I've really been struggling with whether or not to write this post. Every time I decide to do it, my mind races to all of my friends and acquaintances who will immediately label me a crazy, fundamentalist. So this is my attempt to show that I'm a very normal person who just happens to have some very real convictions regarding Halloween.
Growing up, my family did not celebrate Halloween. I have never in my life gone trick-or-treating, nor had I ever even really witnessed trick-or-treating until a few years ago. My family lived in the country about 10 minutes outside of town, and we did not have a "next door neighbor". Each year, all I knew about Halloween was that for a couple of days out of the school year, my classmates would talk about what they were going to dress up as, and then in the days following Halloween their lunch boxes were filled with fun-size Snickers and Skittles.
Of course I thought I was missing out on something. I'm sure I told my parents they were the worst parents ever for not allowing my brothers and me to experience the joy of dressing up and receiving free candy! It all started when I was really little and my dad, who is such a Godly leader of our family, did a study on Halloween. He read up on the origins and what still goes on today, and he decided that as far as his family was concerned, he felt it was best if we didn't celebrate it. Whenever my brothers and I would whine and ask why we didn't get to have fun, he would simply say that it was a holiday that didn't serve any purpose in glorifying God and that's why we didn't celebrate it.
When I became an adult and Jarrod and I started our own family, I realized I have the same convictions. I believe very strongly in a spirit world and in the existence of evil, and I believe there are things we are called to resist.
I know people will say they participate in Halloween just for the fun of it. They will say they don't dress up like anything scary, and they don't do anything evil on Halloween. But for me, it's the gray area involved. How do I say to my kids, "You can dress up, but not like anything scary. And oh by the way, don't pay any attention to those creepy looking people walking down the street with you"? How do I say to my kids, "It's ok to celebrate Halloween and laugh about curses and seances, but we don't play with Ouija boards"? How do I say to my kids, "Ghosts and spirits are fun on Halloween" and then still teach them about the evil nature of Satan and his demons? So for me, it's the in-between stuff that I don't feel comfortable with and I feel the Lord laying it upon my heart to resist the entire notion.
Some of you will tell me that you have incredible childhood memories from Halloween, and you want to impart those onto your children. To that I say, I do too! Since we didn't trick-or-treat or do anything else involved with Halloween, every year around the same time, my parents would have a party at our house. They would invite friends over from church, and we would have a hayride around a "country" block. We would have a huge bonfire in our pasture from all the brush my dad had collected over the past year. We would have yummy food and us kids would run around like crazy.
I remember playing hide-and-seek in the dark in our pasture in front of our house. I remember how we would climb on top of my dad's hay bales and run down the rows of them like a robber on top of a moving train, and then we would slide down the sides of them. I remember cold night air that would make your chest hurt to breathe, but never wanting to go inside because it would mean leaving the fun.
So no, I've never trick-or-treated and I've never seen the movie Hocus Pocus, but as an adult I can honestly say I don't feel like I missed anything. I love Fall. I love anything pumpkin related. I love apple cider. I will decorate for Fall, but you won't see any bats, ghosts or witches around, and you won't see us trick-or-treating. No biggie.
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