As we approach Halloween, I find myself reflecting on the night I met my wife. It was at a Halloween party.
I was a non-Christian at the time, quite anti-Christian in fact. She was a Christian … who’d come dressed as a witch. We found each other interesting, the rest is history.
A lot of Christians seem to have problem with Christians participating in Halloween festivities. A lot of Australian Christians are talking about it this year. But my story is this: if my wife hadn’t, if she’d shunned it, I wouldn’t be blogging to you as a Christian today.
Curious Christian 
I have always found it an excellent night to talk to youth group about fear, and how Christ can remove it. Use ANYTHING in popular culture is my approach! 🙂
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One irony is that we focus our ‘evil’ sensors on one night of the year, as though all hell and it’s minions have the rest of the year off… the other irony is hell having any power in the first place. Satan is defeated people!
Matt 16:18 – What does this verse mean? Anyone ever been attacked by gates? No, rather gates are there to shut things out – the church will advance on hell and the gates will not prevail!
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True Wes, but if you take the All Saints angle, as did the medieval Christians, the focus need not be on the evil, but merely the dead and the unseen world. Symbolically the dark can refer to the mysterious. Has it not been said that modernist Christians lack a sense of mystery?
In any case, even if we do leave the focus on evil, in a society as secularized as ours, isn’t it a bit self defeating to culturally disengage from one of the few events on the calendar where people actually celebrate the supernatural? In the same way as horror films and heavy metal can point to a latent sense of spirituality in an otherwise secularized culture, halloween erodes the distinction between the secular and sacred, opening up opportunities for discussing the defeat of darkness and the nightmares which plague humanity. Some monsters are real (indeed, I see huge irony in sending kids out in the dark to meet strangers). Jesus speaks to this darkness and fear. By shunning the dark we shun an opportunity. What have we to fear of the dark, ultimately, if we stand in the light? Fundamentalists lack confidence in the light.
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