How do we approach this complicated issue? I suggest that Halloween is, in some ways, similar to Christmas.

In 21st-century North America, you don’t need a calendar to tell what time of year it is—just look at the seasonal merchandise of any department store.

Equipment for cookouts or picnics indicates that summer is on its way; fireworks remind us that we’re approaching Canada Day or Independence Day. When notebooks, pens and pencils, backpacks, and padlocks become widely available, we know another school year will soon begin. And before back-to-school season ends—sometimes even before it starts!—stores bring out costumes, candy, and ghosts galore.

Halloween has become one of the biggest holidays in North America, now rivaling Christmas in the amount of related merchandise.

Isn’t God’s providence great enough to allow blessings to evolve from condemnable practices?

We all know about trick-or-treating: children dress as characters of their choice and go from house to house, receiving more candy than they get the entire rest of the year. Adults get in on the fun too, by tending their doors and proffering treats or by accompanying their children—sometimes in costume themselves.

Homeowners decorate their houses and yards with jack-o-lanterns, spiderwebs, tombstones, and more.

The holiday seems to be a favorite of the mass entertainment industry as well. October is prime time for the release of horror movies. And since “haunted houses” have long been popular attractions, almost every theme park now hosts its own Halloween event, the ultimate probably being “Halloween Horror Nights” at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla. These productions offer you the opportunity to face your worst nightmares.

What’s It All About?
Like other cultural phenomena, Halloween comprises many features: pageantry, fall festival, confectionary feast, and a celebration of all things scary and/or supernatural. And, like everything else in contemporary culture, it presents a question to Christians: do we participate or do we not?

We do know some things about the history of Halloween, but not as much as we may think. The name is derived from “All Hallow’s Eve,” the night before All Saints’ Day, or “Hallowmas” (Nov. 1), which is followed by All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2) in Western Christianity.

The Roman Catholic Church declared that Christians were to intercede for the deceased in heaven on All Saints’ Day and intercede for the deceased in purgatory on All Souls’ Day. Popular belief held that the spirits of the dead returned on All Hallow’s Eve. As with all superstitions, people performed actions in the hopes of pleasing, appeasing, or warding off those spirits.

How trick-or-treating developed in this context is unclear, but it is believed to have derived from the practice of a town’s poor begging for treats (“Soul Cakes”) in exchange for prayers for the benefactors and their families. That practice combined with “mumming,” the production of costumed pageants.

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