Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?
The Lordship of Christ Over the Seasons (Revised Essay)
This essay is a revised version of Christians & Halloween: Christ’s Lordship Over The Seasons, originally featured in my book Re-enchanting Time. It has been updated with additional historical context, expanded engagement with opposing viewpoints, and enhanced with new sources to strengthen the argument.
Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?
Is Halloween just a modern-day continuation of the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain? Are Christians inadvertently engaging in pagan practices through customs like trick-or-treating or dressing up in costumes? These are questions I’ve encountered increasingly during my time in ministry. Many believers seem genuinely unsure about how to navigate the complexities surrounding Halloween.
In previous years, I’ve pointed people to James B. Jordan’s Concerning Halloween, a well-reasoned defense of why Christians can celebrate Halloween. However, I’ve decided to offer my own take, one that responds to the specific questions I’ve received and engages more directly with common objections, while drawing from a broader historical and theological context.
The Myth of Samhain’s Connection to Halloween
The popular narrative that Halloween is a direct descendant of the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced SOW-in) is largely based on myth rather than fact. Samhain, with its Celtic origins, was indeed celebrated from October 31st to November 1st as a festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the darker half of the year. The Celts believed that the veil between the physical world and the spirit realm was thinnest during this time, allowing spirits to pass freely into our world.
During Samhain, people would leave offerings of food and drink to appease wandering spirits, and mumming—going door to door in disguises—was also part of the festivities. However, despite some superficial similarities, modern Halloween is not a continuation of this pagan festival. Nicholas Rogers, in Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, points out that “there is no hard evidence that Samhain was devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship” in the way many modern retellings suggest. 1 The connections between Samhain and Halloween are often overstated and simplified in popular culture, while the deeper Christian origins of Halloween are often overlooked.
The Christianization of Halloween: All Hallows’ Eve
To understand the true roots of Halloween, we must look not to paganism, but to Christianity. Halloween, as we know it today, finds its origins in All Hallows’ Eve, the vigil before All Saints’ Day. The name itself—Halloween—is a contraction of “All Hallows’ Eve.” The celebration emerged as part of the Christian liturgical calendar, meant to honor the saints who had passed on and to affirm Christ’s victory over death.
The establishment of All Saints’ Day can be traced back to Pope Gregory III in the 8th century, when the church dedicated November 1st as a day to commemorate the saints. Later, All Souls’ Day (November 2nd) followed, honoring all faithful departed. This shift was intentional, not syncretistic; it was part of the church’s strategy to redirect pre-Christian customs toward Christ-centered purposes.
Historian Ronald Hutton, in his seminal work The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, notes that “All Hallows’ Eve developed independently of Samhain” and was not an attempt by the early church to ‘Christianize’ paganism. 2 Instead, the church established its own sacred days during a time of year when the pre-Christian world was already attuned to themes of death and the afterlife.
Mockery of Satan and the Triumph of Christ
Many Christians today express concern over the customs of Halloween—particularly the wearing of costumes—wondering if this might open doors to paganism or occult practices. Yet, when examined through the lens of church history, Halloween has always been about mocking the defeated powers of darkness, not participating in them.
James B. Jordan, in Concerning Halloween, argues that Halloween can be seen as the final mockery of Satan before All Saints’ Day. He writes: “On October 31, the demonic realm tries one last time to achieve victory but is banished by the joy of the Kingdom… to drive Satan from us we ridicule him.” 3This tradition of mockery is grounded in the triumph of Christ, who disarmed the powers of darkness (Colossians 2:15) and made a spectacle of them.
The practice of mocking evil can be traced back to medieval traditions like gargoyles on cathedrals, which, far from being symbols of demonic power, were intended to ridicule the defeated spiritual forces that had no claim over the church. Similarly, the custom of dressing up as ghosts, goblins, or witches has its origins in this tradition of ridiculing evil. As Jordan points out, the very act of dressing our children in these costumes is a demonstration of our confidence in Christ’s victory over Satan: “The fact that we can dress our children this way shows our supreme confidence in the utter defeat of Satan by Jesus Christ.”
Addressing Common Objections: Historical and Theological Arguments
Some argue that it’s improper for Christians to mock Satan, as this should be left to God alone. However, this overlooks a key theological truth: we are united with Christ. As Paul explains in Romans 6:5, “For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.” Through our union with Christ, we share in His victory over the forces of darkness. Mockery of Satan, then, is not an arrogant act on our part, but a participation in Christ’s triumph.
Additionally, Scripture is filled with examples of God’s people mocking and deriding their enemies. Consider Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:27) as he mocks the prophets of Baal, calling their god to action. In the same way, by participating in Halloween traditions that mock Satan, we are affirming our faith in Christ’s total victory over the powers of evil.
