Halloween 'entertainment'

I recently received a ‘Christian’ magazine in the mail. I didn’t sign up for this magazine but it found its way into my mailbox anyway. I curiously flipped through it and came to an article about why horror and the occult are fascinating to people. This article spoke of a television program about serial killers, it mentioned books and movies about wizards that have earned billions of dollars, and it talked of a popular television show about zombies that had more than 17 million viewers for one of its season premiers.

As I write this Halloween is rapidly approaching. Decorations abound in every store. From the innocent to the evil…it can be found. Whether a person is looking for a costume to turn their dog into a hot dog or their home into a ‘haunted’ house…all one needs to do is walk into their local department store or sit before their computer.

I read something that said retailers expect to make almost 100.00 per household on Halloween. This includes costumes, candy, decorations, greeting cards and…who knows what else. I was in a thrift store not all that long ago and watched the person before me in the checkout line buy a monster themed dress, a superhero cape, and some sort of bat wings that looked like they should have been butterfly wings but weren’t. The total cost for these second…or third…hand costumes? Over twenty dollars.

I have been debating on whether or not I want to write on Halloween for a while. I find myself straddling the fence where it’s concerned. There are very real reasons for speaking against Halloween. But there are very real reasons for saying nothing also.

Halloween has even been embraced by ‘churches’ that hold fall festivals or trunk-or-treat nights where they offer supposed alternatives to traditional Halloween celebrations. Theoretically these celebrations are to keep children from going door to door taking candy from strangers. In reality these celebrations are often held days before Halloween arrives. Kids…and their parents…go from one of these alternative celebrations to another…and then they go trick-or-treating.

Many of these ‘church’ celebrations are doing nothing but prolonging the time that is celebrated in Halloween fashion. Most of them have no restrictions on the costumes they allow through their doors. Not only do they encourage the celebration of Halloween but they do nothing to discourage the evil side of the celebrations.

Which brings me to the reason I hesitate to write anything on Halloween. I’m very much against it. Not because of the Holiday itself but because of the way it’s now celebrated. Anytime horror is allowed to be portrayed before children…and anyone that would rather not have to encounter it…there is something very wrong about that.

Many businesses are no longer allowing their employees to wish people a Merry Christmas because of those that are offended by the Christian beliefs in the holiday. Instead these businesses are wishing people a Happy Holiday or Season’s Greeting. But those same businesses have no problems selling horror decorations and even displaying them for all their customers to see.

There are many people that object to Halloween based on the history…the roots…behind the holiday. I might be one of them if I could get past the horror of what Halloween is today. For me there is no reason to look to the history of the holiday because there’s too much sin and evilness in the way it’s portrayed today.

Why worry over what it was hundreds of years ago when the true problem with the holiday lies in what is presented to the world…and fed to the children in our world, one fun-filled holiday at a time. The problem doesn’t lie so much in Halloween itself. The problem lies in the reason it’s become so popular. It’s the same problem with much of what’s being turned out of Hollywood today. The problem is sin. It’s evilness.

The article I read spoke of how that wizard series is worth over 15 billion dollars and has its own theme park.

There is a saying that says money is the root of all evil. It isn’t. Anyone that knows Scripture knows that sin is the root of all evil. But sin…is the root of the problem in people that seek to bring in more and more money. How much does a ticket to that wizard theme park cost? How many of the people that helped make that series what it became would like to go to that theme park but can’t afford to do so…and how many free tickets does the owner issue every year?

Once through those gates…how many people that may have saved for years to be able to afford their tickets are charged three times the going rate for items simply because the owner can get that much money? Even basics like a peanut butter sandwich cost a high price inside the gates of a theme park.

The owners of that park…and all the others like it…are serving money while providing entertainment to the masses of people that serve their own sinful natures.

When I was a child, Halloween was a child’s holiday. There were costume parades and kids parties. Kids went trick-or-treating and basically enjoyed a night of playing dress up and treats. Teenagers that went trick-or-treating or dressed in costumes were often turned away at peoples doors and were talked badly about. Today…Halloween is more an adult’s holiday than a kids.

That can be seen in the horror story decorations and the adults roaming the streets and filling the kid’s celebrations. Years ago I knew two men that spent months every year putting together and presenting a haunted house. It was done not for the kids but for the fun of creating the gruesome scenes. I used to have a neighbor that had large blow up decorations for Halloween. She loved putting them in her yard, loved seeing them. She did it not for her kids or the neighborhood kids but for herself. And the decorations…were pure evil.

Gone are the days when Halloween consisted of friendly jack-o-lanterns and kids in mostly cute costumes. Instead we have a day when all the evil of Hollywood…when all the evil of the world…can walk the streets freely.

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. Luke 6:45 ESV

That verse doesn’t speak of Halloween but what it does do is show us that from the heart…the mouth speaks. Evilness comes from the evil within the human heart. Including the evil that is celebrated on Halloween. Who can put on a costume depicting something evil unless the love of that evil thing lives within their hearts?

