My mother didn’t “celebrate” Halloween and didn’t want us three girls out there asking for candy either.

My mom was a single mom… three young daughters… English as a second language… scary day… threats of poisoned candy.  As a grown adult, that makes sense to me.  It was about safety, security and saving money on three costumes.  To be fair, she usually bought us a bag of candy and let us have at it… but no dressing up.  Of course, as a child, I just felt like it was another thing we didn’t get to do.

Finally, when I was 12 or 13, my mother finally let us get dressed up and get candy at the local mall.  And after about a half hour of begging, she also reluctantly let my sister, Renee, and me go through the haunted house that was there.  It was FAN-stinkin’-TASTIC!!!  I can still remember the thrill of it all.  Maybe it was independence.  Maybe it was some strange kind of bonding with Renee.  Maybe it was the mere sick scariness of it all.  I still don’t know.

What I DO know is that Halloween and trick-or-treating is still a pretty big controversy in the Christian circle.

I’ll be honest.

Brian and I take our kids trick-or-treating.  They get dressed up… in whatever Holly’s kids were the year before (why buy a new costume when they don’t care what they are yet, right?) and we walk with them and their friends around the neighborhood asking for candy for about an hour.  We then check through the candy bag, give them a few “safe” pieces of candy, let them run off a sugar high together, eat a few pieces ourselves, then throw away the rest.

What do you do? … and why?

I thought I’d post my personal thoughts… so here goes:

It was pretty difficult to pick up the anti-Christian theme in the film… and I was looking pretty critically at it.  I really don’t think kids will pick that up.  However, I wouldn’t recommend this film for young kids.  It’s pretty intense (it’s rated PG-13).  There were some young children in the theater watching it the same time we were and they were crumpled up in their seats.  A LOT of anticipation and suspense… we jumped out of our seats a couple of times.

The books are another story though.  I haven’t read the books yet (though I plan to), but I understand that as you read into the series, it gets a lot more blunt.

IMHO, I think the movie had a good moral behind it:

to seek the truth. 

I think we should always be doing that anyway.  And if this story truly pushes people/kids to seek the truth, I believe they will find it.  Jesus is the way, the truth and the life… they will find him.

Getting off my soapbox now…

Why do you think he has such a following?