Tag: Halloween
Breathalyzer Man Busted – November 2, 2009
by Bruce on Nov.02, 2009, under Category
Ohio partier dressed the part in Halloween drunk driving arrest
NOVEMBER 2–A Halloween reveler dressed up as a Breathalyzer machine was arrested early Sunday for drunk driving. James Miller, an 18-year-old college student, was busted in Oxford, Ohio after cops spotted him driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street. An actual Breathalyzer machine recorded Miller’s blood alcohol content as .158, nearly twice the state’s legal limit. Miller, pictured in the below mug shot, was charged with underage drinking and DUI, according to an Oxford Police Department report. Officers discovered an open can of Bud Light in the vehicle’s center console and the remains of a case of beer on the passenger seat and in the trunk. Miller’s costume, which retails for about $30, includes three sobriety levels: Boring, Life of the Party, and Sotally Tober. It also includes a well-placed plastic tube with the instructions “Blow Here.” (2 pages)
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The littlest airplane geeks come out for Halloween
by Bruce on Nov.02, 2009, under Category
Sometimes you can just tell when you’ve got an airplane geek in your midst. FlightBlogger reader and proud papa Chris Darringer sent these photos of 23-month old Theo to me this evening of his little guy trick-or-treating.
He writes that Theo “dressed up as a 747-8, performing final gauntlet testing for Halloween. Like Boeing, I experienced some manufacturing problems with wrinkles in the fuselage and mounting of the wings (which I fixed with the “stringers”). Luckily my plane launched on time this year, though 
”
Thanks Chris!
via Google Reader (296).
A Halloween Story
by Bruce on Oct.30, 2009, under Category
A Halloween Story
Dr. James Emery White
Pastor, Ranked Adjunctive Professor of Theology and Culture Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
I grew up in a day when Halloween was little more than pumpkins, fall festivals, hayrides, and dressing up as a pirate or a farmer to go trick-or-treating. That is what it held for my now very post-Halloween-age children as well. As a result, I’ve had a built-in resistance to those Christians who bash October 31st as a pagan festival that followers of Christ have no business supporting, much less engaging. Yes, I know its history, but few celebrations in our day are free of pagan roots, and the idea that donning a costume and receiving a mini-Snicker bar is an invitation to the occult is ludicrous to my thinking.
And if you want to really push me, I’ll bring up the fact that at the very least it can be celebrated as Reformation Day (when Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg church).
So I still hold to the child-like fun the night can hold, but I no longer view the day itself as innocuous.
For example, the costumes (among adults, at least) might as well be advertised as “Dress like a Slut” day. This is not original with me. In an article in The New York Times titled, “Good Girls Go Bad, For a Day,” Stephanie Rosenbloom writes of the changing nature of women’s Halloween costumes in the last several years.
Little Red Riding Hood, in her thigh-highs and miniskirt does not seem en route to her grandmother’s house. Goldilocks, in a snug bodice and platform heels, gives the impression she has been sleeping in everyone’s bed. And then there is the witch wearing little more than a Laker Girl uniform, a fairy who appears to shop at Victoria’s Secret and a cowgirl with a skirt the size of a – well, you get the point.
As Rosenbloom notes, the images “are more strip club than storybook.” It’s a wonder, she adds, that “gyms do not have ‘get in shape for Halloween’ specials.”
(Actually, mine does.)
Of course, experts are often trotted out to speak of this as the “empowering” of women as they embrace their sexuality, and look for deep and positive meanings in the evolution of Cinderella from virgin to vixen. But take a walk through your neighborhood mall’s costume store, as I recently did – mine featured a prominent “no one under 18 allowed without a parent” sign out front – and you can cut through the sociological analysis.
And need I even delve into the gore side of things?
Then there is the Christmas-ization of Halloween. There are now Halloween trees decorated with ghosts and pumpkins, orange lights on houses, and even Halloween displays on lawns. In an article in USA Today on how Halloween is getting “Christmassy,” Maria Puente writes that “Halloween…is second only to the December holiday in spending.”
Don’t believe it? According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent $5.7 billion in 2008 on Halloween.
Yep, 5.7 billion.
But here is my biggest complaint of all: we are giving the world of the occult what it most wants.
And what does the world of the occult most want?
To be trivialized.
C.S. Lewis, in his famed Screwtape Letters, said that what demons hate most is to be mocked. Perhaps during Lewis’ time, that was true. But they’ve gotten wise. Now, I think they like it.
Why? It is one more way to mask their reality.
I was jolted into how we have removed the reality of the occult from our American culture during a recent trip to the Philippines. Reading the Manila Bulletin one morning (the nation’s leading newspaper, I saw the following headline: “93 students possessed by evil spirits.”
It was striking in how “matter of fact” it was. Just a story about what happened.
The story detailed how at least ninety-three students at a public high school in Bontoc (the Mountain Province General Comprehensive High School) were reportedly possessed by evil spirits while they were attending classes. The event led to the suspension of regular classes for several days.
