Seven reasons why Christians should celebrate Halloween

Is celebrating a holiday that honors ghouls, demons, ghosts, and everything that goes bump in the night dangerous or even evil?

Somewhere, in the halls of history, Halloween or All Hallows Eve, got hijacked.  What started as a day to prepare for All Saints’ Day
(November 1st), Halloween became a spooky, evil, and candy filled
observance.  The term “Halloween” from its beginnings, had nothing to
do with any pagan or evil beliefs.  The Christian festival All Hallows
Eve morphed into our current term Hallowe’en.

The key in understanding of the origins
of the term Halloween comes from the sense of what is “hallowed” or
“holy”.  In the Lord’s Prayer, Christians pray, “Our Father, in heaven,
hallowed be your name…”  In the fourth century, John Chrysostom tells
us that the Eastern church celebrated a festival in honor of all saints
who died. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Christians celebrated
“All Saints’ Day” formally.

How did Halloween become associated with evil spirits?  When we look at history we discover:

More than a thousand years
ago Christians confronted pagan rites appeasing the lord of death and
evil spirits… the druids, in what is now Britain and France, observed
the end of summer with sacrifices to the gods. It was the beginning of
the Celtic year, and they believed Samhain, the lord of death, sent
evil spirits abroad to attack humans, who could escape only by assuming
disguises and looking like evil spirits themselves. The waning of the
sun and the approach of dark winter made the evil spirits rejoice and
play nasty tricks.

If the Christian observance of
Halloween began with a religious focus, how can we reclaim Halloween
from its current feared status?  Here are 7 ways Christians can take
back Halloween... Read more at On the Bema, part of the CCblogs network.