I'm a Christian and I'm Indifferent Towards Halloween

Two articles have already featured two rather opposite views of the Christian spectrum for Halloween. In one article, I'm a Christian and I Love Halloween, an optimistic view is portrayed of Halloween. Rather than see it as the pagan devil worship some decry it as, the author embraces the festivities that go with it, not believing it incompatible with her religion in the least. On the other end of the spectrum is Christine Northern's, "I'm a Christian and I Hate Haloween.

Contrary to the former article, Christine takes a much more cynical approach to the holiday. Equating it with arson, vandalism, and other tomfoolery that occurs on October 31st, she declares that she'd like to simply be woken up when its over.

For my own part, I'm a Protestant Christian that best identifies with Lutheranism. Do I love Halloween? No. Do I hate Halloween? No. Do I feel it need be condemned for its rending of our children's souls? No. For my own part, I'm entirely indifferent towards the holiday that I had so treasured growing up. As a young child, I saw Halloween as my chance to dress up and become someone else for a night. Most importantly, though, I was not just taking on a different persona, my family went into detail to make sure I had the best darn costume in the city, state, or maybe even the country.

It was my night to brag, because people thought it was awesome that I actually glued my mask to my face (which in truth was just latex, but they didn't know the difference) and other such fun tricks to give my costume a little extra flare. All my time in California, I consistently had costumes that put all the other kids' to shame, and I liked it that way. As I stocked up on my bags of candy, I didn't think of the babies that were being sacrificed to Satan, and I didn't think of witches that were dancing naked in the woods, I thought, "Man I loves my candy."

However upon moving to Louisiana, the haunted capitol of the United States, everything died suddenly.

Gone were the days of actually caring about the costume, gone were the days of skipping excitedly from house to house for several square blocks, treading carefully up to a house that someone had elaborately decorated because I just KNEW a zombie or mummy was going to pop out. Was this because I was now old enough to grow out of Halloween?

Absolutely not - to this day I would still dress up and trick or treat with friends if I had the opportunity. But the fact is, Louisiana just sucks for this sort of thing.

Rather than encourage kids to get out and actually experience the entire experience, the news posts early in the morning the hours "trick or treating" is legal. I kid you not, throughout the day, parents are reminded that trick or treating can only be carried out between 5pm and 8pm - but there's more. Rather than the conventional door-to-door trick or treating I was used to, much to my malaise we were expected to report to Main Street, where police officers cordoned off a large section of the road.

Children in costumes stood in a long line that wrapped about 100 kids long, each waiting to get to the end where some school administrators with masks were waiting with several bags of candy. The child was given some, and told they could go on their way. The child then returned home, content with that and whatever else the administrators had given out of their own pocket while they waited in line.

Costumes didn't really matter, it was more of an orderly retrieval of candy.

This was of course, assuming that the entire holiday wasn't downright re-scheduled.

Because a high school football game was on - and that meant Halloween could wait until the next Friday over.