Halloween can be a strange holiday because it seems both supernatural (all the references to gravestones and ghosts) and secular (candy and wild parties). Some Christians wonder if it has a dark supernatural origin, whether it represents Satan’s birthday.
The idea may sound scary, but it raises some important questions we should establish. Do some people celebrate Satan’s birthday on Halloween? Was the holiday designed for that purpose? If either of these ideas is true, should that mean that Christians shouldn't celebrate Halloween?
Does the Bible Say Anything about Satan Having a Birthday?
There are various claims about Satan worshippers celebrating Satan at different events (more details in the next section on that). However, as Christians, we don’t base our beliefs about Satan on what cults or other religions say. We start with what Scripture (and what Christian tradition supporting Scripture) says about Satan and go from there.
We may hear about Satan a lot in Sunday school or church, but the Bible doesn’t give us a detailed biography of who Satan is. Instead, we get bits of information from different books that scholars combine to seek a complete picture. In Genesis 3, we meet a talking serpent who tempts Adam and Eve to defy God and eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The serpent is traditionally believed to be Satan, tempting the first human couple. We get the name Satan from various Bible verses using the Hebrew word satan, which means “adversary,” to describe a spiritual being who opposes God or his people. We especially see “the Adversary” opposing God in the Book of Job, where he challenges God to see how faithful Job is. Satan (sometimes also called the devil or Beelzebub) appears more prominently in the New Testament, especially when he tempts Jesus in the desert.
Lori Stanley Roeleveld discusses several biblical passages offering details on Satan’s origins. Ezekiel 28:11-19 describes someone called “the King of Tyre” whose pride caused him to rebel against God, while Isaiah 14:12-14 describes “Morningstar” or Lucifer wanting to rise to God’s level. In the New Testament, Jesus says he saw Satan “fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18), and Revelation 12:7-9 describes a fight between angels in which a great dragon takes a third of the heavens with him. Taking these passages’ details together, it appears that Satan is an angel who rebelled against God and took fellow rebels (a third of the angels) with him. The followers who went with Satan would be the “unclean spirits” or demons mentioned affecting people throughout the Bible.
If Satan was originally an angel, then God created him (as God created everything else), meaning there was a point at which he was “born.” However, we have no details in the Bible about when that moment was—nor, for that matter, about when other angels, such as the messenger Gabriel, were created.
While church calendars include days honoring particular angels (like Michaelmas, commemorating the archangel Michael), no denomination claims that those days remember an angel’s birthday. No mainstream, historic Christian church has a church holiday devoted to remembering Satan at all, much less celebrating his birthday.
Granting that we have no idea when Satan’s birthday is, we still have to determine whether Halloween celebrates him, in the same way that Christmas (probably not the exact day when Jesus was born) celebrates Jesus’ birthday.
So, what should we know about Halloween?
Does Halloween Celebrate Satan’s Birthday?
While modern Halloween celebrations (trick-or-treating for kids, wearing costumes at parties) may not seem very religious, the holiday combines religious and cultural traditions.
- Trick-or-treating comes from mumming and guising, two British practices that involve wearing costumes and reciting songs or poetry for money or food.
- Bonfires come from Samhain, a Celtic pagan holiday celebrating the final harvest of the year.
Historians argue about how much we really know about Samhain, making it hard to call many Halloween festivities “pagan in origin.” Regardless, these traditions eventually were absorbed into Allhallowtide, a three-day event in liturgical church calendars.
- All Hallows’ Eve (or Halloween) is October 31
- All Saints' Day is November 1
- All Souls’ Day is November 2
If you come from a more evangelical Christian background, you may wonder why Allhallowtide lasts three days and what it is for. After Christianity became a legal religion, Christian churches developed a liturgical calendar with special feast days. Feast days are for things like remembering important biblical events (like Jesus’ birth) or important church figures (also called saints). During Allhallowtide, Christians are encouraged to reflect on deceased people who are important to them (family members, church leaders, or historic figures who built up the church). In traditions like Roman Catholicism that emphasize praying for the dead, people may give special prayers during Allhallowtide.
Granting that some aspects of Halloween have church liturgy roots, we may worry whether people who worship Satan use Halloween to celebrate Satan’s birthday.
Do Some People Celebrate Satan’s Birthday at Halloween?
