Halloween Do You Trick or Treat?

Halloween do you trick or treat?  

Search the internet and you will find a myriad of blog posts, articles, tweets etc. Halloween and what Christians should do with the holiday.  I do not propose to write anything new here but I am going to give my experience with Halloween and exactly what we are doing as a Christian family this Halloween.  I have been reading many different takes on what should or shouldn't be done.  I am not telling what you should do in this situation with your family, I would ask that you use discernment and do what God would have you do in all aspects of your life.  To see a glimpse of what we are doing read on......






I was raised in church.  My father was a pastor from the time I was born until his death in 1990.  Of all the years that I can remember not one of them did we not participate in Halloween.  It use to be a big event..... youth groups would have lock ins during that time with games, food and fun.  There were Halloween parties at our church families houses for the kids,  with guess what...... costumes and all.  Bobbing for apples, crazy little games set up with bags of stuff and we had to be blind folded and put our hands in the bags and it was all creepy crawly feeling.  In the bags would be regular everyday items, grapes cut in half to feel like slimy eyeballs etc.  Then the kids would all get together in the neighborhood and go trick or treating.  Large groups of us would go and as the years went by we even went trick or treating by ourselves.  Ooooo gasp by yourself?  Yes you heared me by myself (what I mean by that is no adult supervision) just me and a few of my friends and we would make it an effort to go to every house we could in our neighborhood making super big hauls of candy and goodies. (Now before you start thinking we were teenagers, that would be wrong we started doing this in 5th grade and by my calculations that makes me about 10 years old)


Were they different times back then?  Well kind of, but the biggest difference that I can tell is that we knew our neighbors!  We spoke to them almost daily.  We all rode the bus to school together or walked or rode our bikes to school together.  We knew each others moms and dads some were Christians some not but we were a community. (some became Christians all were witnessed to at one time or another).  There were no 20 minute waits in line at parent drop off or pick up at school, that is not how we did it.  There was a significant blend of the have and have nots so to speak, a blend of all types of people in the neighborhood.  


Bottom line we don't do that anymore.......  We don't know our neighbors that well, we may know a couple on either side of us but the neighborhood..... nope.  We rarely interact with the people we do know.  (We are called to have deep spiritual friendships with our brothers and sisters in Christ, how many of us really feel that is happening.  I don't and I realize that this can start with me..... I don't have to wait for others to get this right)  We as Christians are continually creating events and things to do and asking non-Christians to come to us.  We ask them to come to us hmmm.......  I am not knocking having things to do at church and some may even make a great argument that it is outreach, but I am saying we are all in a place that we can impact and by outreach we should actually go to them.  What a novel idea....... go to them.  I wonder who said - we should go to them first? -  Mark 16:15 


So guess what we are participating in Halloween this week, our kids are dressing up.  I won't go into all the details of what costumes they are wearing.  I will tell you some of the costumes that I wore when I was a kid.  Many years we just didn't have that much money so we were one of many things we could put together with what we had at home.  I was a baseball player, a football player, I wore a sheet over myself and was a ghost that was about all we had.  I was a pirate complete with eye patch and an earring (that was one of my moms broaches strategically pinned to a wig and bandanna I was wearing to give the appearance that it was in my ear..... don't think it worked that well but I tried.)  One year I remember having a book on homemade costumes.   I decided to be a werewolf.  The costume consisted of cotton balls teased out to look like fur, a whole bunch of Karo syrup used to stick the cotton balls to may face, hair and hands and brown and black paint.  It looked pretty cool but it felt miserable.  I actually won a costume contest at a friends Halloween party with that costume.  I could not wait to get it off though..........  sticky sticky sticky.


While I have been thinking about this for a while now.  ( I could point you to several other resources with thoughts on this but I will save you the hassle at this time.)  I want to quote a section out of our Sunday School book materials that helped finalize this thought process for me.

Trick, Treat, or None of The Above?

Next week is Halloween night.  Many Christians opt not to observe it at all.  Some parents draw the line at "no scary costumes." Some churches have fall festivals as an alternative to Halloween. Here is the reality:  there is probably no other night in the entire year when you will have as much interaction with other families in your neighborhood.  So if you are thinking missionally, you should consider this question:  On the one night of the year when my entire neighborhood is coming to my doorstep, what will I do with the opportunity?

 What are we going to do with that opportunity?  Well I am glad that you asked that question.  We are doing this (drum roll please..........)  We are putting together candy bags in plain old simple zip lock bags and inside of that zip lock bag will be one of two cards that we are making on the computer.

Card #1  Will say:

The Best Treat Ever!  This Ain't No Trick

Front Side

on the back of the card will be

John 3:16-21 (MSG) 

¹⁶ "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. ¹⁷ God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. ¹⁸ Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.    ¹⁹ "This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. ²⁰ Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won't come near it, fearing a painful exposure.  ²¹ But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is." 

I am using the text from the message here on the cards because it speaks in a language that is more likely to get across to the non Christian person.  It speaks in an everyday language that is accurate enough ( for those of you that would appose this translation) to get this message right. 


Card #2 will say:


You Think Halloween is Scary...... Try HELL!


on back will be the same verse as on card #1

Front Side of Card

Back of Card

I don't know what kind of response I will get from the unsaved or from other Christians that get them.  Bottom line I am not doing it with fear of man in mind.  I am doing it for the glory of God.  What I am doing.... you may be apposed to.  You may think it is not right, you may think I am sinning.  Here is what I know.... the freedom that is afforded me in Christ allows me to make mistakes and if I am going to make mistakes I want it to be in an effort to introduce Jesus Christ to other people.  People are not saved by anyones power alone but In the power of Christ.  We are trying to be in the world and not of the world.  What will you do to reach other people for Christ?  Lock your doors and turn out the lights and pretend you are not home?