Why We Don’t Celebrate Halloween
Halloween is coming up quickly, which means costumes, candy, and door-to-door escapades for many. Lots of families (especially children) look forward to this holiday every year because they so enjoy the costume parades, parties, and of course – all that candy! But, like some other families, we won’t be participating in any of this.
Why not? Halloween, in its current form, is pretty innocent. What’s wrong with cute bunnies bobbing for apples and eating lollipops?
Well, Halloween is one of those issues that some feel more strongly about than others. I’ve had plenty of friends and neighbors over the years who chose to participate despite Christian beliefs. I’ve had several who chose not to trick-or-treat, yet chose to dress up and participate in parties or other holiday happenings. I believe we are all called and convicted on this issue on an individual basis. We all have our own comfort levels with this. I think this is the way it should be. So this article is really meant to share my personal convictions with you, not to speak to your convictions.
Our reasons for not celebrating Halloween are really two-fold: first, it is a pagan/satanic holiday. Second, it is based around junk food. We are opposed to both.
Halloween began as a celebration of wickedness and Satan worship. It is rooted in pagan tradition. Although the original ways it was celebrated bear little resemblance to the way it is celebrated today, I still find myself uncomfortable with it. Children may dress in cute costumes and get candy from neighbors, but this isn’t the way everyone celebrates. There are icons of witches, skeletons, ghosts, and other “evil” things. People, especially teenagers, play tricks on others (egging homes, toilet papering homes, etc.). Sinister stories are passed around. Some, who participate in pagan religions, celebrate with special rituals (some of which are Satanic). Although some of you are thinking “And what does that have to do with dressing your child up , going to a party and bobbing for apples?” It’s the entire spirit of the holiday that makes me uncomfortable.
I personally don’t even like the idea of getting candy from strangers! I don’t like trying to dress the kids up to be something they’re not (not because I have anything specifically against it, I just don’t really want to mess with it). The spirit of the holiday just makes me uncomfortable, so I don’t really want to participate or have my kids participate.
I might have considered participating because of my own fond memories of going trick-or-treating as a child. Yes, I did go. I wasn’t raised in a strong Christian home (and my parents still wonder why I don’t let my kids trick-or-treat). But then there’s the issue of the candy.
Candy.
People go out and buy bags and bags of “fun size” candy bars and boxes. Tons of sugar in so many different forms, plus artificial colors and flavors. No redeeming nutritional value at all. It used to be, 20 or 30 years ago, that sometimes neighbors would give out toys, apples, raisins, or homemade treats. These days we’re advised not to eat any homemade treats, so most people don’t bother to make them or give them out. This means that everything is store-bought and laden with junk.
So once you look at the way that Halloween is celebrated today, it’s primarily about junk food! To me, that is just as harmful as the spiritual roots of Halloween, albeit in a different way. I just don’t want my kids eating that much candy!
And lest you think I am too strict, and that “once a year isn’t going to hurt them,” let me tell you something I discovered recently. I gave Daniel a vitamin C tablet, which I later discovered had corn syrup in it (grr). From this tiny, tiny amount of corn syrup, Daniel’s bottom turned red, then broke out in open, bleeding red sores. Yes – a tiny amount of corn syrup cause bleeding red sores on my son’s bottom! So not worth it. I can’t allow him any candy at all.
That’s where we stand on Halloween. Again, I’m not trying to convince anyone of what they should do about Halloween; these are just my personal convictions.
Do you celebrate Halloween? Why or why not?
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TESTING!
We do do Halloween. I hate to say celebrate because I’d prefer to use that word for Christ’s birthday, our birthdays, Anniversary’s, etc. I am a Christian but I’m also a working Mom whose kids go to “school” and learn about Halloween and Santa so I go with the flow. I struggle with issues like these but I feel as if I implant some good knowledge into the minds of my kids then I don’t have to worry too much. I was raised as a Christian child (sadly we only really went church on Sundays and didn’t do too much else) but I never felt as if Halloween was a bad thing to be doing. I also was raised in a junk food household so that is a big concern of mine. I’m really torn at how we are going to address that issue. A local dentist takes extra candy which is likely what we’ll do with most candy our kids get. I don’t want to compromise our food standard so I think we will be giving out pencils/stickers/etc
Our church has a harvest party every year and that is the extent to what my kids know about the holiday. We make homemade costumes amd they do get candy but not in massive amounts. As a church we offer a fun alternative to the chaos of the holiday. My daughter, 4, doesn’t know the word Halloween. I was raised with this same tradtion at the chrurch I grew up in and never trick or treated or got into the scary stuff centered around the day. As a Christian the conviction is yours as you said, Kate.
