To the editor:

In 837 A.D., Pope Gregory IV, hoping to replace pagan practices, established Nov. 1 as All Saints Day, a time to remember and to honor Christian saints. Today, many Christians forget All Saints Day. Instead, they celebrate diabolical, pagan Halloween on the night of Oct. 31. Many practices forbidden in Deuteronomy 18:10-12 are associated with Halloween.

Sadly, many churches have Halloween parties for children using fearsome goblins, witches, jack-o’-lanterns, skeletons and ghost figure. All of this may frighten children badly and open the door to Satan. This is just the opposite of the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control listed in Galatians 5: 22-23.

Our supermarkets are loaded with orange pumpkins. Each is a potential jack o’ lantern, which is particularly evil. It symbolizes “the Lord of the Dead,” an idol. Also, its fearsome face represents the god Saman, who would drive off less powerful spirits. The lights in the jack-o’-lantern symbolize the “fairy fires,” which were lost souls flitting through the night.

Halloween was not celebrated in colonial America. Nor was it celebrated by our nation during the 19th century. But, about 1900, European immigrants brought pagan Halloween to the United States. Let’s celebrate All Saints Day and not Halloween.

John A. Bond,

Lawrence