Is All Saints Day Biblical & Should Believers Celebrate it?

Some try to defend Halloween by claiming that it is distinct from All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day, arguing that the latter are purely Christian observances with no connection to paganism. But there's more to the story, and here's what you need to know.

Most already know that All Saints Day isn't found anywhere in Scripture and that God never told His people to set apart a day to honor the so-called righteous dead. Instead, the biblical feasts are about God Himself: what He’s done, what He’s promised, and what’s still to come. They’re about honoring Him for His works and His faithfulness, not setting apart days to honor the deeds of men.

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches venerate saints, a practice that contradicts Scripture. Some Protestant denominations also observe All Saints Day, though they don't all practice saint veneration or pray to the saints in the same way. But either way, it blurs the line between honor and idolatry and adds man-made practices God never commanded.

Certain denominations defend All Saints Day by pointing to earlier traditions in which various churches remembered martyrs before the observance was moved to November first. But those early practices were rooted in the same Catholic ideology: churches creating their own religious observances apart from Scripture. Just because a practice existed earlier doesn't make it biblical. Whether it began centuries before the date shift or later aligned with Samhain, the practice itself was never commanded by God or part of the faith delivered to the saints in Scripture. It was man-made from the start.

Whether it was called All Hallows Eve or something else, setting apart a night to honor the dead, righteous or not, is not biblical. Doing it with prayer and fasting doesn't change that fact. 

Although the day is celebrated by various Christian traditions, the Catholic Church designates it as a Holy Day of Obligation. Catholics attend Mass to honor all saints, known and unknown, and may pray in their memory. More than just honoring them, however, they actually pray to the saints, asking them to intercede with God on their behalf. On the following day, All Souls Day, they pray for the dead believed to be in purgatory, not for saints who are already in heaven. 

Scripture clearly condemns communicating with the dead in Deuteronomy 18:10-11, listing it alongside child sacrifice, sorcery, and other abominations. It says, “There shall not be found with you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who tells fortunes, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or someone who consults with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer.” The Hebrew term translated as “necromancer” refers to someone who seeks to consult or inquire of the dead. Rather than seeking spiritual intercession from the dead, Yeshua taught us to pray directly to the Father in His name in John 16:23 and Matthew 6:9, never instructing us to pray to saints, angels, or anyone else. 

Scripture doesn't permit us to invent our own holy days. Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 warn against adding to or taking away from what God commanded. Proverbs 30:5–6 says, regarding God's flawless words, “Don’t add to his words, lest he reprove you, and you be found a liar.” Making the day an obligation is doing exactly that, adding to...

A few verses earlier in Deuteronomy 12:29-31 it goes even further, explicitly warning against adopting the religious practices of pagan nations to worship Yahweh: “When Yahweh your God cuts off the nations from before you... be careful that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you, and that you not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods? I will do likewise.’ You shall not do so to Yahweh your God; for every abomination to Yahweh, which he hates, they have done to their gods; for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.”

So after reading all that we have to understand that we can't simply invent our own ways to worship God or copy pagan practices.

And for anyone who says the church isn't copying pagans in this regard, pagans were doing this thousands of years before the church ever existed. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, among others, had religious practices involving the dead, including ancestor veneration and communication with the deceased. The church adopted similar practices, following the same pattern of religious syncretism seen throughout its history.

Instead of creating holy days to honor saints, true worship keeps the focus where it belongs. Inventing religious observances shifts the glory from the Creator to the created.

Just because a holiday is extra-biblical doesn't make it automatically wrong. I don't have a problem with days like Purim, Hanukkah, Independence Day, or Memorial Day. The issue isn't that they aren't in Scripture, but what we do with them. If they remain cultural or commemorative without becoming spiritual or religious observances or obligations, that's one thing. But once we turn man-made traditions into Holy Days of Obligation or acts of worship, that's when they cross the line Scripture warns against.

At the end of the day, praying to and for the dead and setting apart days for saints isn't honoring God in any way, it's replacing His clear commands with man-made idolatry.