I really wish I’d have grown up earlier.
I’ve written before about how my wife and I have scaled back Halloween as our children grew older. Even as we scaled back our expectations for the season my wife and I would decorate as early as the fall equinox and no later than my birthday in early October. We had so many skulls, so many sheeted ghosts, with a few fake pumpkins and witches’ brooms for flavor. We had the fake tombstones for a fake cemetery in the front yard, and fake pumpkins with orange lights inside for the front door. My wife even made a macabre wreath with a skeleton lounging in the middle of it.
This year, we didn’t even think to decorate until I realized it was the middle of October already. I pulled out the long plastic storage boxes and brought them downstairs. “Why did we need two of these things now?” I asked my wife. “We’re not even into the whole witches and ghoulish bloody stuff anymore.” It’s a residual effect of our recent immersion in Christianity. You really are changed inside. In our case, we weren’t offended by anything. We simply didn’t care for it anymore. Keep the goofy little ceramic ghosts pulling faces and even the skeleton wreath, but the rest can go.
Yet even so, maybe we’re inadvertently following a trend. I noticed it was low-key all over for Halloween this year, even on the Internet. A few houses went all out, but for the most part you’d be lucky to see so much as a pumpkin on the porch.
As far as my wife and I are concerned, it’s something we’ve grown out of. Halloween is, at optimum, a pleasant autumn evening’s walk with your children who dress up to collect candy from houses in the neighborhood. Nothing Satanic about it whatsoever, unless you so insist on making it that way. It’s for children. Let them have their fun playing dress-up and pretend. Let them make memories they’ll cherish as they walk their own children down the block.
To think I stressed over observing the night “correctly!” As a Christian, I don’t disdain Halloween as a thing of evil, whose participation attracts malevolent forces into one’s life. As I’ve observed, demons require no invitations to beset anyone. Again, Halloween a time for children to have their fun. As an adult, it’s another childish thing I’ve put away because I have no children to celebrate it with. My former stressing over it is merely another chain among many struck from me in keeping with my transformation in the Holy Spirit. That’s all.
