A session exploring halloween and challenging young people to think how they react to it and if Christians should celebrate it

Suitable For Ages 14 upwards

Required: pens, paper, sheets printed (downloadable from this page), Doorways to Danger video (if you can find it)

Extra Files Needed (i.e. worksheets etc): Halloween Quiz and Bible Study – click to download

Session Plan

Intro: Tonight we’re going to be having a think about halloween

Video Clip: ‘Doorways to Danger’ Video – Clip starting from young girl talking about Lords prayer being read backwards up until the end of her second story. Includes a Youth Workers testimony!
Note: This video is about 20 years old, as an alternative if you don’t have it kicking around in your church closet skip straight to the brainstorm

Ask: What did the group think? (of the video clip)

Brainstorm: What sort of things do you think are associated with evil/occult?
(Ouiji boards, possession, horoscopes, mediums, tarot cards, fortune tellers)

Ask: Do you think they’re bad? What sort of consequences do you think they have?

Why The Occult etc is bad

Explain: All of the things we’ve talked about so far focus on something else other than God for spiritual guidance or experience.

Isaiah 8 says
‘Some people say ‘Ask the mediums and fortune tellers who whisper and mutter what to do’ but I tell you that people should ask their God for help, why should people who are still alive ask something from the dead? You should follow the teachings and the agreement with the Lord, the mediums and the fortune tellers do not speak the word of the Lord so their words are worth nothing’

Deuteronomy 18:10-11
”Don’t let anyone among you offer a son or daughter as a sacrifice in the fire. Don’t let anyone use magic or witchcraft, or try to explain the meaning of signs. Don’t let anyone try to control others with magic, and don’t let them be mediums or try to talk with the spirits of the dead. The Lord hates anyone who does these things…’


Group Task: In pairs get the group to go through the bible looking for other verses that talk about the occult/evil.

Notes For Leaders – verses could be: Micah 5:10-15, Malachi 3:5, Galations 5:19-21, Revelation 18: 21-24, 21:8, 22:15.

Ask: Ask the groups to feedback, reading through the versesAsk:

So how does this fit into Halloween?

Quiz: Give the young people the halloween quiz to have a go at, then share the answers below

Answers: 1 – True, 2 – False – was actually the end!, 3- True, 4 – True, 5 – False, it is thought to have been a tradition that Irish immigrants took over to America, 6 – True, America didn’t have turnips. 7 – False, 8 – True

Ask: What do you think about Halloween?

Read Out The two very different Christian view points below (you make like to get 2 young people to read them)

Christian View Point 1

I have always considered Halloween a day to celebrate the imagination, to become for a short time something wonderful and strange, smelling of grease paint, to taste sweets that are permissible only once a year. How wonderful to be with other children dressed up as what they might grow up to be, what they wished they could be, or even what they secretly feared. All of us, dreams and nightmares, were brought together on equal footing, going from door to door to be given treats and admired for our creativity. How delightful to go to parties with doughnuts, apples, brown cider, and pumpkin cakes—and to hear spine-tingling ghost stories and feel our hearts skip a beat when the teller grabbed for us.

Now some are pressuring us to give this all up, and they use what is for some of us the most difficult argument to answer: it’s the “Christian” thing to do.

“But look at the roots of Halloween,” some may say. “Don’t you see how evil it once was?” I do, but the operative word in that sentence is was. Samhain was once a time of fear and dread, but at one time so was Yule or Midvinterblot, as it was called in Sweden. Toward the time of the winter solstice, the days became shorter and colder. The land was laid waste. In pagan times, to keep the fire of the life-giving sun alight, people often made sacrifices before a great oak tree. Boniface is supposed to have stopped one such sacrifice and instituted the indoor Christmas tree at the same time. The burning of such logs in the midst of sacrifice has come down to us as the traditions of burning Yule logs and enjoying Christmas trees.
I’m not suggesting fir trees and Yule logs be banned from Christmas; I’m only demonstrating what has happened time and again in history. For our pagan ancestors, the holidays that marked the great seasonal changes were often fearful, terrible, and dark. But with the coming of Christ came a great light that reclaimed not only individuals but also the holidays they celebrated. In the case of Midvinterblot and Yule, the holidays that once marked the terrible price required to provide light instead began to express the joyous arrival of God’s true light.

Christian View Point 2

Is Halloween a TRICK or TREAT?
Most absolutely a TRICK. As you can see from all the above the real meaning of Halloween has been watered down. It is Satan’s objective to get all to worship him. God tells us to not have any thing to do with this.

Peter I 5:8 Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour.

1Thessalonians 5:22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.

1Timothy 4:1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons.

If you are a professing Christian, you have no reason to be part of this holy day of Satan. Don’t use the old cop out “well every body does it”. No everybody is not doing it. God will hold you responsible for what you do this Halloween. Will you go ahead and participate in it? Or will you pass along the word and let someone know what the real meaning is.

Explain: So there is no right or wrong, but what we do know is that God is more powerful than the devil…

Group Work: Luke 10: 17-20 Bible Study

Ask: Ask the groups to feedback from the study>

Conclusion: Jesus has already won the battle when he died but the devil is too stupid to realise so continues to try and drag us down. Through Jesus we have power over the devil.

Pray: Peace, no nightmares etc