Christian's Shouldn't Enjoy Halloween
Yep. That’s what Christian media tells us. Maybe they are right. But I know two things: I am a live-your-faith-everyday-Christian and I really really enjoy Halloween.
As a kid my sisters and I dressed up and my mom would drive us around to the houses of people she knew and wait on us in the car as we begged, er, asked for candy. I distinctly remember a dear woman who was my grandmother’s best friend. Ms. Carr didn’t have any grandchildren and even at a young age I knew she loved us. Every Halloween when we knocked on her door she had special goodies just for us--homemade cookies.
In today’s culture, we’d pull out the hazmat suits if we found unwrapped candy in our kids’ bags much less homemade cookies. But Ms. Carr was as much family as anyone. I remember those dark, chilly Halloween nights with other children walking down sidewalks with flashlights, and I smile.
I will not assure you that my sisters and I always dressed like biblical characters at Halloween. One year my twin sister and I were princesses. The next year we dyed one of the princess costumes black. One of us was a witch holding the princess hostage. By the way, those costumes also doubled at night gowns for the rest of the year.
Our family lives in a subdivision with well over 100 homes. I know some of my neighbors but not all of them. I do know who will have a fire pit and give out capri suns on Halloween night. I also know you better have plenty of candy and get out early because everyone runs out of candy after a couple of hours. And forget getting into or out of the subdivision after 6 p.m. Traffic is possibly the biggest nightmare of our Halloween.
I think what I enjoy most is the community. At Thanksgiving and Christmas we celebrate with our own families. We spend hours cooking the best meals and selecting the best gifts and we rarely see our neighbors for those two months. And let’s not even talk about the stress of those holidays.
At Halloween we usually cook a pot of chili or grill some burgers, invite friends who don’t live in big neighborhoods over and we spend time following our kids from one ghost guarded house to another. The children giggle. The adults catch up with no pretense of holiday happiness. And we all go to bed crashed from the sugar high. (So maybe part of what I like about Halloween is eating the chocolate out of my kids bag. But, hey, I’m just making sure it’s safe. Those twix bars look a little shady.)
