Is it okay for Christians to celebrate days like Halloween or Christmas, which aren’t specifically commanded in the Bible?
Some Christian groups claim that it’s not. For instance, 119 Ministries, a “Hebrew Roots” organization, argues that “Christ and the Apostles kept the seventh day Sabbath and the festivals of YHWH such as Passover, but there are many who call themselves Christians who do not keep these days and instead celebrate unbiblical holidays such as Christmas and Halloween.”
There are two sides to this objection. First, there’s the argument that Christians are supposed to still keep the Jewish holidays. The Jewish liturgical calendar was built around three types of festivities: the weekly Sabbath, the monthly new moon, and the annual festivals like Passover. So why don’t Christians keep these?
St. Paul says this plainly in Colossians 2: “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col. 2:16-17).
So just as circumcision of the flesh was just a foreshadowing of the circumcision of the heart, so too festivals like the Passover and Pentecost prefigured greater things in Christ. Passover prefigures the Last Supper, the Jewish feast of Pentecost prefigures the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and so on. Even the Sabbath points beyond itself to the Resurrection, which is why Christians from the very beginning have worshiped on Sunday instead of Saturday.
St. Ignatius, writing in about A.D. 107, says Jewish Christians have “come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by him and by his death.” And his teacher, the apostle John, describes being “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (Rev. 1:10), making it clear that the apostles themselves observed the Lord’s Day. This idea that we need to still keep the Mosaic Law was one of the first heresies that the Church faced, and the apostles condemned it strongly.
But the second argument is that we’re not supposed to celebrate holidays that aren’t found in the Bible. It’s the idea that celebrating feasts like Christmas and Halloween is “unbiblical.” According to this view, we’re not even allowed to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, because the Bible doesn’t tell us to. Never mind the fact that the Bible actually does show people celebrating Jesus’ birth: the shepherds come and pay him homage, and the Magi come and bring him his first birthday gifts.
The deeper problem is that this whole way of thinking is itself unbiblical. In Luke 5, Jesus calls Levi (better known as St. Matthew) to follow him. And what’s the first thing Levi does? He throws Jesus “a great feast in his house; and there was a large company of tax collectors and others sitting at table with them” (v. 29). The Pharisees object to this, but Jesus defends it. And lest you think this was a one-time event, Jesus attended enough celebrations that the Pharisees accused him of being a glutton and a drunkard (Luke 7:34).
In other words, as Christians, we are allowed to have fun. We’re allowed to have feasts, to celebrate, to rejoice over things—to throw a wedding banquet or to celebrate some important moment in our lives. In the parable of the prodigal son, when the son returns to the father, the father throws a party to celebrate. They kill the fatted calf with the instructions to “eat and make merry,” and there’s even “music and dancing” (Luke 15:22-25). The father (who represents God) apparently doesn’t think it’s necessary for the festivities to line up with important feast days on the Jewish calendar. He is instead celebrating what we might call a spiritual milestone: the return of his son, just as Levi celebrated his own milestone (his conversion to following Christ).
The early Christians understood this, and made a habit of celebrating significance spiritual milestones: particularly the entrance of Christian martyrs into heaven (what we sometimes call their “heavenly birthday”). In A.D. 155, when the bishop Polycarp of Smyrna died, the Christians gathered his bones and “deposited them in a fitting place,” so that they could “celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who have already finished their course, and for the exercising and preparation of those yet to walk in their steps.”
Eventually, of course, there were too many of these heavenly birthdays to celebrate every one (there are more martyrs than there are days on the calendar), and so Christians came up with a big celebration for all of them, calling it “All Saints” or “All Hallows,” with a vigil the night before to boot. And it’s this perfectly biblical way of celebrating that gives us the feast we today call Halloween.