149 thoughts on “Happy Halloween”

    1. There’s also the “harvest festival” that just happens to coincide with the week of Halloween, where the kids dress up in different costumes and get candy. But I’m sure that’s in Acts somewhere…

  3. Ah yes – the holiday that can only be celebrated by giving out Chick Tracts – and severe guilt if you give out candy instead

    1. My wife and I have not celebrated Halloween since my daughter was born (she is three) – this is the first year that we are even handing out candy. We did the “mall trick-or-treating” this year because we’re still not comfortable with the whole door-to-door thing at night, but maybe next year 😈

      1. I live in an apartment building in a city where people seem to prefer the Halloween parade or trunk-or-treat models (held at churches, even! Godless Southern Baptist churches!) so I never get kids at my door. However will I meet my soul-winning quota?

        1. I heard a church here in the UK (LDS church) is doing the “trunk or treat”, but they call it boot loot.

  4. Human sacrifice… does that awful woman in North Dakota handing out letters saying “Your child is too FAT!” count? Few things are more tragic or enraging than quashing a child’s dreams. 😥 😡

    1. I’ll be happy to contribute a few rolls of toilet paper for any neighborhood kids that want to give the the traditional retort.

      1. NO KIDDING Phatchick! That is so terrible! Nothing like scarring a child for LIFE! That person may have just created the next group of anorexics and eating disorders! Or better yet, the kid might develop trichotillomania and internalize!

        1. The causes of eating disorders are much more complex than getting a nasty note from a b*tchy neighbor on Halloween. Researchers, in fact, now think there is even a physiological component.

          I’m not excusing what she is planning to do, but as a naturally thin woman I have spent a good portion of my life being told that my mere existence may cause someone else to get an eating disorder. It is absolutely not that simple. If it were, they could be prevented and cured much more easily.

        2. AR — I’ve had the opposite problem all my life — I was always the tallest girl in my class and was always referred to as “big boned” as a teen. As a teen, I was 5’8″ and weighed 145 and the boys called me “headlights” because by 7th grade, “the girls” were quite noticeable.

          Growing up is hard enough without people INTENTIONALLY stigmatizing kids!

    3. “At that time the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he went throughout the land of Gilead and Manasseh, including Mizpah in Gilead, and led an army against the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD. He said, “If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give to the LORD the first thing coming out of my house to greet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
      “So Jephthah led his army against the Ammonites, and the LORD gave him victory. He thoroughly defeated the Ammonites from Aroer to an area near Minnith – twenty towns – and as far away as Abel-keramim. Thus Israel subdued the Ammonites. When Jephthah returned home to Mizpah, his daughter – his only child – ran out to meet him, playing on a tambourine and dancing for joy. When he saw her, he tore his clothes in anguish. “My daughter!” he cried out. “My heart is breaking! What a tragedy that you came out to greet me. For I have made a vow to the LORD and cannot take it back.” And she said, “Father, you have made a promise to the LORD. You must do to me what you have promised, for the LORD has given you a great victory over your enemies, the Ammonites. But first let me go up and roam in the hills and weep with my friends for two months, because I will die a virgin.” “You may go,” Jephthah said. And he let her go away for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never have children. When she returned home, her father kept his vow, and she died a virgin. So it has become a custom in Israel for young Israelite women to go away for four days each year to lament the fate of Jephthah’s daughter.” (Judges 11:29-40 NLT)

  5. King Tommy allowed the deacons to even have a haunted house when his children were little (I transferred all his 35 mm slides into digital so I still have the proof); however, after his children were grown — Halloween and everything to do with it was “evil”. Well, now that the youth pastor has kids, they have a “family fun night” with acceptable costumes — nothing “evil” looking or “demonic”.

  6. Donald – Aww – Have fun! Too bad door to door trick or treating is spoiled. I love Halloween in the movie Meet Me In St Louis – that’s how it should be 🙂

  7. There is no Christian association with Halloween, so I definitely don’t have a problem with Christians who avoid it.

    1. I agree Guilt Ridden — if you don’t want to participate in Halloween because it is a very “non Christian” form of entertainment, I have no problem with that.

      If you change your stand after your kids are grown up because you didn’t want to deal with it when your kids were young, and now you want all your congregation to follow suit — BAD example, BAD PREACHER!

