Posted on 10/18/2014 12:03:30 PM PDT by lifeofgrace
In Part 1, I briefly discussed the origins of Halloween and debunked a few myths about the holiday. In Part 2, I covered how Halloween ruins kids and why you shouldn’t observe it. In this final part we’ll see how Halloween is destructive and fruitless.
3. Halloween celebrates fear, darkness, and mayhem.
Masks obscure. Costumes disguise. It’s okay for kids to pretend they are someone else, when they play. It’s even fun to dress up. But take a night when everyone is in disguise, and it’s all about secrecy. And fear. The purpose of Halloween is to scare and be scared.
The old neighborhood haunted house has now become a $6 billion industry. Attractions rivaling theme-park production values are all over the country. Scaring is big business. There’s a difference between thrills and scaring. Riding roller coasters, water slides, zip lines, or skydiving are thrills. Standing in a dark room, becoming disoriented, having hot moist air blown on your neck, seeing a bit of pyrotechnics and flash-bangs, then having someone in a creepy costume jump out at you with a bloody knife is not a thrill, it’s a scare. Once you’ve done the scare, the adrenaline rush is gone. Being scared for the sake of scariness is useless. Do you know anyone who goes through these haunted houses 20 times? How about Space Mountain, can you do that 20 times? I have, and the thrill is there every time.
Scaring my kids without teaching them to overcome fear doesn’t help them; it can actually harm them. There’s no value to experiencing fear for fear’s sake.
Halloween was not always such a tame holiday, and it rewards bad behavior and encourages hooliganism.
Do you know how trick-or-treat started? It was self defense. Back at the turn of the 20th century, Halloween was celebrated by Irish immigrants (remember, Roman Catholics), who went around in drunken mobs committing acts of vandalism and general mayhem. To combat this, merchants got together and started having festivals around the holiday. They targeted children, encouraging them toward less destructive behavior by handing out candy. And so it is today.
Halloween is a dumbed-down version of beast-night. Drunk teenagers and college students do plenty of damage. The insurance industry labels Halloween as the worst night of the year for vandalism. From simple pranks like toilet-papering your house, to serious crime like spray painting your car, Halloween is a time when crime is tolerated, and bad behavior is encouraged. Trick-or-treat is the training ground for more serious mischief as kids get older.
What’s a little mischief, you say? Let them be kids, you say. Most kids trick-or-treat and don’t pick up more serious crime. But some do. If there were a jaywalking day, I wouldn’t have my kids break the law simply because everyone was doing it. How many times have you heard “if Bobby jumped off a cliff….?” Yet it’s okay to egg Bobby’s (parents’) house or TP his yard on Halloween. Just a bit of mischief. If you want to raise a miscreant or a thug, no problem, at least you’re not a hypocrite. Everyone else? What is Halloween teaching our kids?
Fear, darkness and mayhem.
There’s one more, bonus reason why I don’t celebrate Halloween, and you shouldn’t either. Consider this a freebie: 4 reasons for the price of 3.
4. Halloween is incompatible with the Bible.
Only the Biblically illiterate would celebrate Halloween. If you call yourself a Christian, then I’ll safely assume you’re not interested in following pagan or Satanist beliefs. But you’re not celebrating those beliefs, right? You say you’re celebrating the Catholic feast day? Just so you know what that is, here’s what you’re celebrating, from Catholic Online:
Catholics celebrate All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day in the fundamental belief that there is a prayerful spiritual communion between those in the state of grace who have died and are either being purified in purgatory or are in heaven (the 'church penitent' and the 'church triumphant', respectively), and the 'church militant' who are the living. [emphasis mine]So what, it’s purgatory, you say. Purgatory is malarchy. There’s no such place. You can’t pray the dead into Heaven any more than you can pray the dead sinner out of Hell. There are only two destinations for the departed soul in the Bible: Heaven and Hell. This idea of being forgiven through Christ in this life yet not being pure enough to enter Heaven in death is unbiblical and ridiculously flawed; for it to be true either Christ’s forgiveness is incomplete (it’s not, see John 3:16), or our living bodies carry our mortal sins beyond the grave for the elect in Christ (they don’t, see Romans 7:5).
When you die, your eternal fate is cast. That’s the whole reason Christians preach repentance in Christ. If you can put off your repentance until after you die and then “do time” in Purgatory until you’ve “repented enough” then nobody would enter Hell—they’d all be in Purgatory waiting for us to pray them out. The Bible doesn’t support this, and the Bible doesn’t support Halloween. There’s no “pray for the dead and the dead will pray for you.” Pray instead for the living and leave the dead to God.
