Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?

[@dubbkingdom4647]

I agree with everything this dude said…🤔

[@jessbaker6468]

😂😂😂

[@jessbaker6468]

Me too 🙋🏻‍♀️

[@dubbkingdom4647]

😂😂

[@davidbalestri6386]

Hey, you look like his doppelgänger

[@karenbanta1353]

I love using their costumes to ask Holy Spirit for a prophetic word for them🎉🎉🎉

[@OhLordyJordie]

Yeah this is fire!

[@dubbkingdom4647]

Thanks for watching!

[@kavikv.d.hexenholtz3474]

Some Christian groups love to proclaim that our American Halloween traditions are based on the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain. They tell us that at this time of year the ancient peoples of the British Isles celebrated magic rites because the door between our world and the spirit world would open. Celtic occult practices loosed demons on the night of Samhain, which we now observe as Halloween. Christian parents would need to shield their families from Halloween practices, if this story of Samhain were true, but it's not. The truth is that historians don't really know much of anything about Celtic religion. What gets passed around the Internet as history is mostly speculation and nonsense. Pagan Romans avoided the ashes of their forebears, but Christians looked upon the graves of their dead as having spiritual importance. Christian cemeteries were not final resting places; the grave was only temporary. Christians looked forward to the bodily resurrection of their brothers and sisters, and visiting the grave of those who slept in Christ testified to this belief in the resurrection. The resurrection of Christ had rent the veil that separated the living and the dead. The early catholic church did not merely boast a universality over space, but it also claimed a temporal universality. Could death really separate the saints whether living or dead now that Christ has risen? Christians gathered at the tombs to celebrate because in this way the members of the church who still lived could include in the celebration the members of the church who had died. Heaven and earth were joined, in a sense, when Christians both living and dead simultaneously worshiped the God who would one day reunite them. All Saints' Day was a nice addition to the liturgical calendar because it gave all Christians the opportunity to celebrate the martyrs' victory over death. After all, not every city in the Roman Empire had a local martyr shrine because not every city had experienced persecution. Why should martyr-less cities lose the blessing of celebrating what Christ has done through his saints? As I said, it wasn't the pagans who were fascinated with the dead; it was the Christians, because it's only the Christians that believed that the dead don't stay dead. Summer is over and the days are getting darker. What better time to acknowledge that we live in a fallen world? What better time to remember the martyrs who died during the dark days of persecution? But even though things are dark, we celebrate with joy. We can laugh as we dress our children in images of death because we know that death no longer has a hold on God's people. Though things look dark, we mock the darkness and we mock death because we know that we haven't been abandoned to the darkness and that in the darkest days of the year, Christmas will come, and the days will get brighter. Some readers will still be wary of Halloween after this explanation. Some will say, "But isn't the Roman Catholic cult of the saints an idolatrous syncretism based on Pagan hero cults?" The answer is, no; that's Enlightenment propaganda. Others will ask whether Catholic superstition about the saints is really any better than pagan superstition. I would suggest asking these questions: Do I believe the martyrs should be remembered? Do I believe that the dead will rise again? Do I believe the power of Christ has conquered death? If you answered yes to these questions, then you believe the fundamental doctrines that motivated the historic celebration of All Saints' Day and Halloween.

[@dubbkingdom4647]

I don’t know who you are but I would like to! Love this comment!

[@kavikv.d.hexenholtz3474]

@@dubbkingdom4647 Thanks, I wish I could take full credit for it, but it is paraphrased from an article written in October of 2015 by a C. Garbarino. I've been doing a deep dive into the origins and customs of Halloween for the past several years, but hadn't really considered the obvious....why some Christian denominations have, for lack of a better way of putting it, a genuine fear of Halloween. Are these fears legit or just the result of complete misinformation? The latter was clearly the case and this article seemed to capture what I was trying to convey in a more elegant way.

[@dubbkingdom4647]

Appreciate you sharing!

[@revcanada2147]

BOO

[@dubbkingdom4647]

I see what you did there 😂😂🏆