This topic has been on my mind for some time now. And I feel free/released to talk about it openly now. So let’s begin …
People will use Colossians 2:16 to justify their celebration of halloween. And some will claim that “hey, if you celebrate Christmas, you cannot judge me for celebrating halloween, as both have pagan origins. If you can celebrate Christmas for Jesus, I can celebrate halloween for Jesus.“ Really?
Yes, much commercialism surrounds the season of Christmas. Santa Claus can be distracting, for some, plain old of the devil. I won’t expound on this, as it is not the point of this post.
“But Jesus wasn’t born on the 25th. The decoration is paganism…” Probably true I say, yet I think even if we chose another day, the enemy would still follow the time around with clutter and distractions, and yes, paganism. I believe it is up to us to sift through all of that, abandon some even and stick to remembering the actual story behind it all.
Personally for me, I don’t need the tree 🌲, or much of the decor that comes with Christmas. Though not against them. I will admit, I do quite like the lights. As a Christian, of course I like lights! 🙂 Yes, yes, I know the enemy does transform as an “angel of light” in order to deceive. Anyhow, taking away all of that and reading the Bible, we would still have a point where we celebrate CHRISTmas, that is, the sending of Jesus, every time we read the first chapters of Matthew. And we who are Blood bought certainly give thanks for His coming.
With halloween, what remains when we take away all the “spooky”? Even if someone says they are doing it onto the Lord and dressing as something good, the Bible says we are to put on the armor of God, we are to take on the identity of Christ. So putting on the identity of anything else but that of Christ I think is stepping into muddy waters. There are consequences of putting on things even in innocence. (Hosea 4:6) Some have been left baffled by personality changes not knowing that they took on the identity of something sinister during “times of festivity, tricks and treats”. That should be enough reason. But if that’s not enough, there’s always the testimonies of ex-witches and ex-warlocks who make it well known that satanists delight in the fact that there are Christians participating in halloween.
In conclusion, both holidays are surrounded with things that are not of God. For halloween, people go missing. There is a celebration of darkness and death, the movies released in cinemas are dark and horrific. For Christmas, people over eat, focus on materialism, Santa Claus, jingle bells and end up in unnecessary debt. But when we clear the clutter of both, what do we find? Well we find that Christmas still stands with a tiding that brings great joy. A Savior who loves mankind so much that He left His throne, was born of a virgin, died on a Cross and 3 days later rose again. He conquered death! The same death which is glorified in halloween. The Christmas story climbs up to Life overcoming death.
My thoughts are similar for Easter but I hope we’d stop calling it that and say Passover or Passion Week or something. The root of the word Easter is in fact pagan. (Story for another day.) Not true for the word Christmas though, obviously. As we can see, some are so not in favor of Christ, they deduce it to “X-mas”. Others I reckon probably think it’s a cool short code. Again Hosea 4:6.
Let’s not feel guilty for enjoying the season of Christmas, for indeed when we strip away all the clutter that tries to stifle the true meaning of the season, we are still left with the account of His coming in the Holy Scriptures. And that’s enough reason to rejoice, certainly all year round, and appreciate the ultimate Gift, that is the Lord Jesus.