Halloween isn’t the problem. Halloween is simply a day. It is a day created by the Lord, a day made for us, like all the others. There is nothing evil about the day. Nothing bad about it. It is, in fact, good, because…

This is the day the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24 NKJV

It is just a day, like any other, created by the Lord to be used for His purposes. For some reason He allows the celebration of Halloween to continue. Not only that but He allows it to grow more and more sinful.

In the article I read it said that researchers have researched the fascination that people hold with horror. On the surface the answer seems to be that it’s ‘entertaining.’ People enjoy watching and reading horror in all its forms because of the entertainment value. It is a way to engage the senses that takes them to the very edge. Not only that but it allows them to go where society often prevents them from being.

Most people will never know what it’s like to live as a serial killer but they can experience that lifestyle through a movie that shows the life of one in all its gory detail. Years ago my sister brought me a movie and told me it was about a little boy that was kidnapped and that it was a good movie. Back then I still watched movies and took her word for it. I watched that movie all the way to the end. She was right. It was a good movie. If I remember correctly it was even based off a true story. What she didn’t tell me was that in that movie it would tell of and show the deaths of children. Through that movie I lived the murder of kids. Not because I wanted to but because it was played out on the screen before me.

Once that movie ended I never watched it again. I never wanted to watch it again. But many people do watch that movie and so many others. And they watch them over and over. Feeding their minds and hearts on the evil presented as ‘entertainment.’

My husband has said that maybe it’s possible that horror movies and books keep people that might have engaged in those evil crimes in check because through the movies and the books they can live, experience, and feel what doing those things would be like without actually having to commit the crimes.

It’s very likely that he’s right. How many people live vicariously through movies and books? How many people enjoy the thrill of a movie or a book?

The Lord certainly allows those things for a reason. What that reason is we will probably never know. But allow them He does.

That of course didn’t come up in the research on why people enjoy horror films. Instead they cited things like intense emotions and a distraction from life.

Back when I watched movies I never liked horror films. I doubt I ever even saw a movie that would have been labeled as horror. But I saw some that left me very afraid. They created a fear in me that sometimes took months to dispel. In time I learned if I stayed away from those kinds of movies I lived a much more comfortable life. And I never watched the horror movies.

As a child I fell in love with books because they had the ability to remove me from my life and transport me to another place and time…to another life. In a book I became someone else.

If part of the reason for people loving horror movies is to escape their lives…what are they becoming when they leave their lives behind? Even if it is only in their minds.

When I loved to read books of pioneer times…I loved them because in the pages of those books I was able to live in those times. I could see life as it existed before modern technology. I could live in a time when things were simpler.

The article I read linked the occult to horror movies and magical series. That isn’t a far jump. Magic has long been labeled as occult. The Collins English Dictionary says the occult is ‘characteristic of magical, mystical, or supernatural arts, phenomena or influences’ among other definitions. Horror movies and books are known for witches, zombies, and the deepest, darkest sides of human nature.

History is filled with these same things. Fairy tales that were anything but happily-ever-after, mythologies, religions that use the occult, fables and folk tales that depict goblins and other ‘creatures’ of the night.

But at no time in history has evilness been as prevalent as it is today. Computers have given us a way to create what amounts to real things even when they can’t be created in real life. These marvelous inventions of knowledge at our fingertips are also the source of much sin at our fingertips. As a result we can access the darkest things the human mind can imagine within seconds.

The human heart is the darkest of the darkest things on earth. It is filled with evil of all manner.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick… Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

It is out of the evil human heart that the evil in the computer world, in Hollywood, and in all other manner is created. No inanimate object created the evil it shares with the world. The object is simply the instrument that is used to share that evil from one evil heart to the world.

In the same manner Halloween day isn’t evil. It’s a day that the Lord made just as He made all other days. But the evil of the human heart…the sin of men…has turned October 31 into a day that celebrates evil.

I have read about the roots of Halloween before. They are anything but Christian. I would have to point out though that no matter what the root of anything is…if it celebrates or encourages sin in any form…can it be good?

As Halloween grows closer and closer, more and more decorations show up in town. They are not only on store shelves but are on houses, in yards, and even decorate people’s cars. Day by day our world turns into scenes from horror movies. Come Halloween night mixed among the angels and the cartoon characters will be legions of things that stepped right from the most popular horror movies and books.

And they won’t all be children.

One of the reasons I stopped watching movies was because of the goriness of even supposed mild movies. There was simply too much blood in each movie. It seemed that the producers did their best to show as much blood as they possibly could.

Because I never watched the horror movies I can’t begin to imagine how bad they must be…thankfully. But I know how bad the other movies became. What would have once shown a cut with a small amount of blood or a slight smear became a river of thick blood that had to be shown in close detail.

And each one was worse than the last. Maybe not literally but in time…over time. The movie I watched one year would be worse than the one I had watched the year before. Hollywood belongs mostly to the minds of the depraved and it can be seen in the sickening way they portray evil and sin.

Like the movies that had to grow more and more gory to satisfy the minds of the viewers…the viewers minds were growing ever harder to the horrible scenes of evil that was portrayed in the films that were just ‘entertainment.’

Come Halloween night that same ‘entertainment’ will walk the streets of every town in America putting the horror of movies that shouldn’t be looked upon by any, much less children, on view for all to see.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness…

Isaiah 5:20 ESV