Halloween

What will I do at Halloween? My next-door neighbors (an unsaved couple) have set up a display in their front yard that looks like a graveyard. The other day when they were setting it up I went outside and conversed with the lady. She told me that last year she had 350 children come to her door. What an opportunity! I am having friends over, we are going to dress up, meet kids at the door, and give out candy and gospel tracts.

 

The date has been Christianized like Christmas and Easter, because Halloween means the eve of All Saints Day (All Hallows Eve!) There is little difference between Christmas or Easter--it is only that as baptists we don't celebrate All Saints (though I'm preaching on the first and am intending on tieing it in).

I will be celebrating the day by being too busy to observe anything.

 

Post-it:

We did celebrate Guy Fawkes Day though, November 5th

Cheers,

Jim

 

Halloween is an evil day for some people I'm sure.

But it need not be an evil day for you, or for any Christian.

Send your kids out around the block dressed as a cowboy or a princess and collect some candies? Nothing wrong with that. Nothing that dental hygiene can't accomodate.

As long as you make Halloween simply what I've described above, then it's no longer evil despite whatever 'roots' it may have had. Does something have evil roots? Then go and give it new 'roots'. As long as the activity itself is not something morally wrong the argument about 'evil roots' is weak. It's not roots you have to worry about - it's what something is in present reality.

For example, a Christmas tree has pagan roots, evil roots - that appears to be true. But in every house where I've ever seen one, it's reduced to nothing more than an ornament.

The idea here is that if a thing is benign but it's roots are bad, then change the roots in the present! Apply different roots to it right now!

I belive this captures the essence of Paul's 'meat sacrificed to idols argument'. If something is not evil in itself, for example like eating meat or candy, but it has recognized evil roots, ie it was once used sacrificially or is even still used presently by some as part of pagen festival, then you can change that application or those roots by not applying any other context to the meat or tree or candy.

A Christmas tree is merely a tree. Candy is merely a treat. And meat is merely food. If you can accept it in this light, then you are exorcising whatever 'roots' someone else might attempt to apply or has applied in the past.

 

Baptist Vine:

Yes, true. Martin Luther took the pagan tree and called it a Christmas tree,,,the tree of life.

There are some things, however, like a weed, that must be totally extracted and destroyed.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Frankly, I wish someone would pass a law just to get rid of it. The School District my kids are in are talking like this will be the last year for any kind of "Halloween" celebration. I am glad for a lot of reasons. I don't think I can actually say that I am against it or think people are doing evil around me anymore then they do every other day of the year. But it is an annoying day and it freaks people out so why don't we just toss it!
Love in Christ Angie

 

We tried this last year, and no one came to our house. We saw this as possitive, there weren't many kids out celebrating halloween.

Our church used to have a fall festival with ganes and everything, now we have safe trick or treating in the hall, kids knock on the doors and people open up and give them candy, we have a cake walk, and a chili supper, and afterwards the gospel presentation, we have over 200, not bad in a small town of 3,000, and 65% seniors. Over the years we have had unchurched(many were christians not attending, soem becasue tey were new and didn't know where to go) people come and join our church becasue they came to the fall festival and saw that people really cared that their children were safe.

 

Heres one for the animal lovers. The national media in Britain has reported today that those involved in WITCHCRAFT (the media has no problem in recognising its existence) have been attacking horses in relation to their HALLOWEEN rituals. I understand it had something to do with the need for blood sacrifices.
Any comments any one?
yours, Jon

 

All I can say is that I've never met a witch or any other pagan who did blood sacrifices.

 

I thought the concensus was that wiccans and druids worshipped gods that weren't real.

So what's the difference between dressing up as a witch (an I don't mean dressing up as my ex wife) and dressing up as an Egyption temple dude from the Ten Commandments?

 

The national media in Britain has reported today that those involved in WITCHCRAFT (the media has no problem in recognising its existence) have been attacking horses in relation to their HALLOWEEN rituals.

