First Posted 21-Oct-2014
He is, sadly, newsworthy. You know him. The preacher who gets his 15 minutes each year because he finds a docile infobabe and repeats the rant about how we are all going to hell for worshiping the devil because a few of us dress up, get a little (?a lot?) drunk, and have some fun. No better for him are the parents who arrange block parties so the kids can wander house to house collecting candy from the neighbors. For fairness the same infobabe will go find a willing Red Cross volunteer who repeats one more time the urban legend of razors in apples, so, you know, be careful. And of course, the dental hygienist and nutritionist who remind us that moderation is huge. I always wonder about that preacher. He’s so dedicated to his fear of our annual bacchanal. He protests a bit much. My sick & twisted imagination has him celebrating Halloween in full bondage leather led on a leash by a butch dike.
Halloween, to repeat, is All Hallows Eve a Catholic bastardization of a Celtic celebration ending a week of honoring their ancestors. The only people getting caught by Satan are precisely those Christians who drank the Kool-Aid and think the Pentacostal Pastor is brilliant. He isn’t. He’s an idiot in a collar seduced by the dark side and like a flu-virus, looking to infect as many others with his or her disease. Not a white clerical collar silly. A black leather one with spikes and a d-ring for a leash. There is a difference.
Two things. First, if you really are a dedicated, confessed Christian, Satan is a bit impotent. All you have to do is increase your closeness to Christ. The closer to Him you are, the further away from Satan you get. Easy. Just be a disciple of Christ. God will take care of the rest. Second, as a church, we are Middle Eastern, from Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Everywhere else that we are, we are foreigners trying to live out our discipleship as strangers in a foreign land. This has meant, at times, finding ways of celebrating local holidays through Christian expressions of the holiday. So, when we met the Celts we morphed their closure of the ancestor celebration into an orgy of giving candy and acting foolish.
Pentacostal Pastor, because he’s got issues, finds evil in this and tries to hide his leather collar with a borrowed white collar and justification in condemning that which he secretly practices. So, wear a costume. Walk the kids to a few neighbors for trick-or-treat. Get a little drunk at a party. Be safe about it–end the walk with the kids before sundown, take a cab home or get an UberX home after the party. But relax on whether you are committing a sin in this. Rev. Pentacostal Pastor is busy this night doing things he won’t want to discuss on Sunday. Were his activities known, he might need to confess a few things. You, in your silly teal cat costume, are probably fine. Just go easy on the candy and jello shots, ok? Check out this article by Prevention on hangovers.