“First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.” C.S. Lewis
So here’s the thing with Halloween and me. I hate it. I haven’t always felt this way. There was a time when I dressed up as a kid to go trick or treating. I don’t recall all the costumes I wore except for two - the year mom made my sister and me matching pilgrim costumes (gosh, were we cute. Let me take a moment........OK.) and the year I was Jon Tetzel - seller of indulgences extraordinaire!!! The latter one due to having been in a Reformation play earlier that day. The pay off of the night was the candy. For sure the candy. And maybe staying out later than usual.
Now I’m the mom. For Will’s first Halloween I dressed him up as an adorable pumpkin, took him to a pumpkin patch, threw him in and quickly snapped as many pictures as I could get away with. For his second Halloween, he was Tigger. He wore his little costume to the playgroup we attended and he and the other little 2 year olds screamed as we mom’s attempted to line them up on the couch to take a picture of what turned into Scream 4. (Is there a Scream 4 yet? I wouldn’t know.) By the time his third one rolled around, we had moved to Canada and were settling into our life as the pastor’s family. He wore a fuzzy dog costume - practical for a potentially chilly October night- but he never saw the dark of night anyway. It was this year in particular I can pin point the hesitation I had with the holiday. I didn’t dwell on it too much though and just had him help hand out candy to the trick or treaters who came to our door. He never put it together that he wasn’t going around collecting candy. And so went year four and possibly five. I’m thinking that at 5 Wayne may have taken him to a few neighbour’s homes but nothing big. We had the advantage of not having the peer pressure from school being a major influence on him begging to go out and making a bigger deal of it than we were willing to make. Meanwhile, my conversations with Wayne about my uncomfortableness with it all revealed that it was shared by him also. Together we struggled to find a balance between not over-reacting about something that no one else around us seemed to be bothered by and reconciling the holiday with what we knew God’s Word says.
Zanna joined our family and at that point we dressed up both kids - the unspoken rule being nothing evil- and Wayne took them out while I handed out candy, along with a Christian tract on how the goopy inside of a pumpkin is like the sin inside of each of us and how Christ has made us a nice, smiling pumpkin. I figured if people are coming to my door I might as well take advantage of the opportunity for a little witnessing. And while I was at it, we invited their kids to our Christmas for Kids program. Last year, we took a bit different take and moved out of the house. Not literally. We just set up camp at the end of the driveway and served hot chocolate to our neighbours we only see this one time of year. Offering them a warm drink and a friendly greeting solicited a great response from these seldom seem inhabitants of a community we share. Despite these attempts to make the most of this seemingly lost cause of a holiday, the question still nags me and makes me downright angry. Am I settling? Is this the best way to glorify God? Are we in the world and not of the world? Where does this fit into Philippians 4:8 Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.
If Halloween were solely about the cute costumes and hordes of teeth rotting candy, I’d be totally OK with it. Bring on the cavities! But the fact of the matter is that there’s more than that. The very essence of the holiday stems from satanic, evil roots. I can’t ignore that. Futhermore, it continues to be a presence in the celebration of the day. When I consider that my uneasiness didn’t start until we moved here, I consider that maybe the way I perceive it to be celebrated here is darker than other places I’ve lived? Maybe I’ve become more sensitive? I see nothing fun or amusing by dressing up a precious child into a satan costume complete with horns. What’s funny about satan? He’s real you know. And if he can make people think that he’s one funny joke and not to be taken seriously - gotcha! That’s exactly what he wants. And what’s so cute about witches? Hello! They work with satan, and for satan. In a recent email sent to me by Vision Ministries, I read the following with a big AMEN!
Instead of hating evil, Americans toy with it. We toy with holidays like Halloween that were conceived in evil and that promote the “cute-ification” of evil, whether that evil takes the form of witchcraft, sorcery, ghoulishness, or some other form of malevolent imagery paraded before our children. We laugh at the very things that the Lord describes as “abominations,” and we find ourselves obsessively fascinated by, and attracted to, all things dark.
Yet we do not fear the Lord.
Knowing that I’ve struggled with this, my Mom passed on a recent webisode of a very well done, evangelical chat on a Word for Women concerning the Christian celebrating Halloween. I agree with what she says. But I still struggle. We want to reflect Christ’s light in our life and sometimes that’s going to stand out as different and weird to those around us. We want our kids to express their Christian freedom and feel free to participate in the costume/candy part of it if we feel that it can be separated from the evil part. And that’s the big question. Can it? Christians will arrive at different answers and there’s a lot of grey area. It would be too easy to just go along with what everyone else considers “normal”. So if we’re not “normal”, what’s our alternative that can glorify God?
I don’t know what the answer is and I wish I felt some peace about it so we could just move on. But I believe God wants us to struggle with these issues. He wants us to question things in the light of eternity. He tells us to test everything. He challenges us to have discussions on the traditions of the culture we live in and hold them up to truth. If we don’t, then we’re playing with apathy. We don’t have to be fearful of anything because His perfect love drives out fear. But often times, when we’re bold enough to make our own way and create new, intentional traditions that seek to glorify and honour God, he blesses us with memory making, hearts bonded experiences that far outweighs the empty, shallow traditions of the world (santa Achoo!). So for this year, I could pray for torrential rain or maybe a debilitating snow storm to take care of the problem at least until next year, but I think I’ll keep praying for some wisdom on this matter and some peace in knowing that however we choose to let our light shine, his light lives in us by faith. Our pumpkin face is a happy one!