    2. Other things that are “non-Christian”:

      Automobiles
      Alarm clocks
      Computers
      Coffee
      The 4th of July

      If someone does not want to participate in Halloween for any reason, that is fine. In my opinion, the post speaks to the fact that some people take what really is an innocent endeavor (kids asking for candy and you giving it to them) and somehow demonize it with falsehoods. And then preach to anyone that will listen that they are a better Christian because they do not celebrate it. But then turn around and give candy to kids on the bus route.

      1. I’d like an addendum to the 4th of July which includes the non-Christianity of fireworks & guns. :mrgreen:

        (I daresay the other 30 days of July are “non-Christian,” too.) 😈

        2. I’ll consider giving assault rifles Christian status if coffee also makes the cut.

    3. There may be no Christian association with handing out candy to kids in costumes, but there’s certainly a Christian association with Halloween–it’s the evening before the Feast of All Saints. That’s what the word means, since “hallowed” means holy or consecrated, and “e’en” is a contraction of evening, giving “All Hallows Eve.” November lst is All Saints Day.

    4. Actually there is as much “Christian” about Halloween as there is Christmas. In fact Christmas has much better documented pagan roots than Halloween.

      Christian Fundamentalists have done more to promote the pagan roots of Halloween (and Christmas) than the Wiccans & NeoPagans ever could have.

      The Fundies, in their zeal to demonize all things Catholic have taken away a time to recognize the lives of Godly men and women and made it into something that seems to be wicked.

    5. You’ll have to restate that, as the Feast of All Hallows and the Eve of All Hallows are definitely long-celebrated Christian Church holidays. If by “Christian,” you mean “Biblically mandated,” I’m fine with that.

  8. I appreciate that – but how many things in this world have no Christian association – oh my beyond count!

  9. Anyone else reminded of Mermaid Man from “SpongeBob Squarepants”?

    EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL!

    In the cartoon it’s funny; here it’s just sad.

  10. My sons are going as Minecraft characters this year…something I do not comprehend (ie. Minecraft).

    1. I am with you on that one Bro. I do not get Minecraft at all. And I have been playing computer games since Pong™. My grandkids play it, they have shown me and I do not understand it. Maybe I am just getting old. 😥

      Now turn down that music you hoodlum.

        1. BG – The game is MineCRAFT. I’ll defer to Scorpio for further explanation as he is most probably my elder 😉 Plus the fact that he is obviously a video game savant (having started with Pong). I watch my kids play it and I have absolutely no idea as to what is going on.

      2. Minecraft is an amazing game because it can be anything you want it to be with all of the different mods for it. This is from an old girl gamer who also played pong. Heck my first computer loaded from cassette tapes.

        1. I think there is a Ti-99 still in the attic. I remember sitting for quite a while programming a simple loop like “I love you” for my wife to find.

    2. I was a teenager when Pong was introduced, and also play Minecraft. With my work schedule and trouble sleeping, it’s a nice way to while away the EARLY mornings. I looked at a Minecraft sword earlier in the week, but couldn’t pay almost thirty dollars for a foam 8 bit replica. I even still have my original Atari 2600 and Nintendo systems.
      My favorite game is World of Tanks, though.

      1. My boys have a small arsenal of Minecraft swords and pick-axes…want to enter a Lend-Lease agreement?

        1. We might have to. I’ll have to think of something from my end.
          My son plays Minecraft, but I don’t think he needs a sword. He operates the SAW in his infantry platoon.

    1. This is a nice illustration of the Wesleyan concept of God’s prevenient grace– given not only before you ask for it, but before you even know you want it.

  12. Halloween, even by name, has a Christian origin. Granted, with pagan roots, but no more so than Christmas or Easter. All Hallows Eve is the night before All Saints Day (Nov 1), which is the day before All Souls Day. For Liturgical Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Episcopal), these three days are greatly importabt ones on our calendar.

    1. All true, but Halloween as Americans celebrate is about as Christian as Carnival/Mardi Gras, which also originated with the Christian liturgical calendar.

      And let’s not forget that today is also Reformation Day.

      1. I don’t always nail my grievances to the door of a church in Wittenberg, but when I do, it changes the face of Christendom ~Martin Luther (one of the most interesting men in the World)

    3. I was discussing with the kids that it is not only Halloween today but also Reformation Day. They were rather unimpressed with Reformation Day, somehow candy, dressing up, and free donuts at Krispy Kreme just can’t compete.

