Halloween is my favorite holiday – Really?
No it is not.
But this is a sentence I have read from several friends over social media.
In Switzerland it is not that big a deal as it is in other countries.
In our little town only a few kids are disguised, coming for a trick and treat.
There are some public events specifically designed to celebrate Halloween. Shops sell Halloween costumes, facial paint and house decoration hoping to push a trend to capitalize on. However, it is never this big, cultural holiday as it is for other parts of the world, for example North America. I know that in that region, Halloween is something cultural where activities fill the whole month of October. There are many great events for kids and adults during this season.
As I said in the beginning, Halloween is not my favorite holiday. On Social media there are several posts every year why we, as Christian, should not participate in Halloween, explaining the real meaning, and background of Halloween.
While I agree with these articles my main reason why we would never participate in Halloween is slightly different.
Why we as family are not celebrating Halloween:
Because we know that there is a spiritual world. Even though we don’t “see” much of it here in the western world and even many Christians here don’t see this as something “real”- it is still a reality.
While I was living in South America, I met multitudes of people who have felt or seen demons or know firsthand stories of people who experienced them. It’s just so clear to everyone in South America and in Africa as well, that this dimension exists.
I’ve seen people get set free from Demons. To see this sudden freedom and joy in their lives is amazing!
With this knowledge and this life-experience, what we are teaching our children is this:
There is God, Jesus and the Holy spirit – and there is satan and the demons.
God is Love.
He does not HAVE some love – He IS Love. He wants to fill our hearts with this Love, his joy, peace, freedom, goodness, presence to the overflow, in order that our lives can be a testimony of who he is, to bring His kingdom down to earth, and the love he has for this world.
Satan on the other hand is filled with hatred. He is a deceiver (rev.20.10), a liar and a murderer (John 8.44), to name just a few of his attributes. See here for more.
We as Familythatmatters
want to know (practically, through personal experience) the love of Christ which far surpasses mere knowledge (without experience), that we may be filled up (throughout our being) to all the fullness of God (so that we may have the richest experience of God’s presence in our lives, completely filled and flooded with God Himself.
(literally written that way in the Bible, Ephesians 3. 19, Amp).
Because we do have this desire for our lives, we don’t want to belittle who Satan is and what his aim is in our lives. And we don’t want to take any part of it.
Our children know very well that in our family, we will never dress as any creature from the dark side. To dress as Vampire, witches, sorcerer, ghost, demons, etc. are out of question. They would never want to do such facial paint. In our home we don’t have any of these decorations, toys, clothes with printed motives, movies, games or books with these creatures.
Why? Because it just does not make any sense to actively keep the devil out of your life and the lives of others and at the same time have a fascination for him.
There is no such thing as a “sweet” demon. A “cute” sorcerer, a “friendly” ghost or a “funny” vampire.
If they appear like that, they are disguised, but that will never change their attribute.
We explain to our children that Jesus, through his death on the cross and his resurrection, He is stronger than any of them. And that in the name of Jesus, we have all power over them. With this knowledge, we can’t imagine to be part of a Halloween celebration that celebrates the dark world.
In fact, we let our kids watch Franklin the Turtle, a nice funny story for kids. But there is this one episode about Halloween. We always kept them from watching this particular episode. But one day a friend of ours told us she’d seen the episode and it would be absolutely ok. Well, we are not exaggerating that when we let our kids watch it, fear entered their lives for the very first time. And the oldest was age 6 at that time.
Even though he already knew very well about the realities of the spiritual world and how to deal with it, he simply never experienced fear up to that point since he’s just always been embedded in love. Love casts out all fear. We did never put our kids in “scary” situations, and they did not know that darkness of the night, for example, was something one could be afraid of. We really felt like we had done such a stupid thing and we’ve become even more careful since then.
