Do Christians Compromise Their Salvation by Participating in Satanic Holidays?

Halloween ~ The Dark Night of the Soul

Formed with help from online research & various Christian publications

Well, it's that time of year again when so-called Christians & Pagans alike dig through saved treasures or rush out to buy more to decorate & drape the inside & outside of their houses in eerie arrangements of skeletons, ghosts, witches, glowing monsters, sticky spider webs, and a vast array of haunting, seasonal decor.  All of this effort for the innocent fun of Halloween… you think.

Can there REALLY be a Christianized Halloween?  What would Jesus do?  Is Halloween just innocent fun, or is this an unholy celebration?  Hundreds of years of slow transformation have changed the appearance & haunting beginnings of Halloween!  So whether or not you choose to participate in the festivities, you still might consider reading some historical highlights on how it all started & the real story behind the celebration then take it to heart & make your mind up as to which path YOU will choose.

For your soul's sake, fully consider this: Do Christians compromise their salvation by participating in Satanic-based holidays?

Long ago, the festivals celebrating the Savior was changed into the Church’s "holy days" (holidays).  The changes were first initiated with Satan’s guidance under the reign of Constantine (around the year A.D. 325) when Christianity &  Paganism were united into one "church."  Constantine believed the efforts would appease the masses and calm differences in belief systems.  A unification of sorts, that united all people of various backgrounds & beliefs into one church/government-controlled system that appeared to make everyone happy.  The Christians were no longer persecuted but accepted.  The Jews were tolerated but ignored.  How about the Druids, the Pagans?  Well, they had their gods too & were allowed to bring them into the Church & placed within the once hallowed halls so they could perform their rituals & pray to them when they entered!

Keep this in mind; that in the name of peace, what followed was the blending of all types of beliefs, religions, philosophies & cultures into one seemingly harmonious union that was mistakenly made, thinking it was for the good of all. But it was the downfall of pure religion.

FESTIVALS & HOLY DAYS
One of the ways to achieve harmony among religions was to "correct" the festivals of the Lord by reinterpreting them into "acceptable" days for worship.  Was this upheld by God’s word in the Bible?  No! This was man’s doing & one way he did this was to revise the Jewish Calendar system by converting the Hebrew festivals.  Now this wasn't too easy because the Hebrew calendar aligned most precisely with the movement of the heavens.  This was GOD's calendar given to mankind from the beginning, & the ancient "astro" (star) "nomers" (watchers) devised the calendar to follow seasons & feast days; but the new Roman calendar consisted of a blending of the old with the new, naming each day of the week by their Roman gods.  (Just FYI: When the Gregorian calendar was later adopted, the days of the week continued from the first day of the week (Sunday) to the seventh day of the week (Saturday, which was from creation, named Sabbath).  Only the amount of days within each month was changed.)

This newly approved calendar consisted of four cardinal days (time-periods) set aside for "holy days." They were fall (Autumnal Equinox), winter (Winter Solstice), spring (Vernal Equinox), & summer (Summer Solstice).  The seasons determined the four major festivals celebrated throughout the year.

Autumn Equinox: During this time, both day & night are equal in length.  This is the season for celebrating the harvest, endings, the dying of nature, & associated with "the dark night of the soul."  The Autumnal Equinox also marked the beginning of the Pagan year.  This was the celebration that came to be known as Halloween.

Winter Solstice: With shorter days & longer nights, this time period is represented by the Feast of Saturnalia (by the Romans) honoring the god/planet Saturn.  The Feast of Saturnalia (where the name Saturday came from, not to be confused with the God given name of Sabbath) occurred from December 17 to the 24th.  Along with many festivals, this too was a time of debauchery, orgy, and drunkenness.  On December 25th, the Romans celebrated the birthday of the "sun god."  They believed that the sun died during the winter months and after the Winter Solstice, when the sun reclaimed the lengthening of the day, it was "born" anew.  The evergreen tree was part of this celebration, involving several Pagan and Druid deities.

Vernal Equinox: This occurred when day & night are equal in length.  It was a time to celebrate the joys of spring, new life, & the resurrection of nature over death. The Vernal Equinox is an ancient festival celebrating the death and rebirth of the gods Tammuz and Damuzi (you can do your own research to find out more about these for the Christmas holiday).  This was time to celebrate the rites of fertility done through orgies and lasciviousness, with much worship to the gods/goddesses of fertility through human/animal sacrifices. (The use of colored eggs, May Poles, rabbits, etc., were prominently used during this festival.)

