For most, Halloween is an autumn holiday for dressing up in costumes, focusing on spooky stories, and for children to go about begging for candy. That was my childhood memory of Halloween and it remained the same for much of my adult life – just a fun day and evening of dressing up with the opportunity to hoard sweet treats that were very scarce the rest of the year. For an unreligious household, there was never anything wrong with Halloween except for candy gluttony that sometimes ended up with a stomach ache.

Then came my years as a Christian which had me take more notice of the spiritual focuses of the holiday. The church often teaches that Halloween is demonic and derived from the ancient pagan Celtic holiday called Samhain (pronounced “sah-win” in Irish), so Christians shouldn’t participate in any Halloween traditions. Indeed, sometimes there is too much focus on darkness and the occult during Halloween that really can be harmful; things like séances, necromancy, channeling the dead, witchcraft, sorcery, and watching excessively gory and inappropriate horror movies. They can all negatively affect your spiritual and mental wellbeing in ways that you wouldn’t expect, so there is good reason why the church is worried about people celebrating Halloween.

But what I had focused on during Halloween and what most households focus on is generally harmless – wearing costumes, collecting treats, and good-natured fun. For the average household, any religious or spiritual aspects of the holiday are not present. Still, is there more to the origins of Halloween that should make us think twice about participating in it altogether?

As a long-time student of Irish culture, I know it is true that Halloween did come from Samhain, ...

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