Thousands of Christians around the world voluntarily have made the choice to kick Halloween to the curb. They made that decision because there are serious problems with the celebration of this holiday. (Photo by iStockphoto)On Oct. 31, millions will celebrate Halloween. But thousands have taken a stand against this dark holiday. Should you join the movement to ditch Halloween?
Earlier this month, CNN Moneyreported that Halloween spending is expected to be down slightly this year from previous years. Americans are still uncertain about the economy, so spending hard-earned money on costumes and candy seems like an unnecessary expense to some.
Despite the expected downturn in Halloween-related spending, the amount that will be spent on Halloween by Americans is still staggering. The National Retail Federation estimates that nearly $7 billion will be spent to celebrate the holiday this year—mainly on costumes, decorations and candy.
What will you go as?
Have you decided what you will be for Halloween this year? Whether the answer is yes or no—Life, Hope & Truth has a suggestion:
Dress like a Christian for Halloween this year.
You may ask, how does someone dress up like a Christian? The answer: by not dressing up like anything at all!
In other words, ditch Halloween completely!
The origin of Halloween
Thousands of Christians around the world voluntarily have made the choice to completely scrap Halloween. They didn’t make that decision because they are grumps or cheapskates! They made that decision because there are serious problems with the celebration of this holiday.
The origins of Halloween are not very hard to discover. All you have to do is Google “Halloween origins,” and you will find a plethora of information on where Halloween came from.
Here is its origin in a nutshell:
Halloween is a combination of two separate observances—All Saints’ Day (All Hallow’s Eve) and the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sah-win).
All Saints’ Day was an observance created by the Roman Catholic Church to honor “all” the “saints” who weren’t assigned a specific day of commemoration. After Catholicism was legalized and became the state religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, the Roman Church developed a tradition called canonization. This was the process of declaring a man or woman a saint because of some heroic deed or act of faith. Those declared saints could then be venerated and prayed to as an intermediary to God. Eventually the tradition developed to honor each particular saint on a certain day of the year—becoming that saint’s day.
By the seventh century, the Roman Church had canonized so many “saints” that they couldn’t all have a calendar date, so May 13 was declared All Saints’ Day—in honor of all the saints who didn’t have a particular day of veneration. All Saints’ Day was officially moved to Nov. 1 by Pope Gregory IV in the ninth century.
Why Nov. 1?
It is a generally accepted historical fact that Nov. 1 was selected to “counteract the pagan celebrations held on that date” (Strange Stories, Amazing Facts, p. 285). In other words, to appeal to the pagan masses, a day was selected for the celebration that was already being observed by pagans in an attempt to easily transfer their loyalties. They could continue keeping their former celebration and many of its customs, but now under a “Christian” banner. This is the basic origin of most of the holidays kept by mainstream Christianity.
The pagan festival it replaced was Samhain—an ancient Celtic festival that had many meanings and costumes. Samhain marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, and it was celebrated by lighting large sacrificial bonfires where crops were burned to honor the gods and costumes were worn to ward off the spirits of the dead that were believed to rise and wander around on the evening of Oct. 31.
Three reasons to ditch Halloween
Taking into account the origins and the practices of Halloween, here are three reasons you should completely ditch Halloween from your life and your children’s lives:
God forbids the merging of pagan customs into our lives. “You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way; for every abomination to the LORD which He hates they have done to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:31). God demands purity of worship from His followers—not combining paganism with Christianity.
God wants us to avoid darkness. Halloween is all about darkness. It glorifies and emphasizes dark characters of mythology—witches, wizards, vampires, ghosts and zombies. These are all associated with either death, Satanism or the occult. The Bible is clear that we should “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness” (Ephesians 5:11). No fellowship means no participation!
The whole celebration is based on a lie. The entire celebration of Halloween—from the celebrations it sprang out of to the present, commercialized holiday—is based on the unbiblical idea that humans have an immortal soul and live on in another form after death. The ancient Celts believed the souls of those in the Underworld wandered around on Samhain, and the Catholic All Souls’ Day is predicated on the belief that “canonized saints” are serving as mediators for God in heaven. Read “Is There Life After Death?” to learn what the Bible actually teaches on this subject.
Join the thousands of Christians around the world who have made the decision to ditch Halloween!
Don’t we all need a little less darkness in our lives?
Erik Jones is a writer/editor for the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, in the Dallas, Texas, area. He is a licensed history teacher with degrees in education and history. He also studied theology at Foundation Institute in Allen, Texas.
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