Halloween as it is now meets "Christian Treat"

Halloween as it is now meets “Christian Treat”

You may get a kick out of scaring kids. It is somehow fun or funny for some adults to prank kids with fear or, more specifically, to indoctrinate them into ghouls, ghosts and goblins.

Like me, you have noticed that this upcoming national holiday is more popular with each year as each year more churches take up less space on streets across America. With less teaching that death is a victory overcome by our God of love through His Son on earth and now in heaven, the uneducated, the lost, and the dark-hearted choose to mock death or get a false sense of controlling it by making fun of it.

The best time to do this is Halloween.

When I was a kid, Halloween was shadowed by spooky darkness. It was a one-night experience for most of us. Now the evil side of Halloween—and, yes, it is evil—has expanded. Where once paper ghosts may have filled a household window or two from elementary art class projects from the 1980s, now you can buy all kinds of merchandise to celebrate what isn’t cute or kid-friendly.

Sure, you can say your 4-foot inflatable pumpkin is adorable as its coupled with cuddly inflatable cats wearing witchy hats smack dab in the middle of your lawn, but here’s the truth: the darker side of this now dark day is growing.

This should stop. More specifically, this should be replaced.

This is the first of two consecutive columns on Halloween and what churches that haven’t closed should do about light against darkness.

I hope the following story inspires you. It is one about elementary school art these days.

My nine-year-old son recently objected to the upcoming third-grade art project. It wasn’t a refusal. It wasn’t a stance. It was a “Hey, I don’t want to do this.”

The project? The class will make pinch pots with ghosts on them.

I imagine this is a Casper the Ghost thing. My son may have been presented with visuals or ideas about how these pots would be themed. Pumpkins and fall-colored leaves weren’t considered options to my knowledge. They were going with ghosts.

My kid didn’t like it. Ah, apples and trees!

Apples and trees, now that’s a pinch pot idea!

I have professionally taught third grade. I get education. I LOVE education. Learning opportunities are wonderful at all times. This was an awesome time to open up conversation with a great art teacher who listened, understood, and became accommodating. 

My son, upon hearing about the ghost pinch pots, asked if he could make a cross pinch pot.

Hold on. I get it. Church. State.

The art teacher gets this too, of course.

Fast forward. The concern has been resolved in the best way with credit and deep respect given to the art teacher and the principal. It’s a win/win.

There’s more. In catching my disdain for gory Halloween garbage on front lawns, this kid of mine came up with an idea to replace the theme or trend of Halloween from where it is heading secularly to where it could be going religiously.

Getting excited by this?

Me too.

So there, in the middle of our van, my nine-year-old speaks to the gory displays we had just passed. Into the conversation on Halloween, he says, “Christian Treat.”

“What?” I ask from the driver’s seat. I wasn’t quite sure I heard him.

“Christian Treat,” he repeats. “Instead of Trick-or-Treat, it should be Christian Treat.”

Next week, I’ll include in my column information about the founder of Mother’s Day and the founder of Father’s Day. I may or may not mention other days we Americans are exposed to, like National Lefthanded Day (August 13^th) and National Dog Day (August 26^th), but I am going to advocate for Christian Treat (or whatever name it evolves to). Like the visionaries that founded Mother’s Day (which became a national holiday in 1908) and Father’s Day (which became a national holiday in 1966), I’m going to steer hard toward Christian Treat and I’m going to stay on course.

You have to be done with this mess that is Halloween now, unless, of course, you worship the enemy. If you worship the enemy, I DOUBT you know me or read me.

And I get it. Some of you are thinking, “Halloween as it is now is not a big deal, Will. You are making something from what is really nothing.”

What is happening today is “something.” Even if blood and gore didn’t sprinkle itself around the inflatable pumpkin and cats I mention here, it is time to light what has been too dark.