My Take on Halloween: My Friend, the Witch

I know this is a sensitive subject and we all have our convictions.  Every October, I read countless articles on every side of the Halloween issue for Christians, and I see the debate that happens.  From the outset, I hope that you, my friends and readers, do not feel judged by my perspective on Halloween.  We have had a few encounters with people that have shaped our view of things, and today, I'd like to share one of those with you, along with the principles we use to guide our decisions on this and other issues.   

My friend, the Witch

Former witch, really.

When I met her, she had just become committed in her walk with God.  She decided that she was done with witch craft and started coming to Bible study instead.

She confessed her former lifestyle during lunch with me one afternoon, and I promised that I'd never tell her secret.  Years later, I'm still keeping her secret safe.  I won't divulge enough information for you to know who she is.  I've been in enough Bible studies over the past 15 years that it would be impossible to figure out who I'm referring to.

But meeting her and hearing her story changed my perspective on a number of things.

Like many of us who grew up in the 90s, she watched the movie The Craft.  She and her friends thought it was cool, so they started dabbling in the same ideas represented in the film.  Wicca, modern witch craft, became their religion.

And it worked.  Spells worked.  Seances worked.

Witch craft is real, y'all.  

And just like that, I began realizing that when Christians say that something is "innocent" or "just in fun," we are often completely unaware of the dark side of it.  We say this about movies, TV shows, music, friendships, dating, and a host of other issues.

We say it's harmless and that it can't hurt.  But slowly, we give our minds over to these things that are good clean fun, until we realize that they aren't good and they aren't clean.

Or maybe we never realize it.

My Reservations on Halloween

Here's where I get on my soap box for a moment.  I'll be blunt and say I'm not a fan of Halloween.  I don't want to call it a holiday because that indicates that it is holy (holyday = holiday), and I don't believe that it is holy. I could give you a history of Halloween's pagan origins, but countless other blogs do that. We could also debate those origins and discuss them in light of Christmas & Easter's pagan origins, but you know what?  Those holidays are the times in which we celebrate our savior's birth and resurrection, so it's easy to make an argument for redeeming those days.  But Halloween?  What is there worth celebrating in Halloween?  I'm not sure.

Our Family

We do costumes just about every day over here.  My four year old believes Shakespeare is right and that all the world is her own personal stage.  Halloween's costume appeal is pretty dim compared to our daily repertoire of costumes.

We also do "love thy neighbor" every day over here.  While it's easy for me to get swallowed up in our family life, we try to be good neighbors.  We have good relationships with our neighbors and we look for things that we can do for them, like baking cookies or helping them move furniture, and our neighbors often do the same for us.  I don't feel like I need October 31 to be a good neighbor.

But there's a pretty dark side to Halloween.  As I said before, witches are real.  And then there's the emphasis & glorification of the undead, which really bothers me and my husband.  Ghosts, vampires, and zombies aren't alive--they're dead.  So Biblically speaking, what are they?  Demons, perhaps?  Or are they just all in fun, something to gloss over as no big deal?

"Everything is permissible"--but not everything is beneficial..." 1 Corinthians 10:23

With issues like Halloween, my husband and I like to ask ourselves if this is really beneficial for us and for our children.  If it's not edifying, is it something we need to be a part of?

Christian Approaches to Halloween

Christians can take different approaches to Halloween:  We can hide in the house, participate in the alternative activities like fall festivals, or keep trick or treating innocent and fun.  I often hear the argument that we should be salt and light on this dark night, but sometimes Christians and nonbelievers all kind of do the same thing on Halloween.

I don't think it's easy to come up with a hard and fast rule on Halloween and how Christians should respond to it, but one thing I do know:

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.  1 Corinthians 10:31

We haven't figured out a way that trick or treating can bring glory to God, so we haven't done that one.  To be honest, my husband has very strong convictions on Halloween and how it can lead children into the occult if parents aren't careful, so I doubt that we'll ever trick or treat.

In fact, he hasn't been thrilled with the idea of fall festivals either, because it seems to be just an alternative.  We really don't love alternatives.  We love choosing to live for Christ and honoring Him, and that usually means doing things vastly different from the world around us.  But our church has recently started hosting our own fall festival, and we loved seeing our pastor present the Gospel last year.  This brings glory to God, without a doubt.  I can get on board with that.

Our family's first time dressing up on Halloween was for last year's Fall Festival at church.  The kids are dressed up as the Darling children from Peter Pan, Wendy, John, and Michael.  

We do want to make the night a fun one for our kids, so they don't feel that they're missing out too much.  We've attended a Reformation Party and a Pumpkin Party, and the small Reformation Party was definitely our favorite, with a competition between the dads to see how many gummy worms they could hold in their mouth.  Diet of Worms, anyone?  As our kids get older, we think this would be a fun way to bring glory to God on a dark day, and even reach out to our neighbors.

We've also contemplated a fun pizza night with the kids on October 31, which is probably what we'll do this year.  I read a great blog post recently from Emily at Teachable {Mom}ents about shopping for Operation Christmas Child and stuffing shoe boxes on this night.  Now that's a sweet way to love thy neighbor from miles and miles away!

But however we choose to handle Halloween at our house, we want to bring glory to God.

We want to do that with a Christ-like attitude, not a holier-than-thou attitude.  

We understand that others will choose differently, and that's fine.  We're not better Christians because our children have never trick or treated.

You don't have to hide your Facebook pictures of Halloween costumes from me.  I won't think any less of you.  And if you bring your little darlings to our house to show us their cute costumes, don't worry.  We'll give them some candy and adore their butterfly wings.

But as we keep telling our children, especially this time of year, God is not spooky so the spooky things don't honor God.  We don't want to open up their minds to anything that could lead to the occult.  Those things are real.  To us, it's worth it to seem like the weirdos who don't do Halloween.

How does your family handle Halloween?  What principles do you use to guide these decisions for your children?
If you enjoyed this post, you can follow on Facebook and sign up to receive MamaGab in your inbox.

Enter your email address: