Halloween.

Every year, when Halloween rolls around again, I always have to re-evaluate why it is that we don't celebrate the holiday. I know why we don't, but when we are questioned, or when I hear about other Christians who do celebrate, it always makes me think.

It's not because it's a "pagan" holiday. I hate when people use that excuse for not celebrating. That makes no sense to me. Most of our so-called "Christian" traditions stem from some pagan ritual or another. Even Christmas and Easter have pagan roots. I think even our usage of wedding bouquets and bridesmaids comes from an ancient idea that these things would ward off evil spirits. I really don't think pagan origins of any given holiday should necessarily determine whether we celebrate something in our modern world. And really, who knows for sure what really happened in ancient cultures that are thousands of years old.

There is also the whole other side to Halloween. The "cute" side. The argument that, well we dress up in cute stuff and make it fun and not scary, never really sits well with me either. I think, for me, it's the whole idea of death that comes out in this holiday that really turns me off. Because really, it is a holiday about death, whether you dress up as a fairy princess or not. I know that most people do not claim to celebrate death, but all you have to do is drive down the street and before long, you will see yards set up as cemeteries, corpses hanging from trees, blinking vampires and ghosts or skeletons. Gross.

The world is a dark place. Death and demons are real. People suffer from the horror of these things every day. If I was a mother who had just lost a child to suicide, I would be truly horrified and offended if I drove down the street and saw a fake corpse dangling from tree. Or if I had just freshly buried a loved one, and saw a fake graveyard on someones lawn, I would feel mocked. Not that everyone decorates like that, but still it's the idea of identifying myself and my family with something so sad and horrifying. I feel that Halloween makes a mockery of death and evil. Like none of us should be afraid because it's all just a big joke anyway.

Evil is so real that Jesus needed to do something to help us. He, in fact, had to die to rescue us from it. If He shed His own blood so that we can have light and life, then why are we celebrating darkness and death? Even if I dress up my kids in "good" characters, am I not still kind of saying that I support what Halloween stands for? To make a fun joke out of something that cost Jesus His life?

And that is why we don't celebrate Halloween.