The most common objection is that Christians should avoid Halloween because of its perceived pagan roots. Yet, this argument assumes that any connection to paganism renders something unredeemable. This is not a scriptural approach. In fact, Christianity has a long history of taking pagan elements and redeeming them for Christ. As theologian Peter Leithart explains in Defending Constantine, “The early church was constantly engaged in transforming pagan symbols and practices into symbols of Christ’s victory.” 4 This reflects the biblical mandate to subdue all creation under the lordship of Christ (Colossians 1:15–23).
Consider the Apostle Paul in Acts 17:22–34, where he addresses the Athenians and “baptizes” their altar to the “unknown god,” revealing it as a testimony to the God of Israel. Paul’s approach was not to avoid the pagan culture but to engage with it, redeem it, and use it as a means to proclaim the Gospel. Similarly, Christians can approach Halloween as an opportunity for Christ-centered engagement with the culture, rather than abandoning it to secular or pagan influences.
Redeeming Halloween for the Kingdom
So, should Christians celebrate Halloween? The answer, ultimately, is a matter of conscience. But far from being a festival to avoid, Halloween can be an opportunity for Christians to redeem what the culture offers and turn it toward Christ’s purposes. In the Christian tradition, Halloween was never about celebrating evil but rather mocking it, showing the world that Christ has triumphed over death and darkness.
Halloween also presents a rare communal moment in our increasingly isolated society. Neighbors come to your door, children fill the streets, and opportunities abound to practice gospel-centered hospitality. What other holiday brings people together at your doorstep in such a way? As Christians, we can use this occasion to share the hope of the Gospel, extending kindness and hospitality while reflecting on the deeper truths of Christ’s victory over darkness.
Rather than seeing Halloween as something to be feared, let us view it as an opportunity to proclaim that, through Jesus, the forces of evil have been defeated. As Paul reminds us, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Romans 8:37).
So, this Halloween, dress up, mock the enemy, sing imprecatory Psalms, and remember the great cloud of witnesses that has gone before us. Celebrate the victory of Christ, and invite your neighbors to share in the joy of the Gospel.
Happy Halloween.
Rogers, Nicholas. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Hutton, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford University Press, 1996.
Jordan, James B. Concerning Halloween.
Leithart, Peter. Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom. InterVarsity Press, 2010.
A thoughtful piece. Not being an observer of Halloween, I suggest the Church would be better served by observing Reformation Day and considering what it would mean in our own lives and communities if we were reformed by a return to Scripture in our thinking and practice. Blessings.
(This’ll be lengthy, my apologies)
I really enjoyed this, especially as my own views on tradition, paganism, symbolism et al have grown and deepened. Halloween as a practice doesn’t necessarily bother me, although I still have a nuanced take based on two points,
1) Given my increased familiarity with Jonathan Pageau’s work I’ve adopted his notions of centers and peripheries, hierarchies and inversions, and the phenomenon of “carnivalia” and what role that plays spiritually and civilizationally, times when we “let loose” and embrace the inverse (from little carnivals such as weekends and evenings to big ones like, well, Carnival). There’s a mentality I’ve noted in modernist Christianity where one leaving worship will say/think, “Alrighty then, now back to the real world,” and I think as a society if we had a time where the false and inverse was highlighted for a very strictly set time (especially leading up to times of repentance and asceticism, like w/ Carnival before Lent) we’d be able to foster the mentality that the real world is actually the Church and the Sunday commute isn’t leaving but ARRIVING to reality (A. Schmemann has a similar take).
2) Halloween’s greatest issue however still remains that it’s supposed to be “All Hallow’s Eve,” and so I can’t see how to have both: the honoring of departed Saints and the Carnival spirit. This perversion, which you allude to, is much similar to what happened with Christmas, which is that a time treated special owing to a society’s religious origins needs to be capitalized on by a now secularized and commercialized society. Christmas was easier to hijack as gift-giving had always been part of it, but what to do with a day about praying or singing litanies to a bunch of dead people? Ahh, fortunately there was this long forgotten Celtic holiday that involved door-to-door charades and mumming, let’s make that going door-to-door for commercial goods and donning expensive customs! Halloween spending totals, what, several billion dollars? My point, then, is that “HalloweenTM” is bad, but “Halloween as Carnivalia” is okay, although the only way I can feasibly see us pursuing a healthier vision for either is for Halloween to be subsumed into the established Western tradition of Carnival seasons and All Hallows’ Day being rediscovered (I think the cult of the saints could be a major antidote to modernity and disenchantment).