      2. Free Krispy Kreme donuts??? That’s a nasty trick, mum2hba, considering there are no Krispy Kreme franchises near me. 😥

  14. I’m waiting for someone to post their annual Facebook message venting about all the so-called Christians dressing up and going trick or treating. Of course the pagan roots of Christmas and Easter are ignored.

    2. I’ve been seeing the “Halloween is evil ” crap all over my news feed all week from the same people who will be posting pictures of their Christmas tree in about a month.

    3. One side goes “Pagan roots :D” as if that means “Ha ha, you Christians and your holidays, LEWSERS.” The other side goes “Pagan roots D:” as if that means “Oh noez, if you DARE touch ANYthing a PAGAN may once have TOUCHED you’re bound for HELL.”

      Both sides are wrong and should shush up.

      Look. If you are Christian, and your family tree as verified by primary sources is full of Christians (by which I mean anybody who was baptized ever, not just “our particular denomination that demonizes all the others”), then there is about a 90 percent chance that none of your ancestors was Jewish. What does that mean? It means that all of your ancestors were pagan. Every last one of them.

      If the evangelists of the 1st or 5th or 15th century had no problem with my pagan ancestors making a big deal about eggs and rabbits at springtime or carving scary faces into large vegetables in the fall, why should I give a good diddly darn that long ago they were signs of devotion to deities whose names I barely know? 🙄 What, God doesn’t love me because I don’t pretend that my ancestors were Jewish?

  15. I grew up hiding in the basement with the lights off so none of the trick-or-treaters would know we were home. My husband’s family (also Fundies) grew up fully embracing Halloween with trick-or-treat (except when It fell on a Sunday or Wednesday), horror movies (on TV, no theaters), and haunted houses!

    1. I seem to recall that Halloween didn’t become a no-no among our local fundies until I was maybe 9 or 10. Before that, we dressed up at our Christian school and trick-or-treated through the neighborhood. Then in the late 80s, my mother began listening to Focus on the Family radio every day and suddenly Halloween was off limits. Our church and school followed suit very quickly and that was it for Halloween fun.

      I blame Dr. Dobson for a lot of lost fun, actually. And for making me sit through an HOUR of ritual at every Christmas Eve dinner with the Jesus Box or whatever that thing is called.

        1. I can’t, either. If I’m around anyone who positively mentions Dobson or FOTF, I have this completely involuntary reaction where I make a slight choking sound & roll my eyes.

          If the individual(s) persist in praising the guy or the organization, I start to feel really panicky & twitchy.

    2. Sitting huddled in the basement with the lights off, worried about every little sound, knowing your friends are out there, oh yeah, that must have been fun. 😛

  16. Best TREEHOUSE OF HORROR LINE, ever:

    “The doll is trying to kill me, and the toaster’s been laughin’ at me!” (Homer, while running for his life past Marge)

  17. I have never let my children go trick or treating. I had read all the fundy stuff at a younger age and didn’t want to celebrate something evil. Last week I looked at my wife and told her we had missed it. Our children had no joyful memories of candy and dressing up. Tearfully apologizing to our 13 & 9 year old we set about to buy them any costume they wanted. We love seeing the joy on their faces and cant wait for tonight. Hopefully it’s never to late to make memories

    1. Exacatacatly Nobody! It’s not what “Halloween” represents or doesn’t represent — it’s supposed to be about kids having fun! They grow up way too fast! Fundies need to quit ruining their childhood!

      😈

    2. Bless you, Nobody! I understand your desire to not participate in evil, and I appreciate your willingness to rethink whether or not our typical cultural celebration of Halloween is actually evil and to be willing to change your mind.

      My parents wouldn’t allow us to participate, but we did hand out baggies of candy with a tract included to anyone who came to the door, and my mom bought candy for us on sale afterwards, but how we longed to be able to dress up and go door to door! Now I enjoy watching my kids’ joyful participation.

      It’s supposed to be rainy and windy here tonight, but whatever the weather is where you guys are, I hope your kids have fun and make lots of good memories!

      1. Growing up in a non-Christian household, we went trick-or-treating every year. We thought people who handed out tracts instead of candy were mean & stingy. People who handed out tracts WITH candy, we thought we weird or fanatics.