As Vivian Bricker discusses in her article about the Satanic Panic, many stories about Satan-worshipping groups prove to be urban legends when people do a little investigating. Furthermore, many people who publicly identify as Satanists give strange answers about what they believe. For example, Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey doesn’t seem to have believed in or worshipped Satan; an investigative profile by Lawrence Wright and statements by his daughter Zeena Schreck suggest he just wanted a shocking public reputation that enabled him to do strange and outrageous things.
While there is no official answer to what all Satanists believe, various people who have left Satanic cults have described those cults’ practices. Details on these cults have appeared in books written by counselors who have worked with former Satanists (like Destroying the Works of the Devil by George Freeman) or novels reportedly based on interviews with Satanists (for example, Dabblings by Steve James or The Dark Power Collection by Bill Meyers). Some of these accounts mention ceremonies on Halloween night.
Assuming that these reports are correct, we have to ask what it means for us as Christians.
Should Christians Worry about People Celebrating Satan’s Birthday on Halloween?
Some Satanists may use Halloween for dark purposes, but that shouldn’t paralyze us with fear of this holiday. If it was a holiday that Satanists had invented, we might have to worry. But worrying about Satanists appropriating existing holidays for dark activities is like saying that Christians should worry that some Satanists mock Jesus in ceremonies on Easter. It may be true, but we don’t base what we believe (or worry about) on what people defying God do. We remember we have been given a spirit of sound judgment, power, and love, not fear (2 Timothy 1:7).
A related concern for some Christians is whether pagan traditions from Samhain later Christianized into Halloween should make us avoid the holiday. We should consider whether there are Halloween traditions we should avoid because they lead us to sin (getting drunk at parties or vandalizing houses, for example). However, the fact that there are non-Christian ideas behind Halloween in itself is no reason to fear either. One important idea that many Christians have held to for centuries is that God’s power can redeem broken things, and our Christ-given freedom allows us to redeem culture for God. Augustine, the most influential Christian theologian after the apostle Paul, calls this “plundering the Egyptians.”
Throughout history, Christians have redeemed many things that didn’t have Christian origins, removing questionable elements and using the best parts for God’s good. Some examples include:
- Theatre plays began in pre-Christian ancient Greece, but Christians like Dorothy L. Sayers have produced powerful plays that dramatize Christian ideas.
- Fantasy novels were once seen as problematic because they talked about magic. Christian storytellers like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien have shown that it is possible to use fantasy for Christian stories about faith and heroism.
- Pre-Christian winter celebrations like Saturnalia and Yule developed many traditions we still see today (yule logs, feasting, fir trees), but Christians turned those festivities into a winter holiday celebrating Christ’s birth.
So, what are some ways we can redeem Halloween for God this year?
What Can Christians Do to Honor God at Halloween?
There are many ways we can use Halloween as a God-honoring event. Some churches hold trunk-or-treat events to offer kids candy in a safe context. Some Christians hold family-friendly parties to get to know their neighbors.
Since Halloween is rooted in the church liturgical calendar, we may want to consider how to use its traditional role to our advantage. Many evangelical Christians explore church history and liturgical traditions to understand how their brothers and sisters in Christ in other denominations honor God. Allhallowtide can be an interesting time to visit a local church that uses liturgy, see what you have in common with them, and what to learn from the way they honor God in their services.
Whether we are high church or evangelical Christians, we can all learn something from Allhallowtide’s emphasis on remembering the Christians who came before us. We are not meant to be isolated individuals following Jesus. We are part of the body of Christ, called to support and encourage each other (Romans 12:3-13). Remembering Christians who have passed away honors those who have built up the body. The New Testament also encourages us to have a long view of the church: in passages like Paul showing how Adam connects to Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:22), we see that we are part of a larger story God is telling. Remembering and honoring deceased believers helps us see how God has used Christians in the past, how he is using them today, and how he will keep using the church with the generations after us.
This Halloween, let’s consider how to honor God with our festivities, live in courage rather than fear, and humbly remember the brave Christians who have built up the church in the past.
Further Reading
Is Halloween a Pagan Holiday? Origin of Halloween
Should Christians Really Celebrate Halloween?
Crosswalk Halloween Coverage
Photo credit: ©GettyImages/CasPhotography
