what do we do with Halloween?

There is a blog posted on sharperiron.org about the topic of “what do we as Christians do with Halloween?” If you have time, go read the blog and the 20 or so responses (comments) posted about this topic. This topic is obviously one with many different opinions. This is one of those areas where many people will agree to disagree. (If you like this article by Cindy Swanson, check out her blog called "Notes in the Key of Life")

In the meantime, here are my thoughts on the matter:
Halloween used to be for kids
When I was a kid, Halloween was basically “trick or treating” for children. Now, in our society we are faced with adults who still want to act like children. From dressing up at work, to costume parties, to the occult and witches, this is not just a “harmless” day any longer. Even when my kids were young, I would take them to a few homes for “trick or treats”, but we would not allow them to dress up in an evil way. Usually they dressed as Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. We tried to keep this as a fun time for them as kids with nothing evil or scary to worry about, and we always went with them. But more and more today, the focus of this day is on the occult, witches, etc., and we as Christians do not want to focus on evil. Our church is having a “Journey through Bible times” on Saturday night, and the children are dressing up as a favorite Bible character. This is a good alternative to going door to door.

Back in the day, when I was growing up, we used to go “trick or treating,” The unspoken rule back then was that you could go out “begging” for candy only until you turned 12 years old, or went to junior high. Usually, we would go with a bunch of friends in the neighborhood, and living in a small town of 2,000 people, we could almost cover the entire town walking door to door in a few hours. Almost, not quite. But we were only going for the treats. We did not even think about “tricks”. Of course, if someone would not give you a treat, then you were supposed to be able to play a trick on them. Now that is not a very good thing for kids to do, so we just emphasized the “treat” part of it, and everything worked out just fine. Except, one Halloween in particular. One year we went to a street “off the beaten path”, as we were older and braver that year. When we knocked on the front door, we heard a lady inside yell to her husband something like, “George! Go get your gun!” We looked at each other and shook our heads, “Nah! she’s got to be kidding” (surely!.) We knocked one more time and again heard the lady inside, this time a little louder, “George! Hurry up and go get your gun!” This time, we looked at each other and decided maybe we should leave this house and try another one. As we turned to walk away, “George” an old, old "codger," came from behind the house with a water hose and sprayed us really good!! We ran as fast as we could! We even warned as many others as we could not to go to that house!

I guess I can see why adults like to celebrate this day, as it was one of the fun times in your life, and you could eat all that candy! (Like Garfield the cat would say, “Candy! Candy! Candy!!”) Just do what I do, buy extra bags of candy, your favorite kind, and then when no one comes to your door, you have an excuse to eat it! And you don’t even have to count out the number of pieces!! (Shh! Don’t tell my wife!)