‘When you dress up for Halloween, you give the devil the legal rights to change your identity!’

Before I became a Christian two years ago I celebrated Halloween without a second thought. I can remember when my daughter was three years old we encountered a Halloween parade at a theme park in Germany. She was terrified of all the spooky costumes, but after I explained to her that they were just children dressed up she decided she wanted to dress up too.

We spent my daughter’s early years in Switzerland and now live in Italy; countries that don’t traditionally celebrate Halloween, but we often hosted a Halloween party, sometimes introducing the concept to families that had never celebrated it before. It was fun to dress up, play some scary sounding songs, and bob for apples.

Halloween for me was just an excuse for a party, as it is to many in the secular world. But, as a Christian I have avoided the celebration, as I began to understand what’s really behind it.

Halloween has its roots in the celtic festival of Samhain, which marks the Celtic new year, the end of summer, and the harvest season. Samhain was the druid god of death, and the Celts believed that on the 31st October the boundary between the living and the dead blurred and spirits could return to the earth. The origin of dressing up in costumes was because it was thought that if people dressed as ghosts and demons the spirits might mistake them for one of their own and would not harm them. During the festival animals and even humans were sacrificed to appease Samhain.