We never did Halloween growing up, at least not consistently, for the same reasons I assume. We dressed up for the parties at school and did trick or treat a couple times. I felt the same way about celebrating Halloween as you do, until I learned that Christmas is also rooted in pagan traditions, and includes many sugary treats too! I’m sorry I don’t remember the details off the top of my head, but my baby is ready for bed so I can’t research it right now. She’s only 4 months old, so I have a while to plan.
Just some food for thought. If I remember correctly, Easter is the same way too.
We quit celebrating Halloween several years back for the whole pagan ideology reason as well. Instead we turned it into a fun, family night that we celebrate in the back of the house with all the lights in the front of the house turned off.
I will admit, we still do candy. *blush* We allow the kids to pick out a bag of candy and they can have a couple of pieces that night and then those bags will last us MONTHS (with 7 kids, I figure that’s not too bad, right?) as they only get a piece occasionally after that. I’m toying with the idea of convincing them that homemade candies would be SO much better than nasty store bought ones…. But first I need to find some good recipes!
I hope I am not being offensive to you in any way and I agree with many of your reasons for not celebrating, however I would like to correct you on a few minor details. You seem to put Pagans and Satan worship in the same category; They are two entirely different things. Paganism is a very, very broad term. The ancient Greeks had a religion within a branch of Paganism, they for example didn’t practice evil rituals that encourage sin and hate. Witches, who are nothing like the Greeks, also are Pagans. “Pagan”- a follower of a polytheistic religion, or a religion that follows more than one god and or goddess (“Pagan”, Def. 1). There are hundreds, if not thousands, of beliefs that are considered Pagan. Wicca, one of the best known Pagan religions today, has a famous saying that can be thought of as something similar to a loose Christian commandment; It is called the Wiccan Rede and it basically goes something like this: Do what ye shall, and it harm none. This is a fundament of Wicca and translates simply into: Live your life and no matter what happens, do nothing to harm anyone. Also, Pagans don’t sacrifice or harm animals or people in any rituals. Now onto Satanism or Satan Worship. Satan is a Christian figure, not a Pagan idea. Satan worshipers are Monotheists like every other Christian because they believe in God, but follow Beelzebub. None of the many Pagan religions even acknowledge the devil because he is A) Not a God in the first place. And B) A Christian idea. Truly, Satan worshippers of today for the most part don’t even really follow Lucifer; Many people claim to be Satan worshippers for plenty of different reasons like wanting to be “different” or to be rebellious. I won’t even try to get into explaining the whole deal of Satan worship because it’s kind of rare and frankly just a mess.
I don’t care if you want to dislike Pagans, that’s for you to decide. Just don’t confuse them for Satanists. In fact one of the many unspoken rules of Wicca has been to never attempt to convert or push their beliefs on anybody else, so you don’t have to worry about them trying to convert you or your children. What you really should be looking out for is Satanic-Witches which are nothing like Pagan witches.
Hi Lilah. While I understand your beliefs on differentiating the definitions of pagan vs satanist, please understand that everything that is outside of God – all thoughts and beliefs that do not recognize the only one true Triune God – is satanic (evil). Paganism and satanism are the same because all of it comes from the same source – Satan – who is the “Father of Lies” and the ultimate deceiver. The whole world is actually blinded to Satan’s many deceptions, which is why God calls everyone to Him, to the Light, so that they can see this truth. His Holy Spirit reveals this truth to everyone and people choose to accept or reject it. All good things come from God; the ability for anyone to do good at anytime comes from Him and no other higher power. Blessings and favor come from God, not from anyone else. People following any and all beliefs that don’t acknowledge and worship God are actually worshiping Satan – whether or not they call it that. God (God the Father (Jehovah), Son (Jesus), and Holy Spirit are one) created everything – not just the world but all of the universe. The nature of male and female are in Him, so God is not just masculine or feminine; He’s both and He “is”. Satan can’t create, but he can pervert God’s creation and has done so by giving numerous ideas to mankind to effectively have them think of all the different ways they should NOT acknowledge the only true and living God. The reason why Satan is able to do this, to decieve people, is because we, as mankind, gave our earthly dominion to Him when the earth was first created. This is why the original writer of this post placed pagan/satanic in the same sentence. I hope I have not offended you with this post.