        We did dress up as witches, devils, ghosts, black cats… usually home-made costume, since we couldn’t afford the store-bought ones.

    3. I think your children will respect you even more so for having seen your change in spirit about Halloween/trick-or-treating, etc. While keeping them from trick-or-treating isn’t *wrong*, you felt like you were keeping them from memories, and that in itself almost made me cry (hearing how you felt about keeping them from those memories). Anyway. I just wanted to throw that in there. Maybe they won’t appreciate your change until later, but I know seeing my parents change in front of my eyes was a positive experience.

  18. I grew up with Halloween. Although we were a fundy family, we had no problems with it. We kids regularly went trick or treating — until a child was reported hospitalized after biting into an apple with a razor blade embedded in it.

    After that, we decided to up the ante on giving out treats. I rigged a door so the screen door would look like it opened itself, and then the front door (the inside door) would open with a crash against the closet door (where I was hiding). We got a red light, put it toward a black cardboard “cauldron” behind which my sister sat in a devil costume. She sang “Oh hell is such a blast, you get those fire and brimstone baths! It’s magic!”

    She would “climb” out of the cauldron to give the candy. The little kids loved it. The older kids looked a lot more wary and suspicious. One older teen looked inside at my sister’s production and high-tailed it off the lawn!

  20. I think I dressed for Halloween when I was very young… and it would be another thirty years until I did so again.

  21. Can I just say that I LOVE candy and therefore have a really hard time eschewing a holiday that encourages taking a bucket and pillaging every house within reach for the sugary goodness? Now that I’m an “adult” it is a reason to buy candy in bulk quantities so I’m still not aginit

  22. It isn’t the Christian-nonChristian aspect that is important. It’s the fact that once a year, we’re given a bucket and get to lawfully pillage the neighborhood or, as “adults”, buy candy in large enough quantities to put Godzilla in a diabetic coma.

  23. I went to a fundy college in the 70s and early 80s and they had a haunted house on the third floor of the main classroom building and a speech kid who did a supper scary ghost story.

    1. Actually, I think it was in the 70s and I went as a kid. I grew up in the town where a fundy college was located.

  24. Halloween is against the rules at my Fundy U. 😛

    But if your costume is pop culture related and the teachers don’t get it….you can, um, hypothetically, dress up as Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory. 3:)

      2. …could make an appearance as Dwight from “the Office” and probably the Fundy U profs would think I was growing rightly!

  25. Romans 14:5 KJV

    One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.

    I grew up celebrating Halloween. My church did, too. We even had a haunted house. My mom was a witch. It was great fun. After I was an adult, preachers began preaching against it, so many of us stopped participating. My kids have never gone trick or treating. If they wanted to go, I might let then go to specific houses (people we know), but not just anywhere! We usually go to a couple of harvest festivals and their school classes each had a party today (and a bag of candy).

  26. I am going out dressed as a science book this year. My fundy family will condemn me but be afraid to lay a hand on me. It is perfect.

  27. I was reading Psalm 58 this week and thought is was a great passage for Halloween. The imagery is rather gory. Teeth being broken, fangs ripped out of lion’s mouths, slugs melting away in the sun, and the righteous dipping their feet in the blood of the wicked.

    As a family we have gone from ignoring Halloween to enjoying it. The kids are so excited, and have been looking forward to it for weeks.

  28. Our church old folks group had a party last Saturday. The announcement went, “The Joy group will be having a costume party on Saturday the 26th, but, THIS ISN’T A HALLOWEEN PARTY.”
    I asked my wife, “If it isn’t for Halloween, why not have it in June?”

    We don’t pass out candy, because in the 21 years we have lived in our house, we have never had a trick-or-treater. The first few years we bought candy, but then just had to eat it ourselves. We didn’t take the kids out because we would have had to drive somewhere else, since in our area the houses are widely spaced and the speed limit on our road isn’t conducive to walking safely. They did get to dress up and beg candy when we would visit the in-laws or be elsewhere for some reason.

  29. Just like most of the holidays, it doesn’t much matter how it started or what it originally meant. What matters is what it means now and how it is practiced. There is not a thing wrong (except for sugar being toxic) with kids dressing up and neighbors giving candy. However, if you are an adult and you go all out, then you are a loser and need to save the decorations and costumes for your LARPing habit.

