EP 103: How Should Christians Handle Halloween?

Few things stir up as much controversy or elicit as many strongly held opinions in church circles this time of year as the question of how Christians should handle Halloween.

Today, we’re looking at what the Bible has to say about the matter and discussing the need for extending grace to anyone who doesn’t share our viewpoint.

Show Notes

VERSES CITED:

  • Titus 1:15 – “To the pure, all things are pure…”
  • Romans 14:14 – “I am… fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself….”
  • Ephesians 5:11 – “Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”
  • 1 Corinthians 10:20-21 – “… the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God….”
  • Romans 13:12 – “… lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
  • Matthew 5:14-16 – “…let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds & glorify your Father….”
  • Romans 14:4-6 – “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls….”
  • Acts 17:22-23 – “…‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.”

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How Should We Handle Halloween?

Full transcript from Episode 103

Hello, friend. Welcome to Episode 103 of Loving Life at Home. Today, I want to talk about Halloween. Because few things stir up as much controversy or elicit as many strongly held opinions in Christian circles this time of year as the question of how believers should handle this holiday.

On one hand, there are some Christians who grew up trick-or-treating and have fond memories of dressing up as favorite cartoon characters or super-heros or some other innocuous persona like fairy princesses or firefighters. They view Halloween as innocent fun and family time strolling the block, showing off their costumes, and collecting candy from the neighbors.

On the other end of the spectrum, some Christians view Halloween as a day of irredeemable darkness and devil worship from which believers should distance themselves as far as they possibly can. They want nothing to do with Halloween and view with suspicion anybody who claims to be a Christian but does not share their strong aversion to this pagan holiday and all its demonic celebrations.

And somewhere in the middle, you have believers who recognize the dangers of playing with fire but also yearn to bring the light of the gospel to those who’ve never received it, and view Halloween as an opportune time to do exactly that.

Honestly, in my 60 years on this earth, I’ve fallen into all three categories of believer at one age and stage or other. My goal is not to convince you to swap sides, wherever on this spectrum you may find yourself. Rather, I desire that you would (1) consider what – if anything – the Bible has to say on the matter and (2) patiently extend grace to anybody who isn’t presently in your same camp.

So, what does the Bible say?

Well, folks in that first, fun-loving group might point to verses like:

  • Titus 1:15 – “To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.”
  • Romans 14:14 – “I am convinced and fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean.”

While people who think Halloween is of the devil and should be avoided entirely will probably cite verses like:

  • Ephesians 5:11 – “Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”
  • 1 Corinthians 10:20-21 – “… the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons. You are not able to drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You are not able to partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons.”
  • Romans 13:12 – “The night is almost gone, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.”

And the ones who advocate a missional approach to Halloween might refer to verses such as:

  • Matthew 5:14-16 – “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
  • Romans 14:4-6 – “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person regards a certain day above the others, while someone else considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes a special day does so to the Lord; he who eats does so to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.”

That last one is a good passage for all of us to keep in mind as we prayerfully decide how we are going to handle Halloween, both individually and – at least, when our children are younger –as a nuclear family. When they grow up and leave home, the LORD may convict them to do things differently than you did during their childhood. And you’ll need to be at peace with that fact and trust that the LORD will lead them in the way they should go, even if it looks different from the way He led you. We all need to hold our opinions on this matter with an attitude of humility.

So…Should believers reject “All Hallows Eve” or celebrate it? Ban trick-or-treating or grab their buckets and traipse door to door collecting candy along with everyone else? Ignore the day’s festivities or try to redeem them in some way? Is there a way to honor God on this holiday? A middle ground? How, exactly, should Christians handle Halloween?

Many believers wrestle with these questions, and my advice to you is to pray it through.  The same Paul who tells us, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness” also pointed to a pagan altar on Mars Hill and used it to preach the gospel.

In Acts 17:22-23 we read, “So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:22-23)

Paul used the Athenian’s idolatry as a starting point to share the gospel with a bunch of pagans. And he did it right there where they were already in the habit of congregating, in the Areopagus, which the Romans called Mars Hill.

I don’t feel qualified to give a definitive answer as to whether Christians should celebrate Halloween (other than to prayerfully follow the Lord’s leading). But I can share with you how our family has handled it.

Alternatives to Trick-or-Treating

When our children were little, we were able to avoid Halloween altogether. And that’s the tack we normally took. But as they got older, we had to find new ways of navigating this holiday.

  • For several years running, we spent October 31 celebrating Reformation Day, instead of Halloween. We’d sing Martin Luther’s hymns, watch a biopic of his life, and do several other activities I’ve written about in a post on our family website, which I’ll link in the show notes. It
  • Sometimes, I’d plan family vacations toward the end of October, so we’d be out of town for Halloween.
  • On years when our church hosted a Fall Festival, we’d spend the evening attending and/or volunteering at that event.
  • We’ve let our little ones dress up and taken them to visit elderly neighbors on Halloween night (after those same neighbors called our family in advance to tell us they’d made special treats for our children and could hardly wait to see them in costume). I felt very torn about what to do the first year that happened! In the end, I think we put our boys in their cowboy hats and bandanas and our girl in a ballet tutu just long enough to go next door for popcorn balls or candied apples. I can’t remember for sure what our elderly neighbor had made, but it seemed ungrateful to reject her kind offer.
  • Sometimes, we’d go out to eat or see a movie before trick-or-treaters started showing up on our doorstep. (Once, before heading to the restaurant, we set a huge bowl of candy on the front porch with a note to “please take only one.” But before we ever made it out of our driveway, one greedy kid dumped the whole bowl in his sack and ran away. Jackpot!)
  • We’ve even visited a local farm on Halloween. There we petted the animals, took a hayride through the pumpkin patch, and felt our way through a corn maze by the light of the moon.

