“What are you doing for Halloween?” Ask a Christian parent this question, and be prepared to hear an answer like, “Nothing! We don’t celebrate Halloween.“ Thunder crashes, and you creep away, embarassed for even asking.
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“What are you doing ON Halloween?” Ask the same parent this slightly altered question, and their whole manner and response brightens. “Why,” they begin, as birds begin to sing and sunshine breaks through the cumulus clouds. “We’re all going to the Harvest Party at church!” A choir sings. A trumpet sounds. You feel privileged just knowing these saints.
Let’s take a look at the typical Harvest Party.
- It is a celebration.
- It is chaperoned (usually).
- It may have costumes.
- Games are played.
- Contests are held.
- Food abounds.
- Music blares.
- Everyone enjoys themselves.
Certainly, nothing to get concerned about, right? The problem, however, lies in the billing. The Harvest Party is usually referred to as the Christian alternative to traditional Halloween hijinx. Alternative, however, implies substitute. It assumes our children need something to take the place of Halloween, since they won’t be participating in the secular and pagan celebrations. It suggests our kids are missing out on something. And indeed they are, if we allow them to spend Halloween in celebration.
If we are to train our children to be soldiers in the army of Christ, why would we sign a pass for them to go on leave when the battle is escalating on the front lines?
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As a child of four, I contacted the first of many spirit guides (read: demons) while playing with a Kindergarten classmates’ ouija board at a chaperoned Halloween party. This spiritual assault ignited an intrigue with the supernatural that culminated in my lifestyle as a practicing witch: divination, necromancy, channeling, astrology, psychic ability, and spell working. It wasn’t until I was twenty that I met the real Jesus Christ, and was released from the trap that Satan had set for this young prisoner of war sixteen years earlier.
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There are too many casualities on Halloween and far too few troops fighing the enemy. Instead of partying on Halloween, teach your children how to fight. Keep them aware that the fight isn’t against occultists, non-Christians, Christians who feel differently than we about Halloween, or institutions that promote Halloween, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers or darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).
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