On another note, it is also during this time that the Jewish festival of Passover is held which is separate but totally different from what is called Easter.  Christ partook of the Passover and told his apostles to continue doing it in the future, remembering him when partaking of the bread (symbol of his body, the word) and wine (symbol of his blood, the sacrifice).  Can you see how Satan’s lies melded with the basic Christian truths to initiate holidays that were not even Biblical?

Summer Solstice: These are witnessed by the longer days & shorter nights.  The Britain's called this a "Midsummer Night."  It was a time of great abundance revealed in celebrations of drunken abandonment.

A CELEBRATION OF DEATH
As early as B.C.E. 400, the ancient Celtic civilization gathered to celebrate the Celtic New Year and the festival of the god of death, Samhain.  During the dark night of the soul, October 31st is when the souls of the wandering dead were thought to manifest themselves to the living.  This time of year was a celebration of the Autumnal Equinox.  The event marked by the harvest, the culmination of Summer, and the dying of nature.  It was a festival to bring fear over the minds of the unenlightened.  At the stroke of midnight, the Celts offered many human sacrifices to the god of death (Samhain).  It was during this night, the soul passed from death to a new birth just as the clock sounded the midnight call ushering in a new day.  A time of death to the old year and birth to the new, and so began the ancient Celtic New Year.

In A.D. 834, Pope Boniface IV moved the celebration of "All Saints Day" from May to the 1st of November.  The day before became All Hallows' Evening, or Halloween.  You may also remember that October 31st is Reformation Day in celebration of Martin Luther posting his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the church (this action, among others, essentially began the Reformation).  All Saints Day was an attempt to rid the people of the festival of Samhain along with its sorcery and occult divination.  All Saints Day was also known as "All Halloweds" which was to be a time to honor those martyred by Rome (imagine that), but not recognized by the Reformers as a scriptural holy day.  Pope Boniface IV failed in his attempts to replace the festival of death with All Saints Day, because today Halloween is more popular than ever before.  The festival of Samhain always occurred the night before All Saints Day or, as it came to be known, All Halloweds Eve (or All Halloweds E'en).  The name "Halloween" came to us by the way of the British Isles.  So there it is, "All Halloweds Eve" passed down to us today as the name of Halloween.  In fact, many people begin Halloween as the holiday season leading up to Christmas.

THE DRUIDS
The history of the ancient Druids (which brings us many practices such as the evergreen tree for what’s known as the Christmas holiday) is shrouded in an aura of secrecy.  The mysterious legends originate thousands of years ago, partly from early Babylonian myths and legends.  In later history, the Druids intermixed traces of British myth and the ancient religious practices of the Gauls.  The religion predominately followed the worship of elemental deities - fire/air, and the seasons, specifically following the Solstice/Equinox.

When the first pilgrims arrived on the shores of America, pagan festivals were forbidden, including customs such as the Festival of the Dead, (Halloween, Samhain brought by way of the Celts) and the Roman, Feast of Saturnalia (later known as Christmas).  The pilgrims followed a strict, unyielding adherence to their ancestral forms of worship, with great fear of yielding to the ancient, paganistic celebrations that were later introduced into Church society.

It was only during the Middle Ages, when the Druidic and Celtic customs saw a revival in America through the celebration of Halloween.  The Celtic immigrants, from the British Isles, brought their folk customs and pagan superstitions with them, including Samhain the Festival of Death.  This occurred simultaneously with a resurgence of witchcraft and Satanism in America. The mixing of ancient superstitions with eerie supernatural manifestations helped to set the frightening stage for All Halloweds' Eve.  Supposed witches would fly through the darkened skies on brooms with their medium, the black cat, poised delicately on the broom-tip as lookouts to guide through the night.  Ghosts, goblins, evil demons and all forms of sinister-looking monsters roamed about the streets in search of the unsuspecting soul.

Through time the church, sadly weakened by complacency, no longer fought against the practice of what was termed the evil practice of witchcraft, but more or less tolerated its existence; and as remains to this day, the time near the Autumnal Equinox was by far the most important night of the year by the celebration of Halloween.  Thousands of years have come and gone, yet Halloween still remains today as the official celebration of Summers' end and beginning of the Fall festivals. 

