Powers and Principalities

I’ve said this on Facebook before and I’m going to say it again here because this feeling won’t leave my heart. It comes from the vantage of a Christian mother. I’m not shoving my opinion down anyone’s throat. Read it if you want to. Comment how you want to. Nothing, however, will change my mind on the matter.

Halloween - When you dress yourselves and your children up to celebrate a festival that acknowledges the spirits of the dead mingling with the living, despite your ignorance about the festival, you are buying into it completely. 

Just as you wouldn’t (as a South African) dress your child in an All Black rugby jersey because you wouldn’t be caught dead supporting a team who is the enemy why are you dressing your child up in the very symbols of our enemy? Why are you practicing the rituals that on any other day of the year would be completely frowned upon. 

If anyone comments that it’s just harmless fun and the kids have a jol please spare me. It is not. Do your homework. Any festival celebrating fear is not of Christ. Will never be. 

I get that a Pope hundreds of years ago made the misguided decision to appropriate pagan festival days and turn them into Christian ones - like Halloween and Christmas but the difference is that Christmas comes with the spirit of remembering Christ. We are kind, we share, we give presents, we make Santa shoe boxes for underprivileged children, we make meals for the hungry, we love. We try to be Christlike. It doesn’t always work and Father Christmas puts a spanner in the works but ultimately the day was created to remember Christ’s birth. It’s not perfect but it is ultimately about love.

There is none of that spirit in Halloween other than the sweet thing. And if we really want to live in good neighborhoods where we feel connected to each other surely thats what we should be working towards throughout the year? 

As a varsity student in the US I did Halloween once. I went dressed up as Diana Ross to a friend’s house party. It was a sedate affair. The debauchery on campus that night, however, was not. I was twenty three at the time and even then I felt uncomfortable with the very real spiritual implications of this so called ‘holiday’.

I find all the endless pictures of children looking like my worst nightmare offensive to my very soul. And maybe I just mustn’t be on social media at this time of year. And so I won’t. But as someone particularly keyed in to the spiritual workings of this world I want to plead to you to think about a ‘harmless’ ritual before buying into it. Our precious Jesus died to free us from the spiritual warfare raging constantly around us. Please then do not find joy in celebrating the enemy.