Christians have lots of different views on this. In my research on this topic I read everything from someone saying you should never participate in Halloween, eat any Halloween-related candy, or encourage anyone else too, to having someone say that Christians can participate in every part of Halloween without issue.
For me, I think there is a happy medium. If you do research on the origins of Halloween you quickly find that it is anything but Christian. It began as a pagan holiday in Ireland and Scotland that celebrated the end of the summer and the time of the harvest. There was a belief that it was also a time when spirits would wander the country side looking for souls to inhabit, so people would dress up in costumes and parade around making loud noises to scare the spirits away. The suggested origin of the jack-o-lantern has to do with a man named Jack who made a deal with the devil so that he never went to hell. He never went to heaven either, so he was doomed to wander around the earth with a candle to light his way. The candle was placed in a turnip to keep it burning longer. When the Irish came to America, it was changed from a turnip to a pumpkin.
So, what are Christians supposed to do? Thankfully for us, Christ can redeem anything and everything, including Halloween. We don’t have to completely abandon it simply because it didn’t start as a Christian holiday. Halloween gives us a wonderful opportunity to talk about Christ, and the light of Christ shinning in the darkness – like the light of the pumpkin shining in the dark. There are lots of ways people have worked to show the light of Christ on Halloween. Some people hand out tracks or other things that talk about God’s love for us – after all, you are handing out things to a captive audience anyway. Others write things like this I saw yesterday: “How is being a Christian like being a pumpkin? God picks you from the patch, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. Cuts off the top and scoops out all the yucky stuff. He removes the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc., and then he carves you a smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all the world.”
Find out what's happening in Grosse Pointewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
I don’t think we should just ignore the origins of Halloween and completely embrace everything it can be about, but I do think that we can transform it into an opportunity to share the love and light of Christ with those around us. It gives us opportunities to talk about what we believe and how that positively impacts the way we do things, even the way we celebrate a day like Halloween. As one author said, “Even though Halloween has pagan origins, because of your freedom in Christ, you and/or your kids can dress up in costumes and go door-to-door and just have fun. However, if you are not comfortable with doing this, then you should not. If you know of a person who would be hindered by doing it, then you shouldn't either.”
Look for opportunities to share the love of Christ on this Halloween. Look for things around you that help you to explain the life and importance of Christ to your children and those around you. Shine the light of Christ boldly into the dark night. “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:4-5
