Happy Halloween?

Happy Halloween everyone! I figure that now is as good of a time as ever to start blogging. I've never done this before, so cut me some slack! I'll try to write about interesting things fairly regularly, but we'll see if it works.


I've been thinking a lot lately about how celebrating Halloween fits in with following Christ. The way college students celebrate it, I don't see any way that the two can coexist. Wearing teeny, expensive costumes and drinking too much alcohol is definitely not the way a follower of Christ should live. What about the actual holiday, though?


After looking it up on Wikipedia, it seems that Halloween does have some roots in Christianity, but they don't seem to be very Biblical. It's traditionally known as "All Hallow's Eve", the eve of All Saints Day. Apparently, "it was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints Day, and All Hallow's Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving onto the next world. To avoid being recognized by a soul, Christians would wear masks and costumes to disguise themselves, following the lighted candles set by others to guide their travel for worship the next day. Today, this practice has been perpetuated through trick-or-treating."

This would scare my soul away for sure!

Honestly, that sounds a lot more like something Plato would have written - souls floating around, looking for the next world. I know that this is definitely way different from the Truths about the afterlife written down in the Bible, which talks about a bodily resurrection and God's new creation. 


As a Christian, it seems like not celebrating Halloween would be a good way to try and live for God in ways separate of this world. That's easy enough for me to say as a college student - it might be a different story when I'm trying to raise kids of my own!


However you decided to spend your time this weekend, I hope you were safe and glorified God through it all :)