Hey, I won’t wish you a happy Halloween, but a happy day in general I hope you have.

I think I posted about this last year, but honestly I don’t remember what I said. I doubt anyone else does either. (Let’s be real, blog posts aren’t things that get revisited again and again like YouTube videos.)

I’m not a huge anti-Halloween person, but it’s the only holiday besides Dia de los Muertos that I wish didn’t exist.

Still, I’m seeing some other Christian bloggers saying Halloween is an opportunity. Since there’s pros and cons to this, it might be fun to explore both.

Let’s start with the cons:

Many elder adult Christians, and some younger ones, don’t like Halloween because, obviously, people over-hype it. And there is not getting around that many people do celebrate the wrong things.

Fifty years ago, celebrating your inner monster, or witch, or whatever, would have been appalling. And for a good reason. Those things are Evil.

Witches are not cool. I don’t care what movies say.

Monsters are not good. They are called monsters for that very reasons. They always murder, destroy, and pillage. (Sometimes there’s a bizarre sexual part of it too.)

Hey, I don’t care if I tick any monster lovers off by saying so. Facts are facts.

But Christians hate Halloween even more because so many of the things are directly or indirectly satanic. Demons, devils, black magic, superstition. Heck, whether you buy it or not, the concept of these things is at least bad. (Again, sorry.)

I’m explaining the position, I’m not taking it, yet.

My father also hates that a lot of the church now does things on Halloween because he sees it as compromising with the world. Trying to be cooler, more relatable, and not party poopers.

Frankly, I doubt the world at large cares whether we boycott Halloween or not, but our friends might. I’ve never lost a friend over that, but I do get some strange glances and I find people just don’t get why I could be so uptight.

So, in defense of what is definitely the more awkward position, let me say to everyone who is okay with Halloween, go easy on you Christian friends or family who don’t like it.

We have a lot of reasons to, and we don’t explain all of them because we know it sounds weird. When we do explain, usually no one gets it.

Which would be okay, except in my case it can make your own relatives roll their eyes at you, and that stings.

Even if you are Christian and celebrate Halloween for your own reasons, don’t call the people who don’t legalistic. (That’s biblical, by the way.)

there’s a lot of negative things about Halloween that even non-christian parents are concerned about, and there’s plenty of creeps out there on Halloween to justify being cautious about it.

There are real live people who are involved int he occult and who celebrate Halloween for that reason. It’s not pretty, and I don’t even know how common it is, but the fact is, Christians are’t the only ones who can be weird about the day.

That said, most of us don’t know the people on the other end of the spectrum, but we do know Christians. So I’m talking about that.

Christians may just feel Halloween has too many bad connotations, and can’t in good conscience condone it. They may also know people who, while they aren’t in the occult, do take the death and spooks side of Halloween way way too far, and that’s pretty weird in of itself. Christians don’t want their kids to think that’s acceptable.

This is totally reasonable.

So that’s one side of the issue.

The other side is that Halloween, whether we like it or not, exists. And we can either put about it and freak out that the devil gets a whole day to be celebrated (ahhh!!) or we can suck it up and make the most of what opportunities we have to connect with people in healthy ways through the day.

I mean, handing out treats isn’t inherently evil. Netither is wearing costumes. Neither is having a party, and having wired lightning and crazy decorations.

I’ve done some Church hosted trunk or treats (like trick or treating, but with cars instead of houses) and I had fun and got a lot of candy. (Not always candy I liked, but I’m a picky candy eater.)

My Christian Halloween experience was mostly different just in that most people didn’t dress up as witches, ghouls, or whatever. One guy did wear a viking-like dress. But I’m pretty sure it was a joke. (Some guys do have that sense of humor right?) We dressed up as angels, princesses, historical characters (me,) presents, and even a banana.

Also I believe the decor was more harvest oriented than spooky.

I honestly don’t think that’s wrong. Taking out the negative elements of Halloween and leaving the positive is perfectly within Biblical precedents. And it’s not a discountable ministry tool. Plenty of parents don’t like the idea of their kids going to strangers homes. a family friendly event at a church makes  a lot of parents feel safer about their kids doing the costume and candy gig.

However, I personally don’t celebrate the holiday in any form.

I don’t think it’s a sin to take the more proactive route, but personally I feel no need.

The fact is, even if you redeem the day, you still have to face the fact that it originated as something bad and pretty messed up even; if you study the history of it.

It’s god to redeem a bad thing into a good thing, but the Bible makes no secret of the fact that it is far better never to have had the evil in the first place.

Broken bones can heal stronger than they were before, that doesn’t mean you should try to break them.

So, basically the good in Halloween is all a patch up job. Not wrong, but not as good as the day being totally pure to begin with would be. And that’s why I treat Halloween like any other day, because in the wider scope of things, every day is from God. And eh’s not hindered by what men do on it from blessing the day to His purposes. (Why be God if you can’t ignore what the enemy is doing in one place in order to do something better in a different place?)

I’m well aware that if more than five people read this, I’m definitely going to get both sides of the debate here.

And hey, you could think I’m still being too lenient, or that I’m being too harsh; but, much as I like being in the right, I have to admit that the Bible itself would tell me that this day is open to being redefined.

So, in whatever way you wish to do that, here’s to all of us trying to do good today.

Until next time–Natasha.