Like many of you, I just want Halloween to go away. This year, I started seeing Halloween stuff on store shelves the first week of August. THREE MONTHS EARLY! Now, merchandising is overwhelming. A couple of days ago I needed to go to my local pharmacy to pick up a few things. Just to get a tube of toothpaste I had to wade through four aisles of witchcraft themed candy. Then I encountered shelf upon shelf of simulated human skeletons, Jack-o-lanterns, witch costumes, and ghostly apparitions to hang from the limbs of trees in one’s front yard. They used to call this place a “drugstore,” but now it’s a dispensary, not of life-saving medications, but images of fear and death. I just want it to go away, and eventually it will. But at what cultural and spiritual price?
Here’s why it won’t go away. The National Retail Federation’s analytics reveal that an expected record of $12.2 billion will be spent on demonic junk this year. That’s about 25% more than last year’s record expenditure. But here’s what’s scary—65% of American household indulge this demonic day by purchasing Mammon’s merchandise. But there’s one more thing you need to know. Polls show that roughly half of Americans identify as evangelical Christians, with some measure of personal faith in Jesus. So, if 65% of people buy Halloween, satanic themed, anti-Jesus’ junk, a sizeable portion of that percentage is born-again believers! They are the ones pushing Halloween sales higher by filling their homes and their children’s lives with imagery that comes from the realm of witchcraft and the occult. As the old Pogo cartoon character used to say, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Halloween isn’t going away. Economics will drive up the value of its recognition higher and higher. But you can do a few things.
- Make your home off limits to all Halloween merchandise and no trick-or-treating of your kids. As parents of three daughters, we did that. And our children grew up to be college educated and socially well-adjusted. One is a physician and the other two are business professionals. They are socially well-adjusted, personally successful, dedicated Christians. Expunging Halloween from their lives did not make them socially maladjusted. It made them spiritually aware of the cultural line that has to be drawn in our age which is obsessed with all things demonic.
- Be bold and speak out about the evils of accommodating the visual imagery of witchcraft and the occult that saturates Halloween. Don’t be obnoxious about it but make certain that people know you are a family that doesn’t cater to anything that even in jest makes light of death, darkness, ghosts, curses, spells, conjurations, and witches on brooms. Romans 12:2 still applies today as it did 2,000 years ago: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
- Start learning more about deliverance and spiritual warfare. Instead of buying witchcraft costumes for your kids to go door-to-door collecting candy, enroll in Bob Larson University and learn how the kingdom of evil really operates with deception and destruction. Or have a virtual encounter with me so I can cast out your demons that want you to make cultural compromises.
- When Christians want to have a substitute “harvest festival,” say “no thanks.” Why should Christians feel the pressure to sacralize the season by trying to put our Jesus-spin on the accoutrements of evil which can’t be sanctified? You can put a gold ring through the snout of a pig, but he’s still a pig. Halloween is a day of the spiritually dead, and let the dead bury their dead.
Lord Samhain, the historical druidic demon for whom this day is dedicated is a very real evil spirit. I’ve dealt with him many times. He is vile. Don’t invite him into your home with images of evil. Better to put a plaque on your front door Halloween night with the words of Joshua 24:15: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
