Were we just Halloween lite?

With most events and activities, we tend to spend a bit of time planning before hand but also reflecting afterwards.  Christmas tends to see a lot of up front planning and a lot of resources provided from outside, Easter not so much so.  Halloween, reflecting perhaps our uncertainty of where it fits in tends to get a few blog posts on the day in terms of outside support.  You may have planned something like a light party a month or so in advance.  Is there any follow up discussion afterwards about how it went.

I thought it might be worth encouraging some after the event reflection and review, not least because that will help us think in advance about future years, and I thought the question in the title might be a good one to help focus our thoughts. 

To be sure, if you went for the Light Party event, you will want to think practically in terms of how many families attended, did you get positive feedback, were there any issues and how much Gospel literature did you give away?  If your approach was to try and sit it out then I guess the measures will be more about how many times you were disturbed by trick or treat callers and if you participated then your kids will be counting up the sweet haul by now.  More seriously, you will want to take time to consider the spiritual impact of your approach on the church and families.

As I mentioned prior to Halloween, I’m very supportive of the Light Party approach.  However, one thought has been bugging me. It links to a comment I made in the previous article about how we focus on light and darkness but there is more to Halloween than that.  To be sure, at one level it fits in with other festivals that celebrate light, such as Diwali  for Hindus and part of the pre Christian tradition is about preparing for the dark and cold of winter.

However, significant to ancient pagan festivals, the Christian All Hallows Feast and contemporary Trick or Treating and Halloween Parties is the question of death.  It is as much death as darkness that our society does not have  a clue what to do with.So, the festivities across all of those cultures and traditions touch on curiosity (what happens when we die), grief (is there a way of connecting with loved ones? Will they come back?) and fear (are there more dangerous and evil things out there, beyond this physical life in the here and now.

This links to another point.  One of the big questions people have is to do with “is there  more than this?” We live in  a secular, materialistic world but Halloween is one of those moments when people are (even in a flippant, non-serious way) are open and alert to the possibility of there being something else, something more.

This is why I ask the question “Were we just Halloween lite?”  The risk is that by inviting people to an event which is essentially a similar party but without he scary stuff then we offer something less than Halloween and perhaps don’t fully grasp all of the connection points it is creating.  It’s brilliant to be able to talk about Jesus as the Light of the World but that only picks up on one dimension of what the event is about and indeed one dimension of who he is.

So. Can we use our Halloween response events to draw attention to those other crucial things.   Christians have the answer to those big questions that Halloween throws up.  Let’s make sure we point people to the truth that there is more, that the supernatural world is real but both natural and supernatural are created by a sovereign, supernatural God.  Let’s point people to Jesus who is not just the Light of the World but the Lord of Life who has conquered death.

Let’s make sure that we don’ just offer Halloween-lite but instead full fat Gospel goodness.