THE PLEIADES
Halloween marks the seasonal worship of the Autumnal Equinox, the setting of the Pleiades (Seven Sisters), and an alternative for the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) & the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) which occur during their month of Tishri.  A good example of the rising & setting of these stars can be found directly in Scripture.  "Seek him that maketh (seek the Creator - not the creation) the seven stars (Pleiades) & Orion, & turneth the shadow of death (setting of these constallations) into the morning (rising of them)..." Amos 5:8

Ancient civilizations' associated the seven stars of Pleiades (constellation of Taurus) with immortality of the soul & the star Alcyone representative of the sun-god, the center of the universe, by which all things in the heaven revolved.  The Pleiades held the future (through divination).  The setting of the Pleiades, celebrated during the fall in November/December, brought with it death & endings; and the rising of the Pleiades, celebrated in the spring during March/April, came new birth & beginnings.

EARLY SETTLERS
The future fortune of early villages, through good or bad omens, came through the rising & setting of the stars of the Pleiades & the gods of the night.  During the dark night of the soul, near the Autumnal Equinox, a great festival occurred which was an eerie counterpart to our modern day Harvest Festival.  Huge "bone fires" surrounded the villages illuminating the night sky with a bright, reddish orange glow which are the familiar colors associated with the harvest.  These Halloween "Bone" fires originated far earlier than the celebration of Samhain, but were carried over into the Halloween night of festivities later by the Druids and Celts.  The element of "fire" acted as the altar of sacrifice & the blood of the sacrificial victims (both human & animal) fueled the inferno.  During the dark night of the soul, the bone fires' two-fold purpose was to both appease & drive away the bad spirits that wandered the Earth in search of a human host to possess.

Sacrificial victims were led through the streets of the village by masked Celtic priests, the Druids, who ceremonially offered them to the Lord of Death, Satan.  From the death agonies of the living victim placed on the altar of sacrifice, the priests divined the future of the village by claiming to see the soul exit the body & took that moment of posture as the sign for the village‘s future.  Gruesome isn't it?  This custom originated in Babylon where the Babylonian priests' prayed to the symbolic deities (Nimrod) to inquire (divine) the will of the gods.  The victims were furiously consumed by the roaring flames, & in the morning, all that was left were the bones & ashes.  Today without realizing it, people join in by practicing a similar ritual during the Harvest Festival, not as "bone fires," but as "bon fires."

Another custom was the marking of the body with strange, ritualistic tattoos especially carved near the stomach area (if female).  It was the ancient Druidic "TAU" symbol of fertility, death, reincarnation, & written with the letter "T" or the "tau cross," an ancient symbol for Tammuz, the dying and rising divinity associated with fertility cults.  This same shape can be found in the Hermetic use of the "ouroboros" representative of the "tree of life."  The primeval representation of the renewal of life processes within its own substance; i.e., the rebirth from its own ashes, both living forever, thus representing eternity.  It also depends on the direction of the "T-cross" (i.e., towards the head or towards the feet).  In fertility cults, this symbol would appear over the womb area or near the heart.  Today, some might wear it in the form of a cross on a chain which hangs near the heart.  Usually, the shape would be over the womb area (crux ansata - a symbol of life), & not as a perfect circle.  Sometimes a point, or a comma, is used to form the shape of the "T" representative of the tongue of fire, placed for the symbol representing a spirit-being or messenger, to signify his (the spirit's) more than human character.  In alchemy the practical solution for the use of the ouroboros was a representation of the "dissolution of the body by fermentation; ie, death" (Berthelott).

Initially, the ancient priests carried a hollowed turnip with a lighted candle made with the fat of an animal or human.  The symbol of the hollowed turnip carried the "Jock (or Jack) of the Lantern" which was the spirit-likeness, or image, that was carved into the outer core of the turnip.  The Jock (or Jack) was the guiding spirit within the lantern who dwelled in the light of the burning fat.  Wearing a symbolic mask & dressed in a hooded, black robe with skins of sacrificed animals (sometimes a human body part was also used as a token), the priests carried the Jock spirit on a dangling rope before them to guide the soul of its carrier through the darkness of night.  This procession was of special significance when lighted on the eve of October 31st, to celebrate the ending of the seasons through the setting of the Pleiades.  The Jock O'Lantern provided the light, the spirit-guide for the souls of the walking undead.  Later, in America, pumpkins replace turnips because they were harvested during the Fall, readily available, & easier to carve than turnips.

