It's important that believers have an answer when we are asked why we don't celebrate Halloween.

For many, this coming Monday night marks Halloween. According to The Week, "it's time once again for Americans to dig out their costumes and candy corn – and for Brits to turn off the lights, draw the curtains and pretend they're not at home."¹

In actual fact, every year in Britain this 'festival' seems to grow in scale and potency, thanks in part to US commercial and cultural influences (though the blame rests entirely with us), and perhaps also thanks to the spiritual vacuum of secular humanism that is leaving millions starved of spiritual truth and searching for an experience of something beyond themselves.

Halloween 2016 

According to The Telegraph, "Halloween has become one of the most important party dates in the nation's social calendar".² This year Strictly Come Dancing will be leading the charge, with a Halloween special over the weekend, whilst Pokemon Go will be trying to entice millions more to play the game with a Halloween themed 'event' running through until early November.

As workplaces, schools and social groups plan their costumes, stock up on sweets and prepare to take to the streets, many Christians are shuddering and turning away, hoping somehow to avoid it all. Sadly, some believers are more light-hearted about Halloween, taking it all 'in good fun'.

For all of us, it is worth stopping awhile to consider the roots of the festival, for Halloween comes from somewhere – and it leads somewhere. Apart from anything else, knowing about these roots helps those of us who hate Halloween to have an answer when we are asked why we are not joining in the 'fun'. 

Every year in Britain, Halloween celebrations seem to grow in scale and potency.

Roots and Fruits: from Samhain to Halloween

Modern Halloween celebrations have evolved from the ancient Celtic pagan festival of Samhain, which marked the end of harvest and the beginning of winter, half-way between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.

Samhain was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the spiritual world was thin and easily crossed by spirits (pagan gods, spirits of nature) and souls of the dead. Otherworldly sprites were thought to need appeasing in order for people's livestock to survive the winter, so plates of food and drink would be left out for them - and places would be set at the table for dead loved ones, to welcome their spirits back home.

Neo-pagans and Wiccans still celebrate Samhain today, but from the 9^th Century its populist celebration began to be Christianised, as the established Catholic Church celebration of Allhallowtide (a triage of All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day³ and All Souls' Day, when martyrs and departed loved ones were celebrated, commemorated and prayed for) was re-set to the same date – the turn of October to November. Pagan practices were blended with Catholic belief about the souls of the dead, and over the centuries these practices have evolved into today's distinctive cultural traditions that few now understand or question.

Origins of Modern-Day Practices

But how have we got from this pagan history to today's traditions of pumpkin-carving, apple-bobbing, costumes and trick-or-treating? And how do we explain to our children and grand-children (and interested friends) that these things are potentially dangerous?

Again, it's important to learn of their roots. Pumpkins, though carved across the world as lanterns for thousands of years, were also carved as part of the Samhain festival, to represent otherworldly spirits or to ward them off. Their connection to an Irish folk tale about a man who played games with the devil and ended up in purgatory meant that these 'Jack O'Lanterns' were easily adopted as part of Catholic celebrations of All Hallows' Eve, being used to represent souls in purgatory.

Modern Halloween stems back to the Celtic pagan festival of Samhain.

Apple-bobbing is a straightforwardly druidic tradition, stemming from the Celtic pagan connection of apples to the spirit world (apparently this is partly because the seeds and core of a sliced apple form a pentagram shape – which indicates particularly clearly the root of these ancient traditions in satanism). Apples were often used on Samhain in divination games and rituals.

Trick-or-Treating

Trick-or-treating on Halloween also originates in Samhain, when food, drink and crop offerings were left outside to appease pagan spirits. Over the centuries people began dressing up as these spirits, either to protect themselves or to receive offerings on their behalf. From the Middle Ages onwards this involved going from house to house and receiving food and drink, often in exchange for singing or reciting poetry – with children threatening mischief if they were not welcomed.

These traditions blended easily with the Catholic practice on All Hallows' Eve of children and the poor going door-to-door collecting 'soul cakes' (sweet biscuits marked with a cross) – either to represent the dead or in exchange for praying for the dead, with each cake representing a soul freed from purgatory. Those going door-to-door would often dress up as saints, angels or demons.