    1. If you’re an adult & you go all out with costumes & decorations, you are a loser.

      Or a parent. To kids they’re probably the same thing. 😆

    2. Hold up there, Josh. Our whole neighborhood celebrates Halloween–some of us dress up, some decorate their houses, and a few do both. I’m stuck inside sick, so I’m not doing the witch with a cauldron of candy and attendant huge rats thing this year; but my husband is outside with several neighbors, handing out candy, dressed as a medieval king thanks to his SCA garb.

      We’re in the back of a large group of townhouses, so we’ll probably have four hundred or so kids, like we do every year. It’s fun, it’s harmless, and we get as much a kick out of it as the kids. No losers here.

  31. My family alternated between Halloween forbidding and Halloween allowing. We actually went to a Baptist church that, in the early days before they saw the light, sponsored a Spook Trail that ran along the creek on the backside of the property.

    I actually preferred the Years of Forbidding. We were poor, so I always had to dress up as a hobo. Everyone knew I was just wearing my usual clothes, with a little more dirt smeared on my face than usual.

      1. Do you ordinarily go as Naughty Hobo or Woebegone Hobo? (If you have a hole in the seat of your trousers it can go either way.)

  32. Happy Reformation Day everyone!

    Imagine… Calvinists and Satanists celebrating on the same night!

    Perhaps some here could convince their children to dress as Luther and ask for candy from their fundamentalist neighbours tonight. Photos of the reactions would make a great post tomorrow!

    1. I actually had a “friend” who dressed as Jon Wycliffe for her workplace’s Halloween costume party. Even back then I thought it was lame.

      1. I just think you’d have to spend way too much time trying to explain who it was you were dressing up as, much less trying to explain the significance of the date.

        However, I was discussing the idea of dressing of as a Reformer for Halloween with someone today, and they suggested that with the popularity of Duck Dynasty, you’d probably have no trouble finding a suitable costume beard.

        1. Yes, she did have to keep explaining it. But then, she wanted to. “Light hearted fun” is really not in the lexicon of many Calvinists (speaking as a former five-pointer)

          True that, on the beard!

        2. When my two sons were little, I dressed them as saints (for Eve of All Saints Day….get it?). Yeah, I was a Catholic Nerd. The kids didn’t seem to mind. All they cared about was getting the candy.

          One of the kids would usually go as Francis of Assisi, because sewing-challenged mom could easily make that costume out of brown felt and a rope. And the people on the Trick-or-Treat route usually recognized that it was Francis of Assisi — even here in the Bible Belt, Francis is pretty well known. But the other costume was usually a challenge. One time I dressed the younger kid up as Saint Bernard of Clairveaux. I did a pretty good job, I must say, using a hooded altar-boy robe from church plus a length of black felt. But of course no one had a clue who he was supposed to be. So, I finally just said, “A monk.”

          When the kids got a little older, they had their own ideas for costumes, so they went trick-or-treating as pirates and ’80s-vintage rock stars and stuff like that. I guess I’d loosened up by them…wasn’t trying quite so hard to do the Catholic Homeschooling Shtick.

  33. Totally unrelated question, but my wife and I were having this debate today about PCC where we met. She said it was against the rules to play Christmas music in the dorm prior to Thanksgiving. I said I couldn’t remember that rule? Anyone?

    2. Yep. Current student.

      Also, Michael Buble is unapproved music, except for his Christmas CD (which is wilder than his usual cd’s #thingsthatdontmakesense), and it may only be played between the (faux) Thanksgiving “break” and Christmas. 😛

  34. This is the night that, after the kids were a little older, we would exercise what morphed into our Halloween tradition. We would watch the Charlie Brown Halloween special, followed by Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.
    Now that it’s just the two of us. I’m not sure if the Mrs. wants to sit through them with just me.

    1. For the last 30 years, without fail, after all the excitement is over, my husband and I sit down and watch the Great Pumpkin. It never disappoints! If you grew up with cranky fundies and never got to see it–do make a point of it! A classic.

  36. We do not celebrate Helloween. Every advertisement, flyer, decoration, or yard blow up seems to revolve around death, witches, blood, and demons. The “Jester Circus” blow up at Lowes Home Improvement was ridiculously evil looking. Why would I as a Christian–not even a fundamentalist for that matter–want to celebrate that? I don’t do reformation day either especially since ML didn’t actually nail anything to the door of the church despite what “Trail of Blood” may or may not say about it. I think the great issue here is how the church has compromised on clear issues of right and wrong because it appeals to our very modern sense of “fun.” There is, IMHO, no room for anything related to the occult in the Christian life. So, yes, that does mean that your Indian windcatcher hanging from your mirror must go to.