During the dark night of the soul, the hooded priests walked through the streets passing from house to house with a special demand of food, drink.  Sometimes as an added bonus, a virgin son or daughter of the villagers were offerd as sacrifice to the spirits of the night.  Sometimes the villagers would also dress in costume to hide (mask) their identity from the evil spirits especially in efforts to protect their children.  In this way, the evil spirits were fooled into thinking the villagers to be evil spirits also & not harm them.

The villagers also would create special amulets for good luck.  The sweet taste of the "apple" became the favorite because it pleased the evil spirits & brought good luck to the villagers (bobbing of apples evolved from this belief).

The ancient Druids believed that witches, demons, & spirits of the dead roamed the earth on the eve of November 1st.  If the village willingly complied with their demands, the priests passed by, but if the village failed to produce something of value, the priests placed the "Jock O'Lantern" outside the gateway of the village to be released as a curse upon the dwellers.  The houses would then be cursed with doors/windows marked with a five-pointed star (pentagram) or a six-pointed hexagram (similar to the appearance of "the star of David").  The word "hexed" (meaning cursed) evolved from this ancient occult symbol of the hexagram.  Finally, the spirits would be left in the cursed village to wander the streets, ravaging homes & bringing destruction upon the living.  This custom has been passed down today in the form of “Trick or Treat.”

CHOOSING BETWEEN GOOD OR EVIL
So now I leave it up to you.  There is truly only one of two choices that will be made on judgment day; saved or unsaved.  Do you take a stand for God or for Satan?  For good or for bad?  Are you Christian or Demon?  Yes my friend, it does matter.

How many churches do you see dabbling in holidays brought about by Satan‘s deceptions?  How many seemingly good people help their church hold Harvest Festivals, sell pumpkins, or have Trick or Treat parties for the kiddies?  How much of the Bible can this church TRULY claim to hold up in truth?  Where they mislead in one untruth, beware of others they may mislead you in!  Test the spirit of the church yourself, prayerfully seek God’s truth for yourself.

Do you attempt to comfort yourself in thinking it’s ok, it’s just a little holiday for the kids?  How about, it’s only done in fun, there‘s nothing evil about it?  How DO you turn it over in your mind as to observing this unholy day?  Do you throw yourself into it, participating in everything that comes with the festivities?  How about just part of it, enough to appease the little ghosts & demons by giving them candy when they come to visit your house? 

Perhaps you don’t believe what is written here.  If that be the case, please feel free to do your own studies to find the truth for yourself. God’s Word would be a good start.

Start your own traditions by choosing another date apart from anything questionable then invite your family and friends to enjoy it with you!  Have a theme party to dress-up for, prepare a special meal, give gifts, & play games.

Satan, the great deceiver, the father of lies, has wrapped up so many temptations to make holidays such as Halloween so much fun.  Associating with something that is known as being evil means you are accepting them by participating in them!  A REAL Christian would NOT have anything to do with séance parties, visiting fortune tellers, or even to refer to Zodiac readings.  Stand aside as holy, uphold the good things God has given us.

So now, answer this, how can anyone claim to be followers of Christ while supporting anything unholy?  What do YOU think Christ would have done?  We are to walk in the paths He took. 

Consider this; when one uses Christ’s name by claiming to be one of His as a Christian, yet one continues in sins by participating in anything He wouldn’t approve of, wouldn‘t you consider this alone would be blasphemous by using His name in vain?

Many will say, Lord, Lord… but He will say, “I knew you not.”

May these thoughts prick your heart & make you consider of what you are doing year after year.  Beloved, pray and study your Bible for yourself.  You will find yourself either approved or disapproved.  God will never make you choose, it is a free choice then when the judgements are pronounced every one will be given the reward they deserve.  God’s word is the only path to truth which is Christ’s salvation.  Put aside any evil thoughts or ways.  Pray for strength and guidance.  Continue onward to the path of righteousness, for all things which is good, our Father God will approve of. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil.” (I Thessalonians 5:21-22)