Halloween for Christians

Halloween taps into people's God-given desire for eternity and something beyond themselves, but its symbolic celebration of darkness and death represents the utter inverse of scriptural values – arguably, it represents everything the God of Light abhors.

For many believers, the spiritual and symbolic roots of its practices are more than enough reason to avoid all involvement with Halloween. After all, will we not all stand before God and have to give an answer for every single one of our actions – including those that were 'just for fun'? But whether or not they are 'harmless' in and of themselves, the billing of Halloween practices as such is thoroughly misleading, putting an innocuous and 'enjoyable' face on spiritual realities of evil, darkness, fear and the pagan supernatural – celebrating them rather than offering people a way to be saved from them.

Halloween taps into people's God-given desire for something beyond themselves, but it represents everything the God of Light abhors.

Halloween's heavy commercialisation and sanitisation today should not deceive us. Every form of occult – indeed every form of rebellion, right back to the first sin in the Garden of Eden – starts with an invitation to something seemingly harmless (the serpent to Eve) and is followed by peer pressure to join in (Eve to Adam). So with Halloween. The more we trivialise it, the more likely young people are to get drawn in unwittingly into occult practices.

"For You Were Once Darkness, But Now You Are Light in the Lord" (Ephesians 5:8)

As Christians, we should be wanting to move towards the Light, not away from it – and we should not be wanting to indulge in any activity that might constitute pagan (demon) worship, or lend credence to beliefs about evil, death and the supernatural that are unbiblical.

The easy response for Christians on Halloween is to go into hiding – to stay in for the night or meet up with other like-minded friends. But that would be letting a tremendous opportunity slip through our fingers. The darker the night, the brighter the Light can shine – if we don't hide it under a bowl, but put it on a stand for all to see. We have a real opportunity here to let the light of the Good News shine in the midst of ever-growing darkness.

Halloween is what it is today because the Church compromised, allowing its own celebrations (whatever you think of the theology behind them) to be blended with pagan ritual. There has never been a better time for the Church to accept the call to be distinctive – to stand apart from the crowd, eschew compromise and stand firm, holding out the Word of Life. The Light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the True and Only alternative to the darkness of sin and death – and offers complete freedom from the clutches of darkness.

Halloween is what it is today because the Church compromised.

Ideas for Action

So, here are a few ideas for your weekend/Monday evening:

• Host a 'Halloween alternative' event in your church – it's not too late to organise one! Many churches around the country will be holding 'light parties' or other family-friendly fun nights to offer people an alternative – ideally one in which the Gospel can be shared. E.g. see what churches in Norfolk are doing by clicking here. Meanwhile, Barnabas in Churches have some activity session ideas for children.
• Brave the streets to share the Gospel during Halloween – take a group with you or contact churches in your area to see if any they are sending any evangelism teams are going out.
• Pray: If you can't host or attend an alternative event, consider having a special prayer meeting to intercede for those in your area drawn into Halloween celebrations. The term 'Jack O'Lantern' literally means 'man with a lantern' – or 'night watchman'. Are we not the true Jack O'Lanterns of our day – those who keep watch during the night, faithfully waiting for the return of our Messiah?
• Stay in – and greet trick-or-treaters with the Gospel! The Bible Society have produced a handy booklet entitled 'Might there be more to Halloween?' and CPO have produced some useful tracts designed for young people.

References

1 Halloween 2016: Why do we trick or treat? The Week, 26 October 2016.

2 Morris, H. The best Halloween parties in the UK this year. The Telegraph, 18 October 2016.

3 Or All Hallows' Day - 'Hallow' deriving from the Old English halig, meaning saint.

4 In its infancy All Hallows' Eve was set aside as a vigil for this celebration – when Christians across Europe would remember the example set by martyrs and pray that they might be like them. All Souls' Day (now 2^nd November), when the 'faithful departed' (particularly loved ones) would be commemorated and prayer for, tied down an already popular European Christian practice (though its origins are rather more Roman than biblical) to 2^nd November, as of the 11^th Century.