Kill joy!
Please tell us, DouglasKC! Otherwise we'll never know!
I remembered this time... :-)
My pastor said it very simply, If it doesn't glorify God, who does it glorify?
Sorry, don’t buy it! Also, since my son doesn’t like chocolate, this is the biggest freebie I get all year!
::eye roll::
Yep...
My soul is DOOMED!!!
No. I didn’t raise my kid to believe in Santa Clause, either.
I think Halloween is an objectively good thing. It must be good when an anti-holiday devoted to the forces of darkness is turned to joy, fun, camaraderie, neighborliness, capitalism, and the other aspects of the Light.
The Devil hates happiness, and here we have brought happiness to millions through this celebration. The Devil also hates to be laughed at, and in Halloween we laugh at him and all of his dark devices.
There is a vein of Calvinism that runs through many Protestant churches. I do not embrace it. While always remaining mindful that Satan is real and Satan’s demons can attack, I prefer to celebrate and take joy with the children.
I guess your detractors would call the apostle Paul a kill joy too since he said we couldn’t sit at the table of God and at the same time the table of demons at 1 Cor. 10:2.
Certainly Halloween has no place in the life of a Christian.
“What should you believe if you’re a professing Christian? “
That it is just harmless fun. Our youth group is trick-or-treating for canned food for the Interfaith Food Pantry
Ebeneezer Scrooge....not just for Christmas anymore.
I don’t see this as having anything to do with what one believes as a Christian. Even if one were non-Christian, it’s very appropriate for parents to ojectively examine whether immersing their children in ghoulish, “blood scenes, and icons of death and mayhem is appropriate.
Last week I went to pick up some balloons at the local party store. Since it is close to Halloween, of course the entire store was decked out in gross stuff, with tapes of screams etc. blaring.
I noticed a couple of things. The worst was that several cars pulled up and out jumped some young couples with toddlers. The closer they got to the store, the more their children started resisting, then outright crying, then dragging their feet. I heard one mom yelling at her 4 or 5 year old daughter, “Don’t be such a baby, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Well, no. I don’t see any reason to expose a child at that age to something they do not have the ability to understand and, more importantly, don’t WANT to be exposed to.
Same thing with parents exposing their children to scary movies.
What is the point of that? Why drag a child, crying and shaking in fear, through a gauntlet of blaring, gross, stylized “Death, Destruction and Mayhem”? WHY?
I simply don’t see how anyone finds such subjects entertaining or fun. That said, do what you want when you are old enough to not worry about monsters under the bed. In the meantime, I think it’s quite sick to expose-—never mind force kids to expose themselves to-—what to them are frightening images of death and pain that have no redeeming (fun or entertaining) value to them at all.
You should go ahead and celebrate.
Does Halloween have certain pagan roots? Yes. And so do all our holidays. Where do you think Christmas Trees and Easter Eggs come from? They were pagan symbols used in their holidays that were near these Christian holidays and got subjugated. When people adopted Christianity they still had a fondness for their old holiday customs, so they changed their reasoning and they became part of the Christian holidays. Really all the Christian holidays are ex-pagan holidays, but that’s OK because to a certain degree all Christians are ex-pagans too, eventually somebody in your genealogy wasn’t a Christian.
A losing proposition. It is better to educate your children to the fact that Halloween is fantasy, for fun (Yes, sometimes it IS fun to be a little scared, look at the popularity of roller coasters). Some of the local towns are eliminating the trick or treating by holding little parades with costume contests or block party type gatherings.
Vandals without an excuse will vandalize anyway; punish them appropriately.
There is nothing that is harmless.
Nothing earthly at least.
Everything has a potential for harm.
For most people Halloween is a harmless celebration for creative output and for children to have fun. But of course there other aspects to it as well.
I definetaly respect why the question is being asked in respect to Christianity though. It is good to contemplate in that respect. If the practise of Halloween is going against a person’s spiritual pledge to God then it is obviously causes harm.
What should you believe if you’re a professing Christian?
I believe you’re too cheap to buy some candy, and you hate little kids.
When my little brother and me were kids, we and about a thousand other kids would go from door to door in the war housing, get our grocery bags full, run home to get another and go out again. we never, ever heard or even thought about vandalism. Trick or treating is fun, harmless and I loved it. Now of course, it’s all psychoanlized and politically disected, including some church killjoy politics to the point of nausea, and of course, the kids might be poisoned, which has never been documented, just hyped.
Boo hiss curmudgeon party poopers.