In fact, far from participating in a pagan ritual, I would suggest that Halloween (what it has become in America), is a great opportunity to initiate and strengthen relationships with neighbors and “un-churched” individuals who might not know God or may themselves be serving false Gods.
I’m not suggesting un-relational evangelism tactics such as including a religious tract with every handful of candy. Such impersonal methods will likely generate a negative and uninspiring result.
However, let’s step through a typical Halloween, identify the positives and the negatives, and tweeze out any potential God dishonoring pagan idol worship that would lead us to boycott this American tradition.
Step 1: Spend time with your children picking out the perfect outfit.
Maybe you will dress up too? Sounds fun. OK, I’ve done this before with my children and I know it can be a beating. Negatives: It’s sometimes a miserable experience ending in fights and tears. Often the best outfits have been picked over already and you are left with last year’s favorites. How dreadful. Positives: A shared experience with your kids. And they will probably look adorable, right? Take some pics.
Step 2: Go buy some candy, a scary sound thingy, some plastic skeletons, a few colored light bulbs, and a few pumpkins to carve or decorate.
Negatives: The scary sound thingy, light bulbs, and skeletons are optional, but I would hardly call that pagan idol worship unless you bow down to them and start chanting or praying to them like the Israelites did with the golden calf. If that’s your plan I’d say you need to do more than boycott Halloween. You need to have a nice theological visit with a local Christian pastor. Now, the pumpkins and candy will cost you about $40 all in, and it could get a little messy. Positives: Spending time with your kids. You might actually have a teaching opportunity about whether ghosts and goblins are real, how our bodies will be raised from the dead during the rapture, and how many pumpkins twenty dollars will buy. Does money grow on trees? I don’t think so! Other positives: Spending time with your kids decorating and carving a pumpkin can be a blast. Roast the pumpkin seeds for a delicious treat!
Step 3: Grab the candy bags or buckets, flashlights, get dressed up, and head out for some “treats”.
When was the last time you were “tricked” anyway? Negatives: Yes! More pictures. Positives: Lots of candy you probably won’t eat, memories of the 2 year old stumbling up to a neighbor’s doorsteps, dressed like a lady bug, grabbing 5 handfuls of candy before they are stopped, saying “twick o tweet”. How adorable! Did you get that on video?
Step 4: Meet, make new connections, and briefly mingle with neighbors you rarely see or talk to.
Step 5: Go home, fight the kids over what they can and can’t eat, throw away the “bad” candy, sneak a few yummy bites for yourself (Gotcha!), and scratch your head wondering when the pagan ritual thing is supposed to begin.
Negatives: A sugar rush that just won’t quit and a rekindled need to hit the gym. Positives: An opportunity to talk to your kids about healthy eating habits and the importance of brushing teeth before bedtime, a fun, memory-filled evening with neighbors and family, and some really cute pictures and videos.
So, should we as Christians boycott Halloween? My answer is an emphatic No! Unless you are planning a blood sacrifice, a seance with the undead, and a quick game of ouija, my answer is absolutely not! I wouldn’t miss it for the world!
Look forward to an article in a few months about whether as Christians “Santa Claus” should be part of our Christmas celebration.
I would like to provide a youtube video regarding if Christians participate in Halloween. I would love to know your response to this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKryRrx65sc
Thanks,
- Morris
Correction, the video’s title is “Should Christians participate in Halloween?”
very well done. and your youtube video does a good job of presenting several alternatives to how we should respond. I guess I fall into the camp that says go with it and have fun. I reject that has any evil meaning for most people who celebrate it. If we were in different times or if people actually worshiped the occult instead of simply handing out and consuming candy, I would agree that it would be something to strongly oppose. As it is, it’s a pretty tame parody of what once was.
Brad, I think you’ve done a splendid job of laying out the pros and cons and helping us not lose our heads in religious fanaticism. I went trick-or-treating as a kid and have gone with all of my children walking the neighborhood as they’ve collected the candy. It is a great time of neighborhood fellowship, etc. – as you’ve pointed out. But your excellent points aren’t strong enough (yet) to resolve a conflict within me. Let me explain.
Lamentations 3:40 admonishes us to “examine our ways and test them.” Philippians 4:8 exhorts us to spend our time and energy on things that are “excellent and worthy of praise.” The older I get the more I examine everything in my life. And the more I examine Halloween traditions, the more uncomfortable I get with them. My own neighborhood is right now littered with tomb stones and spider webs in the bushes. I’m looking at costumes and decorations in the stores and the blood and gore are definitely falling into my category of “excellent and worthy of praise.” If my kid were watching a TV show with this much graphic display I would make him turn it off!
And I’m remembering a couple of situations. When our one son was young I took him out on Halloween night. He might have been 4 or 5 years old at the time. We called on one house where there was a scarecrow or something in the yard. We didn’t pay any attention to it, proceeded to the door, got the candy and thanked our neighbors. As we were leaving, my son walked over to this figure to check it out. Suddenly, the teen-ager reached and grabbed my son, screaming at him. He went ballistic. Escaping the clutches of this teen-ager, he ran to my arms and sobbed for more than an hour. He threw away his Halloween candy and vowed he would never go again. (Of course that was a vow he hasn’t kept.)
