Recently I was reminded that Halloween is just around the corner (thanks Cassie!) and have been thinking about the different ways that churches and individual Christian families can respond. The idea of celebrating darkness and things of the night goes against the grain with Christians who have been rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the Son (Col 1v12-13).
In previous years I have attended a ‘Light Up the Night’ walk in Wolverhampton and friends in Wolves have organised a Light Party. Someone else I talked to had organised the young people from their church to go door to door with lanterns giving out sweets and treats rather than asking for them. In our small church, we’re not really at the stage of being able to organise a party or walk, but we always ensure we have a supply of sweeties and Christian tracts to give to the visiting ghouls. The Good Book Company and 10ofthose supply some, although I feel there’s probably a gap in the market for something a little less wordy.
I also get the visiting kids to perform a joke or song for their sweeties. In Scotland, where the Vicar grew up, Halloween was a night for guising (it’s mentioned at the bottom of the Wikipedia page) – dressing up and going door to door with a wee show for the residents, for which they would give you a treat. So beware, you’ll need to have practiced if you come to my door at the end of half term.
And just the other day I was pointed to a blog post with a devotional based around carving a pumpkin. It’s a lot less weird than it sounds and I think I might try this with my kids this year.
So, how will you and your church be responding to Halloween this year? I’d love some extra inspiration. I’ll leave the poll open for a week.
The Vicar's Wife 
The Catholics have been issued official advice from the Bishops…
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/10/13/bishops-halloween-advice-dress-children-up-as-saints-not-witches/
Our Church will be having a Light in the Night Party, and I expect we’ll be somewhere in fancy dress.. any excuse for fancy dress!
Halloween in Northern Ireland, to this ‘outsider’ anyway, one of the core festivities of the year—up there with Christmas, Easter and some activities in July. This is, no doubt, historically due to Irish Samhainn and links with the USA…so it’s been around for a looooooong time.
So it was a bit of a shock to see that so many churches take a “don’t panic! don’t panic!” approach—whilst clearly doing so. (And this happens in England too.)
And while as Christians, we don’t want to celebrate the darkness, it’s my opinion that we have no need to fear, because Christ has conquered. We have no fear of the devil; Christ has conquered. We have no fear of goblins, ghouls, nasties, beasties; Christ has conquered.
If we panic and focus so much on the badness of Halloween, then we betray any confidence we claim to have in the God who defeated death.
Rather, why don’t we just ignore it?
If kids feel that they are missing out on a fun activity, gently explain that following Jesus has sacrifices.
Or organise a party for friends, where it’s shown that ignoring Halloween can be just as fun. We don’t need to make it into another ‘Church calendar event’ by naming it anything. (In this way, we can make it a bigger deal than it needs to be.)
If kiddies come to my door on Oct 31, I’ll give them a sweet, but ask for a joke in return. I really don’t like the ‘I demand this, or I’ll take vengeance’ attitude which is not the original concept of ‘trick or treat’.
The dog may even answer the door wearing his Yoda costume.
Thanks for posting A. Interested to see if I’m on my own on this!
At our eldest’s previous school they decorated a ‘Christian’ pumpkin with crosses and icthuses etc. It was really fun and made the light inside quite appropriate, so think we’ll give that a try this year!
Hi, this is a difficult one for me. On the personal level, the pumpkin idea is what I would probably do (although clearly for health and safety reasons, I might not be able to put it on the window frame). On the Church level a walk of light (and this is my wife’s favourite idea) would be good.
Although -and I am no Church scholar- isn’t hallowen a corruption of the Church festival of All Soul’s and All Saints, and perhaps this is what we, as Christians, should celebrate?
[yes, I appreciate festivals and feast days are not every believer’s cup of tea….]
My Brownies often ask for a Halloween party around this time, but as we are church based we compromise with a sparkle party. dressing up, sweeties, but no mention of ghoulies and ghosties. We make things that are sparkly and light – tiaras always go down well!
We’re doing a ‘light party’ though we’re just calling it a treat party (because there’s no tricks with Jesus).
There’ll be a very short talk just before a party tea about why Jesus is great.
We’re not doing pumpkins, it’s just going to be a party like we’d have any other day.
One thing that we’ve noticed is that people expect invitations to events on the 31st, so hopefully it will reach out further than the sunday school classes.
I wanted to have some ‘Reformation day’ related games…. pin the 95 theses on the door as opposed to tails onto donkeys, but I’ve been voted down 😦
We’ll be away on our half-term holidays this year but we’ve generally ignored it in our current parish. Tracts are available to give out but people don’t really knock at the doors in this area – there’s much more trouble on Mischief Night!
It’s quite interesting that in overtly Christian middle-America, Halloween is celebrated without qualm. I happened to visit my brother in Maryland two years ago, when the Obama election signs were still jostling for attention with pumpkins on the front lawns. Halloween there is a grand excuse for the young (mostly) to dress up as anything they fancy, not necessarily something scary; I even spotted one college student (suitably long-haired and bearded) dressed as Jesus himself! Bearing a striking resemblance to the classic Caucasian representation of our Lord, this student claimed that people call him that all the time, so he thought he’d go with it. The point is that the whole neighbourhood, of all ages, opens its doors and turns out, without malice. There are enough porch lights, tea lights and pumpkin lanterns to dispel the darkness. No tricking was in evidence, unlike the slightly sinister vibe you frequently experience over here in the UK, and if I had any concern it was not for the souls of the youngsters taking part but for their teeth and waist-lines, with such vast quantities of candy being dispensed. Can we not lightly adjust the festival (I like the alternative pumpkin-carving strategy) as we adjusted the originally Pagan midwinter festival which took place at Christmas?
We’re giving out UCB Halloween ‘Bags of Hope’ – although they’ve apparently sold out of them for this year – but one to think about for next.
I have great respect for people doing “light” parties etc, but also agree that by steering so far clear of Halloween we tend to give credence to the powers of darkness. Are we really going to ban “Winnie the Witch?” Last year we had a “Harry Potter” party for children already involved in church. This allowed conventional dressing up and lots of fun games. Probably the best was “potion making” with chocolate custard doubling for mud from the enchanted lake and pomegranate juice standing in for dragon’s blood. Various edibles were then liquidised according to the children’s recipes and quite a lot were actually drunk. It was all good fun and clearly signposted as referring to a fictional world. It also provided our families with something to offer as an alternative to the dreadful “trick or treating”. I’m not sure I’d offer it as a mission event, and we talked about it lots at church first to make sure everyone knew where we were coming from. But I felt very happy with the outcome.
@Paul, All Saints is the next day, 1st November (Hallowe’en being a corruption of All Hallows’ Eve, i.e. the day before All Hallows (Saints)’ Day – don’t know much about All Souls’ but seems to be the day after that, 2nd Nov).
My Dad always tells people he doesn’t celebrate Halloween and asks them to come back the next day if they want sweets! If they do, they get sweets plus a tract. One year he wrote his own tract as he couldn’t find anything suitable. We give out bought tracts fastened to funsize chocolate bars – it’s very funny to watch some of them try to pick up chocolate which doesn’t have anything attached!
@Rachel I don’t really understand what you mean about giving credence to the powers of darkness – I do give credence to them because they are real! As a Christian I know that they can’t harm me but they can and do harm those who don’t have faith in Christ. There is nothing wrong with dressing up as a witch/ghost/whatever in itself, but I’ve always believed that doing that as a child is potentially a gateway to more sinister behaviour as you get older (and I have seen it happen).
Hey – just to let you know…we have a ‘less-wordy’ activity tract planned for release next year…
Watch this space
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