    1. Good one! 🙂 “Every advertisement, flyer, decoration, or yard blow up seems to revolve around death, witches, blood, and demons.” Sounds a lot like the Bible.

    3. “So, yes, that does mean that your Indian windcatcher hanging from your mirror must go to.”

      Dear Mr. RockGroup,
      They’re called Native American Dreamcatchers. And I tend to agree with Darrell on the Poe business.
      Sincerely,
      BJG

    4. I’m not sure this is Poe. To tell the truth, I can see where this guy is coming from.

      Irish immigrants (my ancestors on one side of the family :D) brought our current Halloween customs to America. In Celtic tradition, the Eve of All Saints Day is when you chase away, mock, and deride the evil spirits. You’re not celebrating them; you’re mocking them and celebrating Christ’s (and hence our) victory over them. As Saint Thomas More said, the devil cannot bear to be mocked. But we have the victory in Jesus, so we mock him. Think of it that way. 🙂

      Moreover, as you may have noticed, most of the younger kids (and Halloween is really all about the younger kids) dress in perfectly innocuous costumes — as bumble bees, Batman, Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, and so on. It’s adorable! And dress-up is a blast — a permissible non-evil blast.

      When I was a kid, in an Irish working-class borough of Boston, Halloween trick-or-treating was completely magical. There was nothing scary or evil about it, even when I wore the classic white-sheet-with-holes-cut-out to portray a ghost. 🙂

      But here’s where I can see where you are coming from, BSWACRG: I think that, in recent years, Halloween has become creepier. I am not saying that I mind the way people really go to town decorating their houses. A lot of the decorations are really creative and imaginative, and I get a huge kick out of them. But sometimes I think the creepiness goes over the top. Sometimes I think it’s excessive and perhaps a tad too scary for little kids.

      Case in point: Some years ago, I had a colleague, kind of a ditzy New Agey type, who had a sweet little toddler daughter. One Halloween, this mom took little toddler daughter trick-or-treating and made a point of taking her to a particular house that had been rigged up with spooky music and moving ghouls and zombies and all sorts of scary effects. When the candy-bearing homeowner emerged, all decked out in some ghoulish costume and pretending to be scary and threatening, the little toddler girl was so terrified she literally climbed up her mother’s leg, begging for protection.

      When it has effects like that, I think the current Halloween craze goes too far. It was one thing when it was part of pre-All Saints Day Irish Catholic culture — the context was the mocking and expulsion of the Bad Guys right before we celebrate the Good Guys. But, in our secular society, in some quarters at least, it really has become a glorification of evil.

      Nonetheless, I still think trick-or-treating can be innocent fun — as long as you steer clear of those houses that go way over the top. You don’t want to traumatize your toddler!

      It’s all in the way you approach and handle it, IOW. Let it be about dress-up and free candy…and the banishment of the banshees!

  37. That’s a funny Bible you read. In that the Bible addresses those subjects, it appears that it condemns those actions. Sending children out to celebrate those things, may be akin to rolling them down the arms of Moloch. You tell me.

    1. Yes, the arms of Moloch. You’re probably right. At any rate, steer clear of Lowes’ Jester Circus. If that’s not a gateway to Satan worship I don’t know what is. 😯

    2. Isn’t “Rolling Them Down the Arms of Molloch” a rock group? I love their song “Keep on Rocking Me, Beelzebub”.

  38. What’s Poe? Sounds like an epithet. I can promise you–no Poe here whatever it is.

  41. We just had an awesome time at the annual downtown trick-or-treat! Local businesses and non-profits sponsor this event, not because they are afraid of what might happen to kids if they (gasp shock) trick or treated at straaaange hooooouses–we had a bear in town one Halloween and ToT wasn’t cancelled!–but because after dark here it’s fricking cold at the end of October and little kids don’t want to go out. So from 3:30 to 5:30, you look for the Halloween sign in the window and people basically stop doing any business and pass out candy instead. There are multiple haunted offices, awesome window displays, and costumes on everybody from the grown-ups to the babies to the dogs.

