Lurking in the shadows of our culture is an evil history of a holiday disguised as a time of frivolity and games. Of course, when else is the supernaturally sinister celebrated? When else are superstitions fashionable? When else would a special episode of every one of our favorite sitcoms turn into a pseudo-psycho-horror flick?

The celebration is Halloween (or hallowedevening), and it depicts rank idol and devil worship.

Halloween can be traced back long before Christian times, to pagan Scottish and Irish folk customs celebrated first by the “Druids in honor of Samhain, lord of the dead, whose festival fell on November 1” (Ralph Linton, Hallowe’en Through Twenty Centuries). Halloween was merely the evening celebration in anticipation of the great day of November 1, All Saints’ Day, in honor of Satan, “lord of the dead.”

Modern Christianity, however, would have us believe that November 1 is the day we honor those saints who have died and gone to heaven. The first of November, celebrated among the pagans in honor of Samhain (Satan), is today celebrated in hundreds of churches “to honor all the saints, known and unknown,” in the words of the Catholic Encyclopedia. The Catholics, until the third century a.d., had been venerating martyred saints, each on a separate day. But so many saints had been martyred that the church decided to honor them all on one day. Which day did they choose? November 1—conveniently corresponding to the day when the lord of the dead was worshiped. And it was to be a day to honor all the dead, not only the martyred saints. Why? Because the pagans used November 1 to honor the dead in general. But why appease the pagans? So the church could gain more heathen converts.

This veneration of saints, supposedly alive in heaven, came to be celebrated on a day in honor of the devil because it was a practice which was “quite in line with church policy of incorporating harmless pagan folk ideas” (Linton, op. cit.). Thus came All Saints’ Day and its eve: All Hallows Eve, or Halloween. But it embodies the worship of Samhain—actually Satan.

These blatantly heathen practices worked themselves into professing Christianity and are being celebrated today, with most people giving no thought whatsoever to their origin and few doing anything about it once they learn of it.

God and true Christianity stand for the exact opposite of death and darkness—for light and life (John 1:4-5). No matter how much of a joke we make it out to be, Halloween is simply Satan worship.

There are days, however, on which we are to worship the great God—days He instituted within ancient Israel that are still to be kept in our modern society. Read Pagan Holidays or God’s Holy Days—Which? to understand more about the inspiration and peace these annual festivals of God can bring into your life.