Shining as a bright light on a dark night

…But then, nearly 15 years ago, we moved to a neighborhood that has a reputation for being the best place in town for trick-or-treating. Kids would come by the busload to knock on our doors.

So I began to wonder if there might be some way to use that fact to take advantage of that situation? Some way to use Halloween to point others to Christ, just as Paul used that pagan altar to proclaim the gospel on Mars Hill? Might there be a way we way we could shine as a light in the darkness? A more mission-minded way to approach Halloween?

Sure enough, we were swamped with 1000+ visitors our first year here. We even installed extra lighting in our front yard that year and invited friends over to share the gospel with parents while we passed out candy to the kids and entertained them with a couple slight-of-hand tricks.

We stocked up on gospel tracts and about ten times as much candy as we normally buy for Halloween. Even so, we ended up having to raid the pantry for PopTarts and granola bars when we ran out of candy with a throng of costumed kids still on our porch.

The following year, we were better prepared. I designed my own cute, Halloween-themed gospel tract to pass out — along with the best candy we could afford — to the horde of Disney princesses and superheros who would soon descend upon our front porch to trick-or-treat.

We included the tract in little goody bags we assembled a couple of days in advance. That was such a fun family project – our kids loved helping fill the bags — and it made the distribution process go much more smoothly.

Some years we’ve handed the tracts out with full-sized bars. Other years we’ve assembled our treat bags in advance. Either way, I made a new trick-or-treat tract each year we lived in that neighborhood, in an effort to keep repeat customers engaged. We even translated a few of those tracts into Spanish, so as to have something to offer the Spanish speakers who came to our door. I’ve added all those designs to our family website as a free printable resource. I’ll include a link in the show notes in case you’re interested in doing something similar where you live.

What a great opportunity trick-or-treating has been to share the gospel! I like to think of it as reverse door-to-door evangelism: The crowds come to us!

Since our kids love any excuse to dress up, they don costumes to help pass out tracts and goodies to the neighborhood children (or to collect a few themselves).

I’m certainly not the first person to notice October 31 provides a ripe opportunity for sharing the gospel. Several years ago, Revive our Hearts ran an excellent article on redeeming Halloween that sums up our family’s evolving attitude toward this holiday beautifully. The article was called Being Missional on Fright Night. I’ll be sure to link it in today’s show notes.

I love the writer’s tradition of giving out King-Sized candy bars on Halloween — “because there’s no King as generous as ours.” That story was what first prompted us to do the same. It inspired me to make “King-Sized” gospel tract, just one of 10 or 12 different trick-or-treat tracts we have to choose from. As I said before, we rotate the designs from year to year, so neighbors won’t get the same tract in their bag every October.

Other great ideas for being mission-minded on Halloween

  • Share the gospel while carving pumpkins – You’ll find a great script for this activity on the blog Being Confident of This, which I’ll link in the show notes.
  • Or, you can add Bible verse stickers to the candy you distribute – The Happy Home Fairy offers free printable gospel stickers you can make at home. I love her thoughts on Halloween post, too. I’ll link both those resources in the show notes, as well.
  • Another idea is to Pass out bottled water on Halloween night. – Man a water station at a busy corner of your neighborhood and offer drinks to passing trick-or-treaters and their parents, then use that opportunity to tell them where to find living water. I’m pretty sure our church has sponsored a bunch of water tables in popular trick-or-treating neighborhoods over the years.
  • Don’t wait for your neighbors to come to you – If your children will be trick-or-treating themselves this year, why not let them take some tracts to give as thank-yous to neighbors who leave their porch lights on?
  • Turn the day into a history lesson – Teach your kids about Reformation Day, then use our free Martin Luther multiple choice test to quiz them on what they learned. I’ll link both those resources in today’s show notes.
  • Of course, lots of churches sponsor fall festivals or trunk-or-treat events as a way to draw in families from the community and share the gospel while also providing a fun and safe alternative to going door-to-door.

We moved out of that popular neighborhood about 3-4 years ago, and we haven’t had any trick-or-treaters at all where we live now. I don’t know whether that is how it has always been in our current neck of the woods or if trick-or-treating has fallen by the wayside in the wake of COVID like so many other fun things, including factory tours and Cow-Appreciation Day and Kids-Eat-Free nights at local restaurants. But that’s another episode for another day.

In the meantime, tell me: How does your family handle Halloween? Do you hide from it? Run with it? Redeem it for the glory of God and the furtherance of the gospel? I’d love to hear your thoughts if you have time. Just shoot me an email to let me know

And however you choose to pass the 31st, I hope it’s a blessed and beautiful day for you and your family. Thanks for listening!

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