I love to take walks this time of year. We go to our local park, pick one of it's many walking trails, enjoy the beauty of the trees, the spicy smell of the woods and pick up acorns along our way.
It would seem that there could be nothing to mar such a beautiful season. However, in my humble estimation, there is just one thing that does. Just one day. I refuse to call it a holiday because there is nothing holy about it. It does not glorify God or honor Him for His handiwork. It is in fact extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find anything redeemable about this day. If you haven't surmised what day I'm speaking of let me just say, it is halloween.
I do not like this day. I loath to see small children dressed up like axe murders, Dracula with fake blood dripping from the corners of their mouths and ghoulish, ugly creatures. Yes, I know, not all children dress this way but all the same there are enough who do.
In our small town the local elementary schools make a BIG deal out of this day. There are activities and lessons in the morning centered around the themes of halloween. There is a parade in which all the children walk through the downtown area with parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles watching and cheering. And then to top it off they return to their classrooms for candy, cupcakes and juice boxes. Oh, and the children wear their costumes all day at school.
That is just in the schools.
Then there is the house decorating. One home in particular in our town is an advertisement for every yard decoration that's been thought of. The home itself is a beautiful white, two-story home with a wrap around porch, surrounded by lovely grassy lawns and a graceful curving gravel driveway. On Halloween it is turned into a mock graveyard complete with skeletons rising from the earth. From one of it's tall stately trees hangs a life size manikin in a noose. In two of it's large windows, well lit from behind, stand manikins of a vampire and some other scary guy. Greeting trick-or-treaters at the door is a tunnel with the grim reaper at the end. There are other blow up things on and around the house as well. In fact there is so much stuff I couldn't possibly hope to give you full inventory even if I wanted to. In short, its disgusting.
With all the "everyday"evil in the world, you know like, terrorism, murder, abortion, molestations, etc., why do people want to celebrate it? And don't tell me it's "just a fun" day. There may be "innocent" fun aspects of it but it's roots are not. If you talk to law enforcement, firemen and emergency room workers there is very little that's fun about it.
So how does a Christian deal with this day? How have I and my family chosen to deal with this day? Well, we try to be lights. We don't decorate for it but we do pass out candy with some sort of Christian tract or sticker. We try to take opportunities to talk to people about the Light of the world, Jesus. We try to shine as brightly as we can...and on this dark day that is getting darker the light of Jesus is all the brighter.
Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life." ~John 8:12
4 comments:
You know I so echo your sentiments. I have a lot of regrets when I look at some of my decisions as a parent. As I have grown in my faith and grown closer to Christ I began to feel very disturbed by the whole concept of Halloween. However by that time we had already let both my children participate in Halloween.
In hindsight I wish we had never begun allowing our children to participate, but it was hard to back track once they began looking forward to trick or treating.
I would do my best to try to keep it as positive as possible and there were many Halloweens that we actually spent at the celebrations that our church would hold. But with each year it would increasingly disturb my spirit to see all the sweet children dressed up like the devil or something evil or dark.
I am so thankful that all that appears to be behind us. This year my daughter is thirteen and she chose not to participate in the trick or treating this year. We spent the night together as a family with dinner out followed by a movie.
It truly was a wonderful family time and we by passed all the “celebrating” and pulled in our driveway well after all the trick or treaters had retuned home.
I am glad it is behind us at least for another year.
Blessings
Robin
Cyndy, I'm so glad someone has spoken out in blogland against halloween. Thank you.
love, Tina :)
our dd didn't participate in the normal halloween stuff...she was at a school function.
She did go to a halloween carnival to raise money for two orphaned children in a mexican town one of our youth travels to during the summer on mission...they raised over $100 for them, so that was GOOD! and they were lights!!!
thanks for your post!
Well done. I so agree with you. Our church in UK used to hold a party for children on that night, to try to wean them away from the horrors of the trick/treat/dressup as ghosts thing.
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