumes of any kind creep me out. Always have.
Give the kids a break I am a Chritian and every time I ask my eight year old grand-daughter who is the first thing to love she says Jesus,she knows God is no. one , I do not worship the devil and neither do my grandchildren , but I love decorating the house and haveing everyone in after trick or treating is over , it is a fun time and the kids enjoy it and so do we adults seeing how cute they look . We all know who is no. one and the Real reason for Christmas, and we always have a birthday cake . The kids have enough rules and No No's so let them have fun and enjoy I do . Thank-you sharon
Google "Should Christians celebrate Halloween?" and you'll get about one thousand sites covering everything from "it's completely harmless" to "it's completely hellish." Here's site 1,001 that's somewhere in the middle:

http://jameswatkins.agathongro...

Jim (who is dressing up like a mad scientist)

Well after looking at this I guess I am a pagan, but wasn't he or she cute wearing that costume this evening. Pro: I love candy and my kids brought home some great stuff. Con: We had to worry about what they might bring home. It might contain a razor or worse and we didn't want that for our kids. When I was a kid, which was many halloweens' ago, I remember it as something nice in that people gave me candy. I didn't think of the evil or the evil one coming to get me. I thought that the nice people next door and several doors down were nice in giving me candy. I didn't have the opportunities as many on this blog had in knowing who God was. Not until I was older did I know what it (halloween) meant to others or religous leaders. It has become nothing more than a bunch of children going out with parental supervision, gathering candy; as it was when I was young. Now that I have confused all of you have a nice halloween. In God's Grace John
Okay this is fun and my first comment was before I read the comments. Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My. God loves us so much that he allows us to do what we want, therefore, we should and in most part do what he wants us to do. Lynch-patrick you sometimes creep me out. A child who is raised to know God and our Lord Jesus Christ, knows who to follow and will. Now here comes the But; let them be children and play with other children who celebrate getting candy and no more. Love them as God loves us and they will turn out to be a child of God. I don't talk much about my three, who love God and Jesus more and more each day. They are the pride not only of their parents, but of people around them as they reflect what God has given. They went out every halloween and got candy and fought over who got more and who got the best candy. They reluctantly gave some of that candy to Dad, because he was bigger and to Mom because she was nice to them. Allow your children to be children, raise them to know God and Christ through what you do and through your churches. Give the grace of God as He gives it to us. In God's Grace John
We may disagree about some stuff, and thats cool, but people wearing costumes is no joke. When I was a little kid I tried to convince my mom that Halloween was Satanic so I could get out of going out around all those people in costumes; we're Catholic, so it totally didn't work, but I looked all over our mini-Catechism for reasons why I should be allowed to stay home.

Wow! Lynch-patrick, I think you are officially the only person in all of recorded history who struggled to convince his parents that Halloween was evil, rather than the other way around! Interesting, though!
Bonnie from Intellectuelle adds said, " Aren't we endorsing the holiday itself by participating in it?" You bet, Bonnie! I'm endorsing the heck out of it! I love this day and my kids love candy! Let's go knocking on doors!

How can I say that? Because my children are well balanced, led correctly, and informed. Regardless of ANYTHING that was done on this particular day in the past has NOTHING to do with what we're doing in the present. God is not that small.

God made this day. Let's rejoice and be glad in it! Don't give the neighborhood kids tracts, for crying out loud. Give 'em candy. Lots and lots of candy. Then send them off with a hardy and sincere "God bless you. See you in church."

Yay! Halloween!
Big Scotty V,
I would tend to agreed partially with what you said but a few things that are a little hard to swallow.

God certainly did not make Halloween... That is man's idea.

I also think that if people want to hand out scripture then I think they have the right. I also think that candy is okay as long as the parents are aware there are people out there that could and would harm your children without a thought...

The following scripture states something very important: 1 Corinthians 8 - 7But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. 8But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

9Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? 11So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.

Peace,
MarkO
Thanks MarkO. Love you, brother.
Funny how we Christians seem to have no problem assimilating pagan cultural celebrations and making them our own, yet we fail to even acknowledge traditional Biblical celebrations (and there are many of them) mandated by God in the OT. And if you try the "but that was for the Jews" thing, do your homework on the history behind Santa, the Easter Bunny, Halloween, etc.
I'm not saying we should not celebrate Jesus' birth and resurrection, or even "Reformation Day", but the way we have assimilated pagan Icons to do it frustrates me. We chose some of these dates to appease certain cultures, why do we keep their idols?
So, why don't we celebrate Gods declared feasts and festivals? Did Christians go too far trying to separate themselves from the Jews early in history while embracing fully the rites and ritual of the pagans to "witness" to them?
I'm not really up on this part of Christian history. rr
I spent a good four to five years studying Babylonian witchcraft, as well as magical texts from the Hittites and necromancy from the Canaanites.

All of this study has basically led me to one basic conclusion concerning Halloween: it's all about the candy.

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