They took them to the Bontoc General Hospital for treatment.
It didn’t help.
Later, they were brought to the churches in the town where they were blessed by priests, and this reportedly brought them back to their normal condition.
Happy Halloween.
James Emery White
Sources
Stephanie Rosenbloom, “Good Girls Go Bad, For a Day,” New York Times, Thursday, October 19, 2006, p. E1 and E2.
Maria Puente, “Halloween décor is getting Christmassy,” USA Today, Friday, October 13, 2006, p. D1.
For spending in 2008 on Halloween, see http://www.nrf.com/modules.php?name=News&op=viewlive&sp_id=578.
“93 students possessed by evil spirits,” Manila Bulletin, Wednesday, August 5, 2009, p. 6.
via A Halloween Story.
Christianity and the Dark Side: What About Halloween?
by Bruce on Oct.27, 2009, under Category
Albert Mohler
Author, Speaker, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Over a hundred years ago, the great Dutch theologian Hermann Bavinck predicted that the 20th century would “witness a gigantic conflict of spirits.” His prediction turned out to be an understatement, and this great conflict continues into the 21st century.
The issue of Halloween presses itself annually upon the Christian conscience. Acutely aware of dangers new and old, many Christian parents choose to withdraw their children from the holiday altogether. Others choose to follow a strategic battle plan for engagement with the holiday. Still others have gone further, seeking to convert Halloween into an evangelistic opportunity. Is Halloween really that significant?
Well, Halloween is a big deal in the marketplace. Halloween is surpassed only by Christmas in terms of economic activity. According to David J. Skal, “Precise figures are difficult to determine, but the annual economic impact of Halloween is now somewhere between 4 billion and 6 billion dollars depending on the number and kinds of industries one includes in the calculations.” Furthermore, historian Nicholas Rogers claims that “Halloween is currently the second most important party night in North America. In terms of its retail potential, it is second only to Christmas. This commercialism fortifies its significance as a time of public license, a custom-designed opportunity to have a blast. Regardless of its spiritual complications, Halloween is big business.”
Rogers and Skal have each produced books dealing with the origin and significance of Halloween. Nicholas Rogers is author of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Professor of History at York University in Canada, Rogers has written a celebration of Halloween as a transgressive holiday that allows the bizarre and elements from the dark side to enter the mainstream. Skal, a specialist on the culture of Hollywood, has written Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween. Skal’s approach is more dispassionate and focused on entertainment, looking at the cultural impact of Halloween on the rise of horror movies and the nation’s fascination with violence.
The pagan roots of Halloween are well documented. The holiday is rooted in the Celtic festival of Samhain, which came at summer’s end. As Rogers explains, “Paired with the feast of Beltane, which celebrated the life-generating powers of the sun, Samhain beckoned to winter and the dark nights ahead.” Scholars dispute whether Samhain was celebrated as a festival of the dead, but the pagan roots of the festival are indisputable. Questions of human and animal sacrifices and various occultic sexual practices continue as issues of debate, but the reality of the celebration as an occultic festival focused on the changing of seasons undoubtedly involved practices pointing to winter as a season of death.
As Rogers comments: “In fact, the pagan origins of Halloween generally flow not from this sacrificial evidence, but from a different set of symbolic practices. These revolve around the notion of Samhain as a festival of the dead and as a time of supernatural intensity heralding the onset of winter.
How should Christians respond to this pagan background? Harold L. Myra of Christianity Today argues that these pagan roots were well known to Christians of the past. “More than a thousand years ago Christians confronted pagan rites appeasing the lord of death and evil spirits. Halloween’s unsavory beginnings preceded Christ’s birth when the druids, in what is now Britain and France, observed the end of summer with sacrifices to the gods. It was the beginning of the Celtic year and they believed Samhain, the lord of death, sent evil spirits abroad to attack humans, who could escape only by assuming disguises and looking live evil spirits themselves.”
Thus, the custom of wearing costumes, especially costumes imitating evil spirits, is rooted in the Celtic pagan culture. As Myra summarizes, “Most of our Halloween practices can be traced back to the old pagan rites and superstitions.”
The complications of Halloween go far beyond its pagan roots, however. In modern culture, Halloween has become not only a commercial holiday, but a season of cultural fascination with evil and the demonic. Even as the society has pressed the limits on issues such as sexuality, the culture’s confrontation with the “dark side” has also pushed far beyond boundaries honored in the past.
As David J. Skal makes clear, the modern concept of Halloween is inseparable from the portrayal of the holiday presented by Hollywood. As Skal comments, “The Halloween machine turns the world upside down. One’s identity can be discarded with impunity. Men dress as women, and vise versa. Authority can be mocked and circumvented, and, most important, graves open and the departed return.”