1 John 4:18 reads “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 1 John 4:8 says “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” If you celebrate Halloween, you celebrate fear. If you have fear, you don’t fully have love. And to the degree you are not full of love, you don’t know God.
The best reason for a Christian to not participate in Halloween: celebrating Halloween distances you from God and everything God is, desires, and loves. Halloween is the absolute opposite of God and His plan. The quickest way to ignorance is separation from God.
Halloween is the only day on the calendar dedicated to the ignorant. Embrace Halloween, and you are embracing ignorance of God, ignorance of everything good, everything bright, warm, illuminated, and glad in your life. You are embracing fear, darkness, death and mayhem.
I cannot, and never will, observe Halloween, and unless you’re ignorant, neither should you.
Doesn’t seem too Christian to me.
All Hallow’s Eve is most definitely christian, more Catholic/Pagan than naught as the next day is All Saint’s Day and Mass is to be celebrated. The tradition of Halloween came from the run on of All Hallow’s Eve.
To say that Halloween has no connection with Christianity is assassine and absolutely false. It’s a misnomer.
The author of this thread is more “evangelical” and preachy about what his interpretation should be than what is and has been for hundreds of years.
With that said, for the past couple of years I have gone to the bowling alley to play a couple games and drink a few mountain dews. This does not preclude me from wanting to participate its just that during those years we have had few tricksters come to the house. We won’t talk about the times a couple of parents got mad at me when I would dress up for Halloween and scare the beejeebies out of their youngins. They would toss their bags/pumpkins high into the air, spilling all of their candy on the ground and make a mad dash all the whilst screaming for their mommies or daddies who laugh initially. Their laughter turns to anger when the kids won’t stop crying. It’s all good Halloween fun!
It’s not like I take my covenant out to some grove in a dark forest and chant in front of a large black kettle over a roaring bonfire or something. I mean me with my green pointed nose with a wart, the pointy large brimmed hat and my straw broom to which sits my black cat.
Trick or treat!
Batman smells!
Give me something good to eat!
(Thank you! I'm here all week!)
We’ve never had a single trick-or-treater at our house, but it’s a rural area....I would like to be able to hand out some candy, though.
My husband lived in a busy subdivision when he was a kid. One Halloween his stepdad was the only one at home...he got swamped with trick-or-treaters. He ran out of candy, and still they kept coming. He was down to pulling Beanie Weenies out of the pantry and throwing them in the kids’ bags, and when THOSE were gone, he started handing out money. Finally he said the hell with it and went to bed. :)
When I was a kid, I remember my mother handing out money to kids after we ran out of the candy. It didn’t go over well with the kids - because their parents would steal the loot!
In my suburban house (as opposed to my NYC apt.), we only have about two or three trick or treaters. Sad.
These anti-Hallowe’en screeds always eventually get around to Catholic bashing.
It is preposterous to believe that people here on earth can pray for us, yet lose the ability to do so the instant they die.
Oh this is ridiculous. Kids in costumes hanging with family and neighbors and getting some candy.
No. The Bible is NOT against this in any way.
Yes, it is. Those little faces holding out their bags is so much fun.
I HATE holloween. And I believe Jesus hates it, too. Knowing Satan it’s probably Jesus’ real birthday.
It is preposterous to believe that people here on earth can pray for us, yet lose the ability to do so the instant they die.
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When you need the prayers of someone here on earth do you contact them or just pray to them to pray for you? With all due respect. What you posted was the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. I don’t pray to those alive because they have no ability to hear my prayer. Same holds true with the deceased
Thank you! It is s no-brainer.
We leave the garage door closed and porch light out. And it helps if we are not home. They get the idea. We haven’t had kids knock on the door yet. If they did we would be gracious and explain we don’t do Halloween.
Umm, with all due respect, I don’t pray TO the dead. I pray to God.
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Good for you, I don’t either and don’t remember accusing you of doing so. The poster’s point was that he believed he could communicate with the dead to summons their help through prayer. I find nowhere in scripture that the dead become omniscient, a glory belonging only to God. As for Halloween; I don’t get into useless debates over legalism. We always referred to it as “majoring in the minors” As Paul claims in Romans, if it doesn’t concern ones salvation, leave it alone.
Halloween is a little harmless fun. It doesn’t have to be about scary things, it can be about the Fall harvest, pumpkin patches, etc. People do like a good scare too, it’s fun and makes most of us laugh.
So All Hallows Eve is not Catholic?
Trying to figure out where you got this erroneous information.
Just one person’s blog. He doesn’t even mention his religion; he just brags about himself.
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