Halloween: It’s All About the Candy
Growing up in “Sin City” – Las Vegas, Nevada – I was exposed to the perception of glamour, bright lights, and stardom. Headliners like Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and the Beatles, to name a few, came and went regularly. The enticements and applause of the performing stages were “candy” for the stars. They thrived on it. Halloween, as a kid, was a night when kids got to get in on the “tricks” of the bright light culture of Las Vegas. It was one night a year when we participated in what we saw in real life every day – people going into casinos, taking chances, getting tricked, looking for stardom, and hoping to walk out prosperous and contented – the candy.
For us, growing up… Halloween was always about make-believe and the candy.
Candy was our big payoff on Halloween night. The more we had, the better. When I raised my two girls in Burbank, CA which has been called “The Media Capitol of the World,” “Media City,” or generally known to most as “Hollywood,” Halloween was about make-believe and grabbing as much candy as you could. In fact, my girls didn’t want buckets for their house-to-house marathon run – they wanted a pillowcase. Halloween was second only to Christmas as the biggest event of the year.
Burbank was full of Hollywood industry professionals. Set designers, prop masters, make-up artists, costumers, and a whole gamut of creative artists. The houses were elaborately decorated and built close together so you could go from house to house quickly and easily. The professional artists went out of their way to entice kids into their game of illusion and make-believe, and it was lots of fun.
With memories of my family fun-filled Halloween nights growing up in Las Vegas, I wanted my two daughters to have the same fun of dressing up in a well-thought-out costume and taking on the perception of what it would be like to be that character for one night and in the land of the movies there were lots of characters to choose from. We always made it a point to ensure that Halloween wasn’t about terror but make-believe and “fun scary.” My girls were also raised from an early age with Biblical knowledge–Satan and his demons are real, wicked, and exist–and they were taught not to play around with the genuine aspects of evil and the paranormal. We taught them that Halloween was a game of illusion and fantasy, and we used the holiday event as a teaching moment to discern the differences.
There is a lot of controversy today within the Christian Church on how and what to teach about the good and bad of Halloween. It has to do with understanding the difference between paranormal and paranoia. It wasn’t about being afraid or living in fear for my girls. It was about fun, make-believe, and candy. I think the controversy within the Church is a ploy of the devil to rattle Christian belief chains and divide and confuse us over innocent fun. When children and adults are secure in their beliefs and their knowledge of who God is, a night of dress-up and scary fun isn’t threatening or feared. My girls knew the difference, which helped them define the two worlds of good and evil.
I am looking forward to Halloween and seeing my grandchildren take part in the illusion of scary things and knowing that they don’t live in the fear of evil and death but in the knowledge of their eternal life in Jesus. He conquered evil and death; as believers, we have nothing to be paranoid about. My grandkids have put on the “full armor of God” before their Halloween costume. Halloween is a night of make-believe, fun, and candy.