This is the kind of material that keeps Hollywood in business. “Few holidays have a cinematic potential that equals Halloween’s,” comments Skal. “Visually, the subject is unparalleled, if only considered in terms of costume design and art direction. Dramatically, Halloween’s ancient roots evoke dark and mellow dramatic themes, ripe for transformation into film’s language of shadow and light.”
But television’s “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” (which debuted in 1966) has given way to Hollywood’s “Halloween” series and the rise of violent “slasher” films. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff have been replaced by Michael Myers and Freddy Kruger.
This fascination with the occult comes as America has been sliding into post-Christian secularism. While the courts remove all theistic references from America’s public square, the void is being filled with a pervasive fascination with evil, paganism, and new forms of occultism.
In addition to all this, Halloween has become downright dangerous in many neighborhoods. Scares about razor blades hidden in apples and poisoned candy have spread across the nation in recurring cycles. For most parents, the greater fear is the encounter with occultic symbols and the society’s fascination with moral darkness.
For this reason, many families withdraw from the holiday completely. Their children do not go trick-or-treating, they wear no costumes, and attend no parties related to the holiday. Some churches have organized alternative festivals, capitalizing on the holiday opportunity, but turning the event away from pagan roots and the fascination with evil spirits. For others, the holiday presents no special challenges at all.
These Christians argue that the pagan roots of Halloween are no more significant than the pagan origins of Christmas and other church festivals. Without doubt, the church has progressively Christianized the calendar, seizing secular and pagan holidays as opportunities for Christian witness and celebration. Anderson M. Rearick, III argues that Christians should not surrender the holiday. As he relates, “I am reluctant to give up what was one of the highlights of my childhood calendar to the Great Imposter and Chief of Liars for no reason except that some of his servants claim it as his.”
Nevertheless, the issue is a bit more complicated than that. While affirming that make-believe and imagination are part and parcel of God’s gift of imagination, Christians should still be very concerned about the focus of that imagination and creativity. Arguing against Halloween is not equivalent to arguing against Christmas. The old church festival of “All Hallow’s Eve” is by no means as universally understood among Christians as the celebration of the incarnation at Christmas.
Christian parents should make careful decisions based on a biblically-informed Christian conscience. Some Halloween practices are clearly out of bounds, others may be strategically transformed, but this takes hard work and may meet with mixed success.
The coming of Halloween is a good time for Christians to remember that evil spirits are real and that the Devil will seize every opportunity to trumpet his own celebrity. Perhaps the best response to the Devil at Halloween is that offered by Martin Luther, the great Reformer: “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him for he cannot bear scorn.”
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther began the Reformation with a declaration that the church must be recalled to the authority of God’s Word and the purity of biblical doctrine. With this in mind, the best Christian response to Halloween, might be to scorn the Devil and then pray for the Reformation of Christ’s church on earth. Let’s put the dark side on the defensive.
Original publication date: October 31, 2003
Should I Celebrate Halloween?
by Bruce on Oct.22, 2009, under Category
Dr. John Barnett
Discover the Book
“Let everyone who names the Name” Paul said, avoid iniquity. Is Halloween a celebration of iniquity? Read on and judge for yourself!Here are some quotes from what many different people have said over the years concerning the celebration of Halloween.Someone once said, “For a Christian to celebrate Halloween would be as proper as a Holocaust survivor trying to celebrate Hitler’s birthday.” Yet so many believers continue to do so without considering what they are doing. Excited children masquerading as witches, ghosts, goblins, skeletons, demons, and other grotesque characters skipping through the neighborhood knocking one doors changing “trick or treat” while holding out a sack in which one is to drop a piece of candy or other goodies…the party at school, or church, or Sunday School where they bob for apples, tell fortunes, or go through “haunted houses”…decorations of jack-o-lanterns, witches on brooms and black cats with arched backs…IT’S “HALLOWEEN” – one of the strangest days of the year.The word evokes a number of responses. Every year as October rolls around, there are those that look forward to it with excitement and those that cringe and wish it weren’t there. Some argue violently against it, some yawn because they’ve heard it all before, may just look the other way and go ahead with it. Some view it as an abomination, while many others view it as a harmless tradition. What is Halloween, or Samhain? What does it represent? And, what should the Christian think about it, if anything?Where did this fast growing American tradition come from? History provides the answers.The pagans believed that on one night of the year the souls of the dead returned to their original homes. “There was a prevailing belief among all nations that at death the souls of good men were taken possession of by good spirits and carried to paradise, but the souls of wicked men were left to wander in the space between the earth and moon, or consigned to the unseen world. These wandering spirits were in the habit of haunting the living…but there were means by which these ghosts might be exorcised.”To exorcise these ghosts, that is, to free yourself from their supposed evil sway, you would have to set out food – give the demons a treat – and proved shelter for them during the night. If they were satisfied with your treat, it was believed they would leave you in peace. If food and shelter were not provided, or if they were not satisfied, these spirits, it was believed, would “trick” you by casting an evil spell on you and cause havoc.
via Spirit Led Living.
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