Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?

My simple answer to this question is yes. Yes, I believe Christians should celebrate Halloween.

Celebrate Halloween in a way that can glorify God. Celebrate Halloween in a way that shows love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control toward your neighbors. Celebrate Halloween by looking for ways to use the good and pure elements of Halloween to relate to your neighbors so that you can express compassion and grace toward them not judgment. Celebrate Halloween by praying and asking God to use this day to create a unique opportunity to serve your neighbors and possibly share the Gospel with them.

But according to a study done by Backlinko, the sweet spot of a blog post sits around 1,447 words. That means my simple answer needs a little more explaining, so here are some more of my thoughts about how to answer this question.

A Kid’s Experience of Halloween

For a moment, I need you to try and forget everything you know to be true about Halloween. I need you to pretend that Halloween, as you know it to be true today, does not even exist.

I want you to take yourself back to when you were, let’s say, 5 years old. As a little boy or girl, can you remember what year this would have been and what you were into at the time?

For me, this would mean going back to 1990. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had just released the franchise’s first movie and had recently launched its new cartoon TV series. I was absolutely in love with these four turtles who could do awesome karate moves, ate tons of pizza, and protected the city. My friends and I would all pretend to be either Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo, or Raphael in order to fight off the evil Shredder every single day.

The year and what thing that each of us was into at the time will probably be different depending on when you grew up. My goal in this exercise is not to necessarily establish a connection between our shared love for the TMNT universe but more the idea that, as kids, we all loved and enjoyed pretending to be something. There is a natural and innocent sense of joy, wonder, imagination, and fun associated with dressing up or pretending to be a cowboy, princess, superhero, cartoon character, astronaut, athlete…or in my case, a turtle.

While we might have had differences in what we were into as kids, I am convinced that all kids, no matter when you were born or what you grew up pretending to be, we all shared a common love (and probably still love) candy! If I am honest, I think I might be even more in love - possibly borderline obsessed with gummy bears today than I ever was as a kid.

Remember that we are still pretending to forget anything and everything we know to be true or associated with the origin and history of Halloween. I now want you to imagine a day that you, as a 5-year-old, you come home from kindergarten. When you walk in the door, you find a costume of your favorite childhood memory waiting for you on the kitchen table. Your parents then begin to blow your childlike mind when they tell you what is about to happen tonight!

They tell you that tonight, all your best friends are coming over to your house and they are all going to be dressed up in their favorite costume too. Once they arrive, you are all going to meet up with all the other kids from the neighborhood. At this moment, as a kid, you are already thinking to yourself, this is quickly becoming the greatest day ever…but you have no clue how much greater and crazier this day is about to get!

Then your parents tell you that for one night, just tonight, you get to run around knocking on each of your neighbors’ doors with your friends and when you do, people are going to answer the door with a smile on their face to offer you more candy than you can ever imagine!

There is not a child that has or will ever live that doesn’t hear these words and start to think to themselves that this day is now the greatest day to have ever existed in the history of mankind.

What makes this day even more exciting is that it is not just for kids but parents too. Not even just for parents but adults in general!

If you have kids, you get the chance to walk around your neighborhood, meeting, introducing yourself, getting to know, and engaging in the community in a very unique way that only happens once a year. Not to mention also enjoying the unlimited treats your child is running around collecting.

Even if you don’t have kids, as a part of the neighborhood, you have the opportunity to demonstrate hospitality by meeting and serving so many of your neighbors and their children by welcoming them to your door and passing out candy…not chips…candy with a smile!

The Christian Response to Halloween

The reason I wanted you to take a moment to forget everything you know about Halloween and simply focus on only certain elements of this day is to realize that there are, as Christians, reasons to ACCEPT or say ‘Yes’ to celebrating Halloween.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there is a lot of stuff associated or connected to Halloween that Christians need to REJECT or say ‘No’ to celebrating. I will never be one who votes in favor to celebrate things like devil worship, evil being glorified, satanic rituals, dabbling in witchcraft, or promoting violence.

I even have to admit that over the years, as the Lord has continued to personally work on my own heart, that my opinion on such things like horror movies, decorating your house in a scary way, haunted houses, SPIRIT stores, or choosing to dress up as “dead cheerleader” verses just a cheerleader has changed over the years.

I used to not see the overall harm in these things but as I have grown in my faith and as my kids get older, I am seeing these things through different lenses now.

I also think that by Christians choosing to say ‘Yes’ to celebrating certain elements of Halloween, it creates opportunity for us as believers to REDEEM Halloween. When I use the word ‘Redeem,’ I am referring to the opportunities Halloween presents to us to reach out and connect with those who do not know Jesus. In my opinion, if we are quick to reject Halloween altogether, we miss out on a very unique opportunity to genuinely show love toward our neighbors. Possibly even miss chances to share the good news of a redeeming God with people living closest to us on a day unlike any other in which they will willingly come to our front doors! Jesus said in John 17,

“I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.” - John 17:14-16

This is the often-quoted passage that Christians refer to when they say that we, as believers, should be IN but not OF the world. To be “of the world” means that you choose to follow the unbelieving world’s values, beliefs, and conduct.

So, to be “IN but not of the world” simply means the opposite. We, as Christians, need to learn to be IN and with this world but not live by its values, beliefs, and conduct. I think this helps set a solid biblical and faith-oriented foundation around how Christians can choose to say ‘Yes’ to celebrating Halloween that both accepts certain elements, rejects certain elements, and still looks to use it as a way to ‘Redeem’ those who view it from a worldly perspective.

I would also argue that this same approach we can use should be, as Christ followers, used to say ‘Yes’ to celebrating any given holiday, especially when majority of people are celebrating such holidays are focusing on the wrong things.

Conclusion

In short summary, if you are a Christian, I hope you understand that I am not trying to put any pressure on you to celebrate or not celebrate this holiday. I can understand and respect one’s decision to celebrate or not celebrate Halloween.

I personally think there is a lot of beautiful and joyful things about the concept of Halloween that we should accept. But I also think there is some really dark and dangerous things about Halloween that we should reject.

The decision is ultimately up to you to make as an individual and I do not think that we should judge each other or anyone else for that matter based on their decision. I do not view this issue or question as a hill I am ready to die on or one that should cause separation between believers or the church.

If you are a Christian parent, I want to encourage you to have conversations with your children about what Halloween should and should not be celebrated for. I also want to encourage you to have this same type of discussions with your kids about any celebrated holiday or traditions.

I hope that the freedom that we are able to experience because of who Jesus Christ is and what Jesus Christ has done for us will ultimately allow us all to at least look at such things like Halloween with the same mindset as Paul looked at the things around him in 1 Corinthians when he said,

“I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” - 1 Corinthians 9:22-23

Perhaps, if we begin to approach such things as Halloween from a Christian perspective, the question no longer becomes so focused on should or should we not celebrate Halloween as believers. Instead, the focus might become more concentrated on how we as Christians can use Halloween as a way to glorify God by sharing his grace, mercy, and love toward others on this day in a very unique way. Just a thought.