Halloween will bring in 11.6 billion in 2024 for costumes, candy, decorations, and greeting cards.

Consumer spending on Halloween-related items is expected to reach an all-time high of $11.6 billion, up from $8.05 billion in 2020, with 65% planning to celebrate at an average spending of $102.74 per person.

How did this start?

Today Halloween is almost exclusively an American secular holiday, but many who celebrate have no concept of its religious origins or pagan heritage.

It can be traced back 2000 years ago, to the Celtic people of Europe and Britain who were pagan Druids. Their major celebrations were marked by the seasons.

The pagan Samhain festival (pronounced "sow" "en") celebrated the final harvest, death, and the onset of winter, for three days—October 31 to November 2. The Celts believed the curtain dividing the living and the dead lifted during Samhain to allow the spirits of the dead to walk among the living—ghosts haunting the earth.

Around AD 600, Pope Boniface IV created All Saints’ Day, a day set aside for the solemn remembrance of the martyrs. Pope Gregory III later moved this holiday to November 1 in an effort to give a Christian alternative to this pagan celebration.

The name "Halloween" comes from the All Saints Day celebration. All Hallows Eve, the evening before All Saints Day, began the time of remembrance. "All Hallows Eve" was eventually contracted to "Hallow-e'en," which became "Halloween."

In the early 1900s, the migrating Irish and Scots brought Halloween traditions to the United States. Over time, Halloween catapulted into mainstream culture.

What should Christians do?

Christians should respond to Halloween with gospel compassion. The unbelieving, Christ-rejecting world lives in perpetual fear of death. It isn't just the experience of death, but rather what the Bible calls "a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume [God's] adversaries" (Hebrews 10:27).

Witches, ghosts, and evil spirits are not terrifying; God's wrath unleashed on the unforgiven sinner—now that is truly terrifying.

Christians should use Halloween and all that it brings to the imagination—death imagery, superstition, expressions of debauched revelry—as an opportunity to engage the unbelieving world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“ There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, Deuteronomy 18:10-13 ESV

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How Can Christians Engage in Halloween Evangelism?

1. Opt Out—Then share the gospel with those who ask why.

Some Christian parents don't want their kids participating in spiritually compromising activities, like listening to ghost stories or coloring pictures of witches. They don't want their kids to dress up in costumes for trick-or-treating to get candy from strangers.

That response naturally raises eyebrows and provides a good opportunity to share the gospel to those who ask.

2. Opt for Halloween Alternatives

Look for some sort of church function to counter modern practices of Halloween.

Like "Harvest Festivals" or "Reformation Festivals"—where the kids dress up as farmers, Bible characters, or Reformation heroes. It can be an effective means of reaching out to neighborhood families with the gospel.

3. Hand out Candy with a Gospel tract

Give out candy to the children passing through your neighborhood and drop a Cross Penny from Heaven with a Million Dollar Bill gospel tract in with each kid’s candy.

Try to engage their parents in a conversation you can steer toward the things of the Lord. Maybe even invite the whole family to your church?

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Christian participation in Halloween is a matter of conscience before God.

Whatever level of Halloween participation you choose, you must honor God by keeping yourself separate from the world and by showing mercy to those who are perishing.

Halloween provides the Christian with the opportunity to accomplish both of those things in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's a message that is holy, set apart from the world; it's a message that is the very mercy of a forgiving God.

What better time of the year is there to share such a message than Halloween?