Thoughts on Halloween

Halloween is in second place for the holiday Americans spend the most money on, after Christmas, of course.  It's a pretty big deal.  For weeks ahead of time folks ask kids, "What are you going to be for Halloween?"  Home decorations get more elaborate every year.

I celebrated Halloween as a child.  My mom dressed us up every year and took us trick or treating when we were little and let us go when we were older.  I think maybe 6th or 7th grade was the last time I trick or treated.  As an adult I have dressed up once on Halloween (well, twice in the same year) to chaperone a junior high dance for the junior high I worked at and to go out to dinner with friends on Halloween.  When we were in our first home and without kids we passed out candy on Halloween if we were home.  I honestly cannot remember how many kids we used to get at that house.  I had a couple of cute Disney Halloween decorations, but nothing elaborate.

One year, though, something happened that changed how I looked at Halloween.  Our church at the time was very involved with some missionaries in the jungles of Venezuela who lived among the Yanomamo people.  There was a specific man from our church who spent a significant amount of time down there and various occasions.  He eventually wrote a book about the Yanomamo from the perspective of the head Shaman (medicine man) of this particular tribe.  Now this Shaman had come to know Christ because of the missionaries who lived there... in fact, most of this tribe has become Christians.  The book, Spirit of the Rain Forest, by Mark Andrew Ritchie, describes in great detail,  their life before Christ.  The book is not for the faint of heart.  These people regularly, under the influence of drugs and spirits, raped, murdered, and pillaged other tribes.  Violence was a way of life for them.  The book tells of the Shaman's conversion and his life because of Christ.

Well, one fall Chief Shoefoot, along with one of the missionaries, came to the U.S. to do a book tour with Mark.  He was here about the time that folks were putting out their Halloween decorations.   He was greatly concerned and perplexed by this.  He asked Mike (the missionary that came with him and spoke Yanomamo, who was born and raised in Venezuela) why the American's put up images of the demons that he and his people so feared (before Christ).  Chief Shoefoot could look at people's decorations and name the proper names for each demon that the particular image represented.  He did not understand why American's would celebrate the evil spirits that the tribes in Venezuela so feared and that inspired them to such violence between the tribes.

Now this happened more than 15 years ago and I am not describing it now with the detail and the absolute amazement that I had back then.  I never thought about Halloween in terms of the forces of evil behind it.  If we sugar coat (literally and figuratively) evil and give it a fun appearance, then it's ok for Christians, right?  What has light to do with darkness?  As Christians are we to make light of evil and the spirit world?  God's word is pretty clear that we are at war with the forces of evil.  Maybe we should take it seriously.