Halloween...

So being a dad puts a new spin on how you look at things. Take Halloween for instance. When I was a kid we went out to get candy and dressed up in some silly costume in order to be allowed to retrieve said candy. Being the I was raised in a good Christian home we were not permitted to dress as anything demonic - witches, ghouls, goblins etc etc (although perhaps Goblins should have been allowed since they are a part of the LoTR universe and as such not demonic in the truest sense of the word). For all of my childhood years though I did participate in Halloween.

However, as I got older and my sister entered the years of candy getting, my parents got more and more convicted about participation in All Hallows Eve and so my sister and her friends were provided with a "Harvest Party" at which they got dressed up and received candy from the kindly folks at our church instead of running around out of doors to get candy from their neighbors. As I've thought about it I've come to think this largely missed the point as so many well meaning Christian alternatives to pop culture do. Instead of providing a really positive alternative and choosing not to participate at all in something we believe is wrong we section ourselves off from culture and basically do exactly the same thing as culture does but we don't engage with them in doing it. What are we saying by doing this? You people are demonic and we want nothing to do with you! We still want the holiday but we don't want to do it along side of you. The subtle shift is away from condemning the act and towards condemning our neighbors themselves. We miss any opportunity to redeem the event and culture and just end up looking silly in the process. No one is fooled when we do exactly the same thing as they do but do it inside the walls of the church and call it "Christian". People ask "aren't you still celebrating Halloween"? Our answer "OH NO! We're celebrating the harvest on October 31st by dressing up and giving piles of Candy to our kids (what does candy and harvest have to do with one another? Furthermore, did we not just celebrate the harvest on Thanksgiving?)!

And as if the whole point of the holiday we're enough reason to get out of it there is the awful truth of how many obese pounds on our children's backs we condemn them to by participating. Most people would agree that North America has a gluttony issue and our kids are suffering because of it. Its on the news every second evening at 6 o'clock. Yet we send our kids out once a year to collect pillow cases full of refined sugar? Who in their right mind would go up to a child and hand them 10lbs of candy and say "here you go...finish this off in a week"? No one. Why? We know its bad for them. So why do we pretend its ok at Halloween?

These are the thoughts I've been thinking as I process whether I'll be letting Layla participate in Halloween. The other side of the fence is that I don't want to come across as cultish or anything. If there's a part at school I'll likely let her dress up and have fun with her friends. But we won't decorate. She won't go out and get a 10lb bag of candy. We likely won't give candy to kids. What do I have in mind instead? I think we're going to take a small family trip around Halloween to some place she wants to go. It's an alternative that invests in our family and doesn't seem like we're just condoning the whole practice without calling it Halloween. I want he to know why we're not doing it like everyone else.

What do you think? Am I missing something? Am I just an idiot? I'd be happy to have further confirmation that my wisdom is foolishness. Let's talk.