I have nothing good to say about halloween. I understand why some celebrate other holidays, although out family does not..but I see no redeeming qualities in halloween. I hate it with a passion and it just seems to get more popular every year, which I pretty much chalk up to the influence of satan and the demons. Yes, I said it.
I don’t want to come off sounding too “know it all” but I actually have done a TON of research on holidays because of my convictions. Personally I don’t like the majority of holidays celebrated in this day and age, but that having been said I need to clarify my thoughts for you.
Halloween interestingly enough is THE ONLY widespread major holiday celebrated in the western world that actually has christian roots. Thanksgiving arguably could have been “christian” but it mostly celebrated the harvest of the America’s not the Lord. Christmas and Easter are definitely pagan holidays and New Years resembles many cultures celebrations.
Halloween has it’s roots in the early church as to celebrate and bless the recently departed as they enter heaven. Now while this notion of purgatory in my mind is false, that is where it originates, from the church not understanding the word. Now we have more knowledge and understand that absent from the body equals present with the Lord, but then that didn’t make sense because they were still stuck on the notion of “Abraham’s Bosom” and it was hard to translate for a lot of new Christians that Abraham’s bosom no longer existed and now you go straight to the throne room. Confused people into thinking up a purgatory. Anyways, the idea was that saints that died throughout the year would stay in purgatory until All Hallow’s Eve (Oct. 31st) every year and then they would move on to heaven. The day was to honor and bless the recently departed as they entered the throne room. Now here’s where it gets ugly. The world, gotta love the worldliness of it, took this idea that the souls don’t move into heaven yet and ran with it. They ditched the idea of purgatory, let’s face it the devil knew it was bunk, and said oh the bodies roam around earth that night and have one final shot at revenge. At this point people were frightened, so they donned masks and costumes to hide themselves from the potential of revenge. (Creepy, but it’s the truth) So even though the holiday is disturbing and disgusting. You will at least know why where and how it got that way.
Personally we choose to ‘celebrate’ Halloween, but not traditionally. I think kids love dress up (adults do too) and make believe is a big way to spur on a child’s imagination, which in turn spurs learning, etc. etc. etc. However, we will not be celebrating it by the traditions that the world does. I will let my kids dress up and enjoy pretending for the day, but we will feast and celebrate the Lord’s blessing in that we know what happens to us. We know what the future holds. (and we might go to a harvest carnival during the day, who knows) But what we will not be doing is:
1. Gory costumes- I’m sorry no. that is not spurring imagination that’s being gross and it’s never ok to try and demonize yourself.
2. Trick or Treating- During this time we will be eating a “feast” of sorts of good healthy foods and discussing what Jesus means for the saints. Candy and gut rot is one thing we avoid! (and the primary reason my in laws hate being grandparents to our kids)
On another note, we do this for all of the majorly celebrated holidays(this god centering thing), but I think what is more important are the feasts that the Lord ordained for us to celebrate that I haven’t seen a lot of Christians celebrate. Passover is one of the most fascinating displays of the resurrection story that I think I’ve seen. There are seven feasts to the Lord and when you follow tradition and then back it with bible knowledge it’s way cool! I think the better question is what high holy days (holidays) are we not celebrating that we should be?
Stephie N
SimplyBEEcause.blogspot.com
Wow -I so enjoyed and agree with your post! We should be celebrating more feasts. My understanding of Halloween is that it is also a celebration of the harvest. We could all benefit from “getting back to the Earth”. If we could instill in our children a respect for the Earth and a responsibility to care for it and celebrate the wonder of nature (created by God) our children might have a better chance at healthy, balanced lives.