Halloween

I had an unexpected revelation the other day in Tesco.  We came upon the Halloween aisle and you know what?  For the first time in my life I didn’t care!!

I’ve been a Christian my whole life pretty much and every year at this time I’ve found the Halloween displays troubling. I was never one of those Christians that sees the demonic everywhere – the Christian equivalent of the ‘reds-under-the-beds’ paranoia of the 50’s and 60’s!  But I did find it upsetting to see it.  It used to bother me that so many American Christians would participate in trick-or-treating; dressing up as ghosts and ghouls, witches and wizards and skeletons and devils.  "Didn't they know how evil it all was?" I thought.  I’ve never allowed my children to participate in Halloween parties or dress up.  (I still vehemently object to trick-or-treating but that’s because it’s simply another invasion of American culture into Britain and while I love the USA I’d quite like to keep our society and culture British! However I’d be just as upset if Americans in small villages started doing Morris dancing just because they saw us Brits doing it).

However the finished work of the cross, the message of the superb and complete victory of Christ, the understanding of the delight the Father takes in his creation and the union we have through Jesus has obviously changed my thinking more radically than I thought.

I guess I now think that dressing up for Halloween and enjoying a party with a ‘scary’ theme is no different to watching a scary movie or Doctor Who!  It makes the participants no more likely to become involved in the occult or have any influence over them than dressing up as a Priest or a Nun for a ‘tarts & vicars’ party would make you suddenly decide the religious life in a convent or monastery was for you!  The activities and trapping of Halloween are silly not demonic!  The American Christians that participate in it have a much healthier attitude to Halloween than most evangelical/charismatic Christians in the UK - they treat it as a silly bit of family fun!

The enemy was soundly defeated Colossians 2:15 tells us this “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

So let’s stop focusing on the enemy, stop focusing on the fear, stop obsessing about the outward appearance and most of all stop judging.  Let’s look to Christ and his glorious triumph and give the enemy exactly the amount of attention he deserves – none at all.