Halloween has fallen into heavy disfavor in the world of evangelical Protestant-dom. Many evangelicals believe that the world of ghosts, ghouls, goblins, witches, etc. that manifests itself on Halloween night is an evil thing that must be avoided at all costs. But they don’t want their kids to miss out on all the fun, so they have alternative celebrations, usually at their churches. These celebrations are usually very creatively named, with such colorful names as “Fall Family Festival”, or perhaps the mildly more exciting “Family Extravaganza”.
My take on all of this: Don’t mess with Halloween.
We as evangelicals shy away from Halloween because of its alleged occultic roots and occultic influences, which we don’t want to expose ourselves or our children to. But while Halloween may have had occultic roots, whatever occultic significance it may have once had has long since vanished, except perhaps for a very small fringe of the population who truly believe in witchcraft and the occult. For the rest of us, Halloween is simply an opportunity for a kid of any age to be a kid, and to have fun by pretending to be something that they are really not.
Do we as evangelicals honestly believe that ghosts, goblins, etc. are real creatures and that we dare not acknowledge their existence lest we give them power over our lives and the life of our society?
The human imagination is a wonderful gift from God, by which we can make sense of much of life. Without the imagination, how can we possibly make sense of things like quarks, leptons, germs, black holes, and many other things in our world that are real but cannot be seen? How could we make sense of God Himself, whom we certainly cannot see? How can you possibly wrap your mind around, say, a being who is three separate and distinct beings which are somehow really one and the same? How can you wrap your mind around the fact that such a being would want to create people in His own image, become one of them, and die so that their broken relationship with Him might be mended?
Much of what we believe as Christians loses a lot of its power, and really doesn’t even make sense at all, without the benefit of our capacity to imagine. And yet we want to stifle the imagination because we believe that certain creatures of the imagination are evil, that they are real and that to acknowledge their existence in any way gives them power over us which we must not allow them to have.
I love what Michael Spencer has to say on the subject of Halloween, and I strongly recommend that you read it for yourself.
Well, that’s all I have time for right now. My imaginary wife is calling me to come help our 2.6 imaginary children get ready for our church’s Fall Family Festival tonight.
