I remember fall break during freshman year, around this time of the year, where I traveled to Boca Raton, Fla., to visit my grandparents. Being the faithful Presbyterians they are, they took my father and I along with them to their Sunday morning service. We sat in the arena-like room, high in the balcony, and stared down at the passionate pastor in the pulpit below. I couldn’t help but snicker at his thoughts on the abomination known as Halloween.

"I don’t want to give one single day to the devil and his glory," said the man, his face burned with southern Florida sun rays, index finger quavering in the air and blazer sleeve jiggling as he pounded his fist on the Bible in front of him and denounced the entire practice of Halloween as one of the many ways our world was going to Hell in a handbasket.

What’s fascinating is that this preacher is getting very defensive when he doesn’t have to be. According to PumpkinNook.com, "The origin of Halloween dates back 2000 years ago to the Celtic celebration of the dead. A Celtic festival was held on November 1, the first day of the Celtic New Year, honoring the Samhain, the Lord of the Dead. Celtic ritual believed that the souls of the dead returned on the evening before November 1. The celebration included burning sacrifices and costumes. These early events began as both a celebration of the harvest and an honoring of dead ancestors." No one said anything about Christianity here.

To celebrate Halloween, I feel, is to celebrate diversity. It’s also to remember our history. The comfort of warding off evil spirits inspired the carving of jack-o-lanterns. Now, I can see how the pastor would be offended at all of this. This is certainly an affront to his religion and everything he has been taught. Evil spirits? Inanimate objects, instead of the spirit of Jesus Christ, bringing sanctity into the homes of people everywhere? Why are these kids out stuffing their faces with cheap candy instead of in here in the big, warm church praising their Lord?

I think it’s a sad trend today where many religious fanatics associate all that they don’t understand with the devil. It seems as if the devil is like a secret weapon they pull out from behind the podium and wave at their congregation like a talisman, saying the devil will ruin your life, sweet Christian sinner, if you don’t come to church or stay home and be bored or read the Bible on Sunday night instead of taking your kids out trick-or-treating.

While it’s great to have very set beliefs, it’s also good to know where you came from. None of us descended entirely from Christianity, but from the more pagan religions that preceeded it. Halloween, in all its commercialness, carries a primal sense about it, one that’s deeply human, and deeply repressed in so many of us.

Wearing that costume shows who you wanted to be that night, who you admire, who you hate, who you love, who you want to be, who you don’t want to be, and so much more. That costume is you.

So you could say I feel that Halloween, on a neo-spiritual level, is a way of self-actualization. And I’m sure no one is going to ditch services entirely.