The Un-Holiday

Imagine a world in which Hitler's birthday is celebrated every year. Laughing children dress in SS uniforms, with little Hitler, Goering, or Goebbels masks; or maybe in dingy gray and white death camp 'pajamas'. People put out cutesy little nazi or Führer figurines saluting 'Heil Hitler'. Lights are strung up with little death-camp-victim skeletons and skulls. Swastikas and little crossed Hitler Youth knives are hung on doors or placed on the table. Stores are filled with mock razor wire and styrofoam incineration ovens that you can place in your yard in anticipation of the coming 'holiday'. To heighten the atmosphere, recordings of Jews being mercilessly tortured are played in homes and stores..

A view into the future if the Allies had lost the war? No.

Recently we went into a local Kroger and were greeted by a very macabre, life size, motion-sensored, animated, dead-thing 'butler' with a severed head that 'spoke' to you from the silver platter upon which it lay. Just that day my beautiful wife and I had been discussing the fact that the stores would already have the Halloween stuff out. Thus far, we have managed to keep our two and three year old boys more or less ignorant of the existence of Halloween. I told her I hoped we could keep them from finding out about it at all for at least another year.

I must admit that in my youth Halloween was my favorite 'holiday'. My earliest remembrance of it was somewhere around four years old when I was dressed up as Spider-Man, with one of those cheap, ubiquitous, plastic-formed masks. I kept trying to stick my tongue through the little tiny mouth hole. That may also have been the last time that I dressed as something that was not particularly scary. It seems to me that in most years I dressed as a vampire, although once – at our 'church' Halloween celebration – I remember dressing as a demon (church : demon; church : demon; Anybody seeing any kind of problem here?). I always took Halloween very seriously, looking with disdain on people who carved silly faces on their jack-o-lantern, or who dressed up as ballerinas or any similar non-scary thing. After all, this was Halloween – get with the program, right?

And I considered myself a Christian!

Well, in all fairness, all of the Christians that I personally knew also celebrated Halloween. As I said, our 'church' had actual bona fide Halloween parties each year. It wasn't even one of these so-called 'church harvest parties' or some other mealy-mouthed excuse to celebrate the un-holiday while still feeling churchy, but an actual named Halloween Party. How disgusting is that?

In a corner sat a regular member of the church, dressed as a gypsy, who 'read' your fortune in a crystal ball! A part time baptist preacher who burned a very expensive book of world religions because he didn't want to expose his children to such things (a position with which I now agree by the way), occupied a dark closet where children could come in and reach into a bowl and squish supposed human brains through their fingers! Ghosts, spirits, demons, monsters (and at least one young vampire); occultism on every side.  Spooks and jack-o-lanterns and the whole schlemiel.

And the one constant that I remember about these 'church' Halloween parties from year to year was the inevitable discussion amongst varying parents and 'The Pastor' about how rigid and overbearing and legalistic it was for some Christians to fail to observe Halloween, thereby depriving their children culturally and certainly stunting their social development. So here was the pastor, the deacons, the Sunday School teachers, the parents, and all the good 'church' people teaching their children not only to observe Halloween, but that you are wronging your children if you do not.

Well, what can I say. It was, as Peter said, "..your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers." So for many years I continued to celebrate the unholiday as my favorite holiday. I thought it was fun. I thought that was what people should do. I thought that's what Christianity was.

Then God came.

When you give your life to the Prince of Life, when you really give your life completely to Him and give your heart to Him, and you get close to Him, there remains no longer any place in your life for Death. Paul said it this way, "What fellowship has light with darkness?" and "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons."

If you call yourself a Christian, and you partake of Halloween, the Un-Holy-Day, then something is very, very wrong. You can cry 'legalism' if you want to, but celebrating death is wickedness and sin-sickness, and celebrating death when you profess to belong to the Prince of Life is horribly mixed up. If you can find enjoyment in such things you are not where you need to be with Jesus – if you are with Jesus at all. If you are not repulsed by the things you see all around you in the celebration of Halloween – tapping into the very demonic realm that has fought and is fighting to drag you and your spouse and your children and your closest friends and loved ones screaming into hell – then you need to ask yourself very seriously if your are His at all. I cannot say emphatically that you are not – Paul was admonishing Christians after all not to drink the cup of demons – but that if you are comfortable with this stuff you really need to go back to the beginning and examine yourself carefully to ask if you are really saved.

Death is our enemy! Hell is our enemy! Satan is our enemy! Demonic spirits are our enemies!

Oh People! People! Open your eyes and see the unmitigated, inexpressible hatred leering back at you through evil eyes in this wicked celebration! Smell the putrid stench of decay rising up around you and clinging to your hair and clothes and skin! Hear the tortured screams of every deceived man and woman that has ever ended up exactly where they thought they would never go, eternally cut off, eternally hopeless, eternally dying and decaying in an unending death forever! This is the hope and desire of the lords of Halloween for you and all whom you love!

If you think comparing Halloween with Nazi Germany is a bit much, or maybe even over the top, then consider: Adolph Hitler and his followers were only men, mere flesh and blood, also themselves deceived by demons and now writhing in their own agonized hopelessness. But the real power behind that horror – the power that is waiting and desiring to show what they can really do, to unleash far greater horrors than that upon the earth – that is what you are celebrating on Halloween.

If you think the idea of celebrating the Holocaust is an unthinkable or unspeakable idea, how then can you celebrate the kingdom that makes Hitler look like a mere school-boy?