It haunts me that consumers are expected to spend a record high of $13.1 billion dollars this year to celebrate Halloween. 196 million Americans will hand out candy, wear a “dress to impress” costume, and decorate their home or yard. People will also carve pumpkins, throw or attend a party, and visit a haunted house. The top costume for children is an action hero or princess, the top pick for adults, a witch or vampire. Pets will not be left behind, with 10% of shoppers dressing their pet as a pumpkin, hot dog, or bumblebee. Spooky trick-or-treaters will consume over 600 million pounds of candy.
It’s not uncommon for Christians to struggle with celebrating Halloween. According to secular sources, the traditions of Halloween are based on the worship of false gods, contact with the dead, foretelling the future, and communing with evil spirits—all practices labeled detestable in the Bible. God speaks very clearly about practices associated with the supernatural realm, “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead“ (Deuteronomy 18:10-11).
Others recognize that Halloween, the eve of “All Saints’ Day” (November 1), is also associated with Martin Luther and the Reformation. They celebrate the religious freedoms won at that time in history. Since each of these Halloween perspectives contain truth, the distinction between holy and unholy can be daunting.
Because of my experience with inmates, I have a different mind-set; I’m not looking only at the current skirmish, but the endgame. Satan has been studying human behavior for centuries and deception is his first line of attack. Modern Halloween normalizes dark themes, astrology, violence and gore, for a society hungry for entertainment and inclusion.
An inmate named Shana revealed that girls in her pod looked forward to reading horror-scopes. She told them, “Christians have spiritual scopes. It’s not the stars, but God’s promises that are true, and we can really count on them.”
Trunk-or-treating in church parking lots has become an acceptable practice for many Christian leaders and parents. “It doesn’t have the significance it used to have,” they reason. “Today it’s just a harmless kid’s holiday where children can dress up and get candy. We’ll invite the community, hand out gospel tracts, and they’ll see we’re not really different or weird; maybe they’ll start coming to our church.” Is this outreach . . . or compromise?
There is a fascination and resurgence of the occult in the United States. It’s evident in our movies, gaming sites, popular novels, and streaming content where werewolves, wizards, warlocks, witches and zombies abound. Satanism is on the rise in America, and a Pew Research Center report estimates that approximately 1 to 1.5 million people in the last decade, identify as Wicca or Pagan. According to a 2022 NBC News article, the witchcraft hashtag has over 7 million posts on Instagram and more than 11 billion views on TikTok, or as it’s known in the occult community, WitchTok.
The postmodern worldview downplays the Bible’s admonition to avoid any practices associated with darkness. Satan wants to hide his skeletons in the closet and his motives—to mislead and eventually destroy mankind. The Bible says, “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). As far as Halloween is concerned, the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that it’s harmless, he doesn’t exist, and it’s just good-natured fun. And yet, according to various studies and law enforcement agencies, statistics show crime spikes as high as 50% across both the United States and Canada on October 31st.
The Bible affirms spiritual warfare and warns against evil forces. In Ephesians 6:10-20, the apostle Paul instructs believers on how to guard themselves against Satan’s attacks. He describes the full armor of God, but identifies only a single piece as an offensive weapon—the sword, which is also known as the Bible or the Word of God.
Why celebrate a day that gives glory and prominence to God’s enemy, no matter how innocuous our society makes it appear? Ephesians 5:11 warns us to “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”
Not just on Halloween, but every day, the Jailbird Ministry focuses on helping inmates to expose Satan’s lies by offering them a Bible so that, “…they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26).