Isn't this the same media that first reported a link between crop circles and ufo's???

I'm willing to bet that most of those involved in "witchcraft" are bands drunk college kids from cambridge pulling stupid frat and sorority pranks.

 

Funny....those being interviewed who acknowledge being witches seem pretty long in the tooth to be students.
Besides, can attacks on animals be put in the same league as crop circles, and should we be making a joke about living creatures being attacked?
yours, Jon

 

Witchcraft has long been a practice in the UK. I haven't seen the like in the Americas. Each year, a coven of witches meet at Stonehenge to celebrate their rituals. It is not done in secret.

They are quite open about their practices in the UK and they walk the streets with the full understanding that they are known by their neighbours.

Granted, the Brit press does report oddities and sometimes, yea, often, go out of their way to print the unbelievable. There might be a good reason why we refer to the British press as "The Rag".

There is a coven of witches in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. They advertise in the local papers and even give a street address for information. They have never disclosed names, however.

Modern witchcraft is no more than Paganism in this country. They worship all creation, but never the Creator. They are not evil people as we seem to think about witches, albeit misguided.

Cheers,

Jim

[ October 28, 2002, 07:11 PM: Message edited by: Jim1999 ]

 

But even so called "White Witches" refer to the existence of "Black Witches" and their "evil deeds".
yours,Jon

 

There does not appar to be much comment now we are talking about more than candy????????
yours,Jon

 

Now the animal lovers have gone quiet........ heres one for those who love children.

A few years ago when I lived nearer Glasgow, ADULTS (not young students) were caught carrying out "black magic" rituals on young children in a field very close to where we lived. This is part and parcel of the whole Halloween scene which is still a reality in the 20th/21st century. Do we love our children so much that we will encourage them with bribes of candy to innocently walk into the halloween culture?
Any serious comments?
yours, Jon

 

I agree 100% with you Jon. The same stuff goes on here in the U.S. I personally know a young lady who now has serious mental problems as a direct result of her family's involvment with witchcraft and Satanic worship. When she was a little girl they used her body for rituals and such. She is scared for life. She has accepted Christ has her Lord and Savior, but she still suffers, and her "former" Satanic and witchcraft practicing family members still try to get to her and torture her. Her own brother has raped her several times. It is a real mess.

 

We know that the children in the community are going to go trick or treating on October 31 so we have at our church fall festival on that night as an alternative. It is a safe place for the children to wear their appropriate costumes, play games, get candy, eat hot dogs. We have lots of fun. We are not celebrating witchcraft or any pagan customs.

 

If we allowed our children to dress up in costumes, and go from house to house in their neighborhoods collecting goodies. If we decorated our homes and yards with pumpkins, hay stacks, scarecrows. If we go to a get together with friends and family, play games, bob for apples, roast hot dogs and marshmellows on a camp fire and just have fun. If we did all these things on, let's say, the 2nd or 3rd Friday of October, every year and we called it "Beggars Night". Would it still be wrong?
Sue

 

My 8 year old Son brought home a letter from school Monday stating the usual Halloween costume warnings, no guns, knives, blood, gore, you know the standard thigs. Also added was that this year the 5&6th graders were not allowed to dress up at all. And let me just say, after what those girls were wareing, or not wareing last year I can see why!
Also included in the letter was a staement that celebrating Halloween next year will be disussed throught the School District. Also my daughter is in a free preschool program through the same district and they are having a little room party but are not going to be allowed to dress up. I am just curious as to if they are going to do the same with Halloween as some of the schools in St. Louis County do at Christmas. That would be to call it a Fall Festival and a Winter Pagent, or whatever name they might use to eliminate Christ in the picture.
I think at one time Halloween used to be a fairly harmless night of fun, but due to moral decline and shutting the door on God, at this point in time maybe we should do away with it. Then again what about all the other nights of the year when people are killing one another and children are being abused, not to mention animals. How tragic!!! Breaks my heart!
Love in Christ Angie