Just last year, we invited some missionary friends of ours to bring their daughter to a haunted house with us. It had been written up in the Dallas Morning News as being really good. We drove across town and eagerly went in. The adults thought it was fun. My son (now 13 years old) thought it was fun. But our friends’ 11 year old daughter was traumatized. She came out screaming and sobbing, running to her mother’s arms. She sobbed all the way home. And none of us were feeling any too happy for having gone in the first place.
So I’m remembering these incidents, and wondering if we can really stretch the definition of “excellent and worthy of praise” to include things that terrify our innocent children. Colossians 3:21 and Ephesians 6:4 warn fathers not to “exasperate or embitter your children.” Can I in good conscience continue taking my children to venues that I know have a likelihood of scaring them so much that they cry for an hour afterward? Is that really “excellent and worthy of praise?”
To top it off, I was reading Romans 14 this morning, where the Apostle Paul gives us certain admonitions that seem like they directly address this Halloween dilemma.
Romans 14:13-15 says, “… Decide instead to live in such a way that you will not cause another believer to stumble and fall. … But if someone believes it is wrong, then for that person it is wrong. And if another believer is distressed by what you eat, you are not acting in love if you eat it. …”
Romans 14:20-23 continues, ” … it is wrong to eat something if it makes another person stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else if it might cause another believer to stumble … and If you do anything you believe is not right, you are sinning.”
Of course Paul was talking specifically about foods that were considered unclean or inappropriate for believers under the Old Testament laws. But the application to other things is also inherent in what he wrote (“… or do anything else …”).
We often look to the bumper sticker that asks “WWJD?” (What Would Jesus Do?). I think the answer is obvious. Jesus would NOT have tomb stones in his front yard. Jesus would NOT have fake blood on his face when he greeted children. Jesus would not glamorize or make light of the dark underworld. Jesus would NOT entertain himself or his children with horror films, etc.
I’m probably going to walk the neighborhood on Halloween night with my son and his friends, and will no doubt get my share of their candy cast-offs. We’ll probably carve a pumpkin and hand out candy at our house. But I won’t feel good about it. I’ll still be wishing for a better alternative.
Larry, you make some excellent points. The difference between celebrating Halloween and eating “unclean” meat is of course that meat isn’t INTRINCALLY unclean, and Christ’s death and resurrection fulfilled the law so that it is permissible to eat what was once excluded. The occult, however (even in its most supposedly innocuous forms) has always been offensive to God, from Genesis to Revelation, and it is INTRINSICALLY unholy.
As you say, we should ask ourselves whether it is “excellent and worthy of praise.”
R. Brad,
I heartily disagree because the underlying message of Halloween (even ignoring the Satanic and pagan history of the ‘holiday’) is greed and selfishness. Do we, as Christians, really want to participate in such an event that goes against most all of what Scripture says?
Before I was a Christian, I took the kids ‘trick or treating’ and it was fun (so was going to a strip club), because that was what life was all about, having fun and pleasing self. Now, as Christian, my purpose is pleasing God and sometimes that means we have to sacrifice our self, so at Halloween we go to a movie, Chuckie Cheese, or pass out candy with kid-oriented tracts (sorry to burst your bubble but most of the feedback I’ve gotten is that kids like the tracts). I don’t believe that my kids have really missed anything.
I think of Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 6:12 (ESV) “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be enslaved by anything.
We should be careful not be enslaved by being afraid of looking or acting different from the world and seeking to glorify God above all else. Don’t see where Halloween in any way, shape, or form does that.
If you want to do Halloween, go ahead, but don’t intimate that those of us who don’t are doing something wrong.
Since when is pagan idol worship the litmus test for what is appropriate Christian behaviour? You mention it a few times, as though there fact that it is NOT idolatry is evidence of its soundness! I think idolatry is irrelevant here. The question is, does Halloween honour God and edify us? It most certainly does not, for “what fellowship can light have with darkness?” Halloween is perverse. Even in its mildest form it celebrates death, darkness, the occult. Come on people, this is hellish stuff. The supposed evangelistic potential of such things is no excuse. In fact, it is offensive to God that we would use anything so filthy to present the gospel of Jesus Christ. Most of the time it’s just an excuse to dabble in the same godless deeds as the world. Much better to be holy and to honour God first, always. Let the Holy Spirit make opportunities for sharing the gospel with the unchurched – He will always do so in a way that is pure and good, and He’ll do it more effectively.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
My children dress up in costumes and eat treats (in addition to ALL things required in the pyramid) 365 days out of the year. So if I’m a bad parent today, I’m a bad parent every day. We donate our costumes to children’s homes, we give a huge chunk of our candy back to the same place and I can’t recall ever there being an element of darkness in our Halloween festivities. We trunk or treat at the church and up and down our street (mostly IN an attempt to meet our neighbors) and we call it a night. We come home, say our prayers and thank God that we live in a time and a country where we are free to worship (and play) without persecution. I take God more seriously than I take myself and teach my kids to do the same.