Four things evangelicals get wrong about Halloween

Imagine the scene. A pitch-black night. Half a dozen semi-feral kids, dressed to terrify. A old lady in a phone box. The pack of assorted ghouls hidden in bushes around it, waiting to jump out and scare the liver out of her when she'd finished.

It's the dark side of Halloween, all right, that and the whole occult thing.

I confess: I was one of them. I remember feeling very daring in my white sheet with holes cut in it for eyes (I assume I had asked my mother for permission). I also remember the growing sense of unease as the old lady stayed on the phone and the whispered discussions among the rustling leaves. Had she seen us? Was she too scared to come out? Could she be calling the police?

We were not cut out for villainy. We stood up sheepishly and apologised to her when she emerged. She was very gracious and asked if we did anything on Sunday afternoons. No, we said, too demoralised for quick thinking; and so it was that my brothers and I joined a small Brethren assembly at four o'clock every Sunday for the next few years.

Every year, at about this time, there's a outbreak of evangelical hysteria about Hallowe'en. All that stuff about witches and ghosts, and the more fashionable zombies – it can't be healthy, surely? So we claim that it 'celebrates evil', we manufacture worries about children being out by themselves in the dark knocking on strange doors, and run Light Parties instead which are terrifically cheerful. There's nothing at all wrong with Light Parties; my own church is doing one. But here's why I think evangelical churches have got things a bit wrong. Read more

See also
My First American Halloween
Scarier than Halloween

One All Hallows Eve I dressed as Padrig, the apostle to the Irish and Ireland, and went from house to house, carrying a staff topped with a cross. At each house I offered to invoke God's blessing on the house's occupants. I don't remember being turned down by anyone. Take time to listen to this beautiful version of "The Deer's Cry", or St. Patrick's Breastplate, sung by Angelina Davis. For the lyrics of this hymn and story behind it, see "Deer's Cry or St. Patrick's Breastplate." To my way of thinking it is the perfect hymn for the Eve of Hallowmas.