Should Christian families celebrate Halloween? The case for

Lisa Skinner finds that participating constructively in Halloween presents lots of opportunities to engage with friends, neighbours and the wider local community

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Halloween was never much of a tradition in my family, but my godly grandmother always found ways to mark the autumn season with us. She would gather her grandchildren together for homemade apple pie, with coins wrapped in greaseproof paper tucked inside, and organise apple-bobbing, where we’d discover yet more coins hidden in the fruit. It was a financially lucrative event for us as kids. Although we weren’t allowed to “celebrate” Halloween in the usual way, my grandmother came up with wholesome alternatives that still made us feel part of the fun. Thankfully for us, in those pre-Google days, she never caught wind of the rumour that apple-bobbing had its roots in the Roman worship of Pomona (the goddess of fruit and trees).

As a child, in my family, any association with Halloween was discouraged, so trick-or-treating was off the table

The festival of Halloween finds its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, celebrated over 2,000 years ago. The Celts believed it was a time when the boundary between the living and the spirit world grew thin. As the Roman empire expanded across Europe and Christianity spread into Celtic lands, these traditions, and beliefs gradually blended. In time, the Christian observance of All Saints’ Day, or “All Hallows,” emerged, with the evening before known as All Hallows’ Eve, eventually shortened to Halloween.

The tradition of trick-or-treating only became part of the festivities in the 16^th Century, when people would go from door-to-door, offering prayers or songs in exchange for food. This custom, known as souling, took place on All Saints’ Day, when Christians prayed for the souls of the departed. By the Victorian era, the offering often given was a simple pastry known as a soul cake, a type of biscuit/small cake. This gradually evolved into ……