This month I am doing a best-of series for Halloween because I think it is important we remain educated about this day.
As I write this it is just a few days away from October. Once again I feel great pain in my heart rising up for the many lost souls who will be hurt during this time of year, or who have been hurt and have to try to fight off the memories this season. I am also deeply troubled by the many Christians who will go out and celebrate the darkness when they have been saved by the Light. This is the season of Halloween, a time when witches and Satanists celebrate a high holy day; a day of death, darkness, and fear.
If you have been following my blog, you know that a spent my own season in life as a witch, deeply involved in the occult. I have written about my past experiences with Samhain (or Halloween) rituals and what Halloween means to witches. Since coming into a wonderful relationship with Jesus Christ, I have been completely redeemed from the evil I participated in. I have come out from the darkness and experienced His glorious light. My testimony has led to me other Christians who were formerly involved in the occult. Not all of them were involved by choice. Some were involved by force by their own family members. Family members who did horrible things to them during satanic rituals. They try desperately to avoid anything related to Halloween this time of year because the memories of their childhood abuse still haunt them to this day.
When I was not an actively practicing witch I still reveled in Halloween. It was a time to party! Halloween is sensual and exciting! There are sweet treats, fun costumes, games, music, laughter. It is a time to decorate, carve pumpkins and get together with friends and family. What is not to love, right? We always had great costumes such as vampires, witches, ghosts and other ghoulish characters. We also decorated our house with skulls, bats, corpses, headstones, rats and other treasures. It was all in good fun!
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:16
Of course, celebrating Halloween doesn’t have to be about ghouls and scary things. You can decorate for fall and dress in innocent costumes such as princesses and superheroes. It makes for good wholesome fun. So just take out the evil and you have changed a night of evil into something perfectly good. Right? Wrong. I am so sorry to say that you cannot take Halloween and make it good, wholesome, or innocent, no matter what changes you try to make of it. Halloween from its very origins is evil, and it still is today.
During my first year as a Christian, I was quickly convicted to stop celebrating Halloween. It was very easy for me to give it up, knowing what the true meaning of the day is. I did not actually know that it was also an important day to Satanists as well because as a witch you sincerely don’t associate yourself with evil. It didn’t take much research to see that Satanists use Halloween as one of their special days to sacrifice human lives. And I naturally assumed that other Christians would not celebrate Halloween either. I mean, it is obviously evil. Just take a stroll through your neighborhood on a cool October night to see how many houses are decorated with skulls, bats, witches, etc. and you will see how the rest of the world views Halloween. So you can understand how I was utterly shocked to find out that just about every single Christian I knew actually celebrated Halloween.
I was more than shocked, I was dismayed and distressed. I was brought out of darkness by the grace of Jesus Christ. I wanted to rejoice and shout out from the rooftops of my undying love for Jesus. I wanted to get away from darkness and evil and be a light to the world. So how was it that I was so utterly alone in standing up for truth and light among a group of people who were supposed to share the same beliefs as I did? I had many conversations where terms like “God hasn’t convicted me” or “that’s legalistic” were thrown at me. As a new Christian that didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It was pretty black and white. Halloween = evil and Christians shouldn’t celebrate it.
The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie
2 Thessalonians 2:9
I spent that Halloween and the next sharing my story with other Christians as much as I could. I tried to plead with Christians to get them to understand that Halloween does not glorify Jesus and celebrating it actually invites the demonic into your life. It is pretty difficult to convince someone that a day to party and have fun could possibly be bad – unless of course, you were once a witch. Then it makes perfect sense for someone like me to not celebrate it. It absolutely breaks my heart. Yet we live in a fallen world, where temptation runs rampant, and the church has catered to the masses by giving us the message of what we want to hear.
It would be easy to try to strip everything that looks evil out of Halloween and just call it a fall celebration. You could even go to a church on and attend a fall festival, and not trick or treat. Or you could pass out tracts to your neighborhood kids, and pray that one of them finds Jesus through that little pamphlet. I used to go to churches every year to attend fall festivals. It was a great way to have fun and celebrate Halloween. Never once did I hear the Gospel message from any of those churches. It was about free candy and games for us. I also found Christian tracts in my kids trick or treat bags before. I immediately snatched them up and threw them away before my kids could even try to understand what they were. I was not going to let Christian lies into my children’s heads.
I have heard every argument for Christians celebrating Halloween. I have thought and prayed about them all. I continuously come to the same conclusion every single time. Halloween is evil, and it is not for Christians. It is a season of fear and death and cannot be redeemed. Can God be glorified by it? Absolutely yes. By every Christian who stands up and decides not to participate in it. By shining a light into this dark and evil time with the love of Christ. Does that mean I advocate hiding away or turning against anyone who celebrates it? Absolutely not. Every single person in this world deserves to know Jesus Christ. He loves every one of us, no matter what. And we have so many thousands of ways to go out and spread the Good News to the world. It does not have to be done by fall festivals and Christians tracts.
But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.
1 Thessalonians 5:4-5
The topic of demons and the devil is a very sensitive topic in the Christian world. Even among unbelievers, there is great doubt about whether or not demons or real or if they are active in this world. Even when I was a witch I did not believe in the devil or hell! And let’s be honest. The thought of demons and evil is a very scary thought. Just look at what we see of what evil looks like on TV. The devil looks very scary indeed! Yet if you read the description of the devil in Ezekiel 28:12-13, he was absolutely beautiful, the “seal of perfection”. Satan does not come as a scary beast, he comes as deceiving us with his beauty! He preys on our fears, and so we are inundated with scary images of what evil looks like. So when evil does actually come into our lives we can’t even recognize it, because we are looking for something completely different.
Yet we must remember, Satan has been defeated! Jesus our Risen Lord has defeated death and hell, and there is nothing to fear in our enemy. We should rejoice in the authority and power that has been bestowed upon us by Christ Jesus! And in doing that we should reject the things of this world that have deceived us into thinking they are good and fun. Evil always comes tempting us with pleasure. Do not be seduced into thinking Halloween is purely innocent. You are sending a message to the powers of hell that you are open to them invading your life. Everything related to Halloween has roots in ancient occult rituals. Please do not participate in these things and invite the enemy right into your life.
God warns us of the spiritual realm and the evil powers that are coming against us. Should we be ignorant of these things because we don’t understand them? It would be very easy and very comfortable to do so. Yet we were not brought out of this world so that we may remain ignorant and live as the pagans do. We were brought out of this world to have freedom! We are not slaves to fear and death, but live victoriously because Jesus Christ defeated them! Let us be transformed into light and no longer be bound by the chains of this world! Use your freedom to serve one another, in love. The world around us is perishing – let us focus on our real mission here in this world. To spread the beautiful message of the Gospel, which has the power to save lives! Be a light in this world for those who are still blinded by the god of this world!
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ephesians 6:12