    But this year I saw some guy dressed in a black cassock with a white surplice, holding a prayer book. I’d never seen him before, so I thought maybe it was a costume. Except–the look on his face . . . ❓

    1. The town next to ours does a downtown Halloween, too. On at least one occasion, when the kids were little, we did both the downtown Halloween and the usual ToT at a nearby subdivision. (After our first ToT year, we discovered that it’s a lot easier and, er, more productive if you find a subdivision where the yards are only a quarter of an acre or less. We live in the country, but we found the perfect subdivision the second year, and our legs were a whole lot less tired by the end of the evening. But I digress….)

      We really enjoyed the downtown ToT, but I think the kids preferred the subdivision one. At the downtown one, though, we were given a tract explaining that Halloween is evil because it’s “the eve of All Souls’ Day.” Um, Chronology Fail. But the tract was a hoot — it was my favorite part of the experience. 😆

  42. Our fundy-lite church alternated – started off allowing/giving the little kids a “safe party” then as a young married, the pastor preached an anti-Halloween sermon. Problem was, I had invited his sister- and brother-in-law over for coffee and cake after church. The cake was a markdown Halloween cake from the day old bakery. We decided that fell under “meat sacrificed to idols.”

  43. One more short story – we went to a “nondenominational” Bible church plant for a short time. The pastor was OK with dancing and I think probably moderate drinking but had a real bug about Halloween. To the point that his kids were taking piano lessons at the time – if you or your kids have taken piano lessons in the last 30 years, there is always a “spooky” sounding song that the beginners can play after about six lessons. His kids were demonstrating their piano skills to me and just wigging out about their piano book having a Halloween song and picture in it. Their mother was going to glue a piece of paper over it or something.

  44. Okay… so I feel stupid asking this,but tell me Landover Baptist is a satire site? Pastor Deacon Fred? It can’t be serious?

    1. Yes, Kimberly, Landover is satire. And yes, it has fooled many, many people. The site used to have a forum with a bunch of trolls who kept up a whole posting community “in character”.

      When I was immature and in college I thought it was pretty funny and hung around there a whole lot. In retrospect, it was too much laughing AT people, either the people being satired or the people reacting to the satire and not realizing it was satire. I was young and thought I was smarter than everyone and that gave me the right to laugh at them. Life has taught me a whole lot since then.

  45. I always went out trick-or-treating when I was growing up, and other than the fact that the custom contributes to bad teeth and diabetes, I have no problem with it. That having been said, however: Earlier in my pastoral career I used to get a bit annoyed with well-meaning fundies and evangelicals in town who claimed that Hallowe’en had pagan roots, that parents should keep their kids away from it and that churches should instead host “alternative” Hallowe’en events. In latter years, I’ve come around to thinking that might not be a bad idea. I’m concerned about our current youth culture’s obsession with vampires and zombies. I know a teenaged boy whose girlfriend is a self-professed Wiccan (as is her mother), and who has some really bizarre beliefs and practices that I think are genuinely dangerous both to other people and to the peril of her own soul. I don’t understand this recent predilection toward evil and death, and I certainly don’t think it’s healthy. If Hallowe’en is contributing to it (and vice versa), maybe Christians are right in saying, “No, we don’t think we want any part of this.”

    Just sayin’ . . . I haven’t made up my mind on the subject.

    1. Very similar views here; I didn’t grow up in a Christian home; we went trick-or-treating dressed as witches, ghosts, devils, etc.

      I know that Christmas and Easter have pagan aspects to them, but I do celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas day, and His resurrection on Easter.

      Halloween is supposedly a contraction of “All Hallows’ Eve” and is the evening before All Saints Day, or the Day the Dead.

      Even before I became a Christian, this night was supposed to be a night when evil was its strongest. For me, all my memories of this night are pagan and anti-Christian, so I skip it.

      Someone above mentioned the 4th of July; it’s not a Christian holiday, but a patriotic one; it has no un-Christian associations with it (that I’m aware of).

      2. LOL!! I totally didn’t think about it that way!

        I was just noting how the trend for young adult women is towards “slutty” everything. I miss being a kid and having a costume just be a costume.

  47. Celebrating Halloween makes you a pagan in the same way that celebrating Christmas makes you a Christian.

    1. Just not the Circus Peanuts. 😡 Or the raisins. 👿 Definitely not those weird orange and black wrapped things.

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