I have covered other holidays in my posts, but not Halloween. Why? I know that even in the church there are mixed feelings on it so I know that there are people that don’t believe you should celebrate it.
Growing up, Halloween was something we loved doing. Getting dressed up and knocking on people’s doors for candy was exciting and fun. Then we started going to a church that everyone thought Halloween was evil and wanted everyone to stay home. We still went anyway, but we didn’t have our light on for people to come to the door. My family didn’t see Halloween as a big deal. It was something kid’s did and not a problem.
Fast forward to a few years ago. We had been letting our kids do the same. My work had hosted a in building Halloween tour. I would decorate and sometimes give out candy. So it was even safer than going door to door. Win for everyone.
Just before the Halloween after the last we celebrated, one of our friends posted about how they didn’t want to hear anything about Halloween, it was evil and pagan. I showed Angelina and laughed at it. I made a comment of how I was going to do the same for Christmas (I was totally in love with Christmas at the time) because it was just as pagan as Halloween was. This lead to a lot of research on Angelina’s part. She had no idea. I knew. I grew up knowing, but never saw it as a problem.
Some of the things she found were even worse than what I had known about. The stories I heard were disturbing. I couldn’t believe that we would be doing something even remotely similar to what the original intent of the holiday was. Needless to say, we didn’t celebrate that Halloween or any since. We started questioning all holidays and have removed several out of our lives for the same reasons as removing Halloween.
I recently spoke to someone close about taking over pagan holidays for God. I described, in detail, some of the horrific things that happen during Easter, but didn’t identify it as such, but asked the question: If those people came to God, could people now start celebrating that holiday as Christians?
The answer I received honestly shocked me: “Yes” Their reasoning is that God can take any day back. However, that isn’t what is happening here. God isn’t going and declaring Pagan Child-Sacrificing Festival Alpha now His holiday, we are. We are declaring it is His, not Him. God is clear on how He wants to be worshipped and how His people should act. One of the things mentioned in those Scriptures listed above is that we are to NOT learn/do/practice the ways that the pagans/nations. There is no command, instruction, or example of anyone in the Bible taking something the pagans do and turning it for God and God being happy with it. There is however, an example of God getting angry and killing a bunch of people because of them doing that (the golden calf).
All this to say: DO YOUR RESEARCH! Hosea 4:6 – My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.