Halloween: A Dark Night, and Why Darkness Is Not Final

Scripture is quoted from the 1599 Geneva Bible with modernized spelling (words and word order unchanged), with the names Yahweh and Yashua restored throughout (the Father is always called Yahweh and the Son always Yashua, even where older Bibles use a title). The history is sourced at the end. The Scripture application is our conviction, offered as interpretation.

Last night, porches glowed orange, children dressed as ghouls and witches, and plastic skeletons hung from trees. For most people it's candy and costumes. We believe Scripture asks us to look harder at what the night celebrates.

Where the night comes from

Halloween didn't start as a children's party. The Library of Congress describes its beginnings as "an ancient, pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead called Samhain." Encyclopaedia Britannica says Samhain ("summer's end") marked the turn from summer to winter, and that people believed spirits came into the world of the living that night. It also reports that the souls of the dead were thought to return to their homes, that the season was "deemed favorable for divination on matters such as marriage, health, and death," and that people wore masks and disguises so the ghosts wouldn't recognize them.

Later, the church tried to cover it over. Britannica notes that in the early 700s Pope Gregory III moved the feast of All Saints to November 1, "perhaps in an effort to supplant the pagan festival." The night before became All Hallows' Eve, which was shortened to "Halloween." According to the Library of Congress, the church meant those feast days to replace Samhain, but "instead, elements of Christian and pre-Christian belief mingled."

Britannica also says honestly that "very little can be said with certainty about the ancient Samhain observances." We won't add claims the record doesn't support. What it does show is enough: a night built around the dead, wandering spirits and fortune-telling, which was given a church name without being cleansed.

What Scripture says about those practices

Yahweh didn't leave His people guessing about any of this. Before Israel entered the land, He named the practices of the nations one by one:

"Let none be found among you that maketh his son or his daughter to go through the fire, or that useth witchcraft, or a regarder of times, or a marker of the flying of fowls, or a sorcerer, Or a charmer, or that counselleth with spirits, or a soothsayer, or that asketh counsel at the dead. For all that do such things are abomination unto Yahweh, and because of these abominations Yahweh doeth cast them out before thee." (Deuteronomy 18:10–12)

"Ye shall not regard them that work with spirits, neither soothsayers: ye shall not seek to them to be defiled by them: I am Yahweh." (Leviticus 19:31)

Calling up the dead, reading omens, divination and spirit-work are exactly the things the old Samhain lore puts at the center of the night. Isaiah asked the question plainly: "Should not a people enquire at their Yahweh? from the living to the dead?" (Isaiah 8:19).

Yahweh also told His people not to borrow the customs of the nations around them: "Learn not the way of the heathen" (Jeremiah 10:2). Paul said the same to believers living in a pagan city:

"...what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?... Wherefore come out from among them, and separate your selves, saith Yahweh, and touch none unclean thing, and I will receive you." (2 Corinthians 6:14, 17)

Children of the day

In our view, the question isn't whether a child in a costume means harm. Most don't. The question is what we're celebrating, and whose night it is. Scripture says believers belong to a different one:

"Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, neither of darkness." (1 Thessalonians 5:5)

"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but even reprove them rather." (Ephesians 5:11)

"Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good: he that doeth well, is of Yahweh: but he that doeth evil, hath not seen Yahweh." (3 John 1:11)

This doesn't mean hiding inside with the lights off and feeling superior. Some believers will pass out tracts with the candy, some will gather to pray, and some will simply stay home. Each of us answers to Yahweh with our own conscience. What we're called to do is choose deliberately, and not let the calendar choose for us.

Darkness is not final

This is the part that matters most. Halloween makes a show of death, fear and the grave, as if those were the powers that rule the night. They aren't.

"Then spake Yashua again unto them, saying, I am that light of the world: he that followeth me, shall not walk in darkness, but shall have that light of life." (John 8:12)

"And that light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." (John 1:5)

Yashua took on flesh "that he might destroy through death, him that had the power of death, that is the devil, And that he might deliver all them, which for fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14–15). The fear that night trades on has already been broken.

The people of Ephesus who had practiced "curious arts" brought their books and burned them in public once they met the truth (Acts 19:19). Nobody is too deep in darkness to come out. "For ye were once darkness, but are now light in Yashua: walk as children of light" (Ephesians 5:8).

The pumpkins will rot and the costumes will go back in the box. But "the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light" (Isaiah 9:2). Darkness had its night, but it doesn't get the last word.

Darkness is not final. Yashua is the light.

Sources

• Library of Congress, "Halloween & Día de Muertos Resources: Introduction," https://guides.loc.gov/halloween/introduction
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Where Did Halloween Originate?," https://kids.britannica.com/scholars/article/Where-Did-Halloween-Originate/700973
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Samhain," https://kids.britannica.com/scholars/article/Samhain/65212
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "All Saints' Day," https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/All-Saints-Day/309774
• Every verse was checked against the saved 1599 Geneva text (/workspace/bible-geneva/all_verses.txt) on 11/1/2026.