“I don’t see why I can’t go,” I insisted. “It’s not as if I’m actually celebrating it.”

“It” was a mini Halloween carnival held in my school. I thought it’d be interesting to dress up in costumes that would normally evoke a double-take from passers-by, but my mentor remained sceptical.

“It’s just a fun event,” I reassured her.

Most people celebrating Halloween aren’t doing it to observe some pagan ritual. Many, like me, just see it as another social event – another excuse for a party. So what’s the big deal?

I eventually attended the party that year, but I’ve abstained from any Halloween-related celebrations since then. I realised subsequently that, in the name of fun, festivities have been commercialised into mindless entertainment.

Not mindless as in, we should mind less, but mindless as in, we’ve failed to engage our mind. We don’t give any second thought to the meaning behind the event.

Halloween? Let’s visit a theme park Horror House. Christmas? Splurge on presents. Valentine’s Day? Bouquets of flowers at a marked-up rate.

Do we know what we’re buying into? Or are we just doing like everyone else does?

As I was doing some research on Halloween (okay, I Wiki-ed it), I realised that its origins closely resemble what we know in Singapore as the Hungry Ghost Festival.

Suspected to have originated from the Celtic festival called Samhain, Halloween is a time of the year where spirits are believed to be more active on earth. During this period, offerings of food and drinks were left outside for spirits to consume in hopes of of deterring any evil intentions befalling on their family and their crops through the winter. The souls of the dead were also believed to revisit their homes and it was common for people to prepare extra food and space at the dinner table to welcome them.

Subsequently, people started to impersonate themselves as the spirits through disguises and costumes to receive offerings on the behalf of the spirits as a form of good luck.

Sounds familiar? If most Christians have reservations participating in Hungry Ghost Festival-related events, why don’t we have the same reaction towards its Western equivalent, Halloween?

Do we know what we’re buying into? Or are we just doing like everyone else does?

Commercialisation has so successfully reduced festivals – be it Halloween, Christmas or Easter – into marketable processions to hawk goods. And we buy into it within thinking or questioning.

Yet Paul exhorts us to grow in our knowledge and discernment so that we may present ourselves faultless before Christ.

And this is my prayer: That your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ — to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9-11)

We are explicitly called to turn our backs on the patterns of the world, and instead be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).

You may, however, still remain unconvinced. Halloween in Singapore doesn’t hold the same significance – and therefore consequence – as it does in other Western countries, you reason, I mean, nobody here sees it as a pagan event!

I thought the same way too. And so, even though my leaders tried to dissuade me from going to the Halloween party that year, I went ahead anyway. But what really tilted the scales for me was my friend’s pointed question years later.

“Is it worth the risk of upsetting God?”

I knew my answer in a heartbeat: No, it isn’t.

If we’re honest with ourselves, at the heart of all the “can I?” arguments lies the question: Should I?

Yes, we can celebrate Halloween because the Bible says that everything is permissible (1 Corinthians 10:23). But is it “beneficial”?

Would we be willing to surrender all our arguments, as long as there’s a 0.0001% chance that God disapproves?