Halloween - Do you celebrate or not?

[Tropical Wilds]

Getting gifts from family is very different to door knocking on strangers houses for junk candy.

So it’s ok to stuff out your hand and ask for things from family, but small treats for people who ask to participate in the holiday, that’s bad?

Who ever said anything about "sin"
That word has no meaning to me whatsoever.

It’s the topic of the thread…

Kids love lollies. I don't actually think they care anything about halloween, they just want free lollies.

You are wrong. Again, having never participated you wouldn’t know, but kids certainly do care about Halloween beyond getting candy. As to a large number of adults.

USA is fine, Canada would be my favourite American country though. Would love to visit Canada, it looks really beautiful in photos.
Not sure why you think I think the Americas is ewwwwww. I'm just talking about Halloween here.

You’ve said a lot of things that seem more than a little snide towards America.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

There is a Christian way to observe All Hallows' Eve, but it's not dressing in costumes and going "trick or treating" or partying.

As to whether it's harmful to dress in costumes and go trick-or-treating and partying, the questions for Christians are: "Is it beneficial? Is it edifying?"

A number of years ago, I worked on an IT team of 25 programmers--all Indian--and myself as the network specialist that ran their test and production servers for a particular product. Most of those Indians were Hindu, but one was Christian. So, that year the Hindu festival of Diwali fell right between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Hindu programmers brought in various foods traditional to that holy day.

I tried some of them, but I noted that the Christian Indian very carefully touched none of it. I asked her about that, and she explained that the other Indians knew she was Christian and always watched her witness. If she ate any of the Diwali food, it would appear to them that she was "hedging her bets" against whether she had full faith in Christ. She said it was okay for me to eat it because, of course, the food was just food and the other Indians knew it otherwise meant nothing to me. But it would harm her witness for them to see her eat it.

How sad for her… It’s more indicative of a problem where people feel that being Christian means being perfect, or being Christian means you can’t partake or enjoy the celebrations of other cultures.

I’m Christian and I’ll make and share Hanukkah food when Hanukkah rolls around. A person I work with celebrates Yule and they and their partner bring in a huge Yule spread and I’ll happily eat that. On a human level, I’ll eat as a sign of respect for how hard they worked with their partner to make food to share. On a spiritual level, I don’t think their God/dess thinks that because I had a Yule cake I’ve converted, and I don’t think my God thinks that’s all it takes either.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

It's important for Christians to protect their witness. Otherwise, you would call us hypocrites. That was the issue in that case. For Hindus, Divali is not just a day to eat treats, it's a religious observance, and a Christian who would share in a Hindu religious observance would be justly called a hypocrite.

First off, it wouldn’t be “just” to call a Christian who enjoys food from other cultures or celebrations a hypocrite. It would be just as stupid as if somebody said “oh, you had Italian tonight…? I guess you aren’t really an American anymore because anybody who claimed to be a proud American wouldn’t eat non American food…”

Secondly, I’ve never heard anybody say that somebody is a hypocrite for eating food from another religions celebration, especially when it’s brought in for communal sharing at work. No rational person thinks that eating a religiously tinged meal is the same as renouncing a faith. So many foods, especially in the states, have religious backgrounds and claiming that eating one makes you a hypocrite is ignorant. Ever eat a bagel? Or potato pancakes? Ever been told you must really be Jewish now? Of course not. Because everybody understands the complexity to belonging to a faith isn’t as simple as eating a religiously ethnic food.

And thirdly, if somebody thinks that… Who cares? It’s a them problem, not a you problem. You can’t control what other people think of you, nor should you try. And if you feel like the whole world is trying to catch you out so they can accuse you of being faithless, you need to adjust your thinking to remember what they say doesn’t matter. Half of this board thinks I’m not a proper Christian because I read Tarot cards, collect crystals, and dress like a goth witch. Who cares? I witness my beliefs by knowing my Bible, by my actions, and through my day-to-day life. If somebody can’t get past what I look, do, or collect, that’s their problem.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

When I was student (for the nth time) in the early 90s, I had a Christian Indian professor. (I was a Christian then, too.) He invited my wife and I to a Diwali celebration with the Indian community in that town. I got no hint that it was weird for him and it certainly was not for us (we're not Indian).

I'm guessing that attitudes about Christians participating in the festival varies among communities.

This is more in line with what I know about Diwali too. It’s an everybody holiday where people across cultures and religions are invited to celebrate. It’s about gathering friends and family, not just people of certain faiths. The Diwali celebration just held in town was hosted by an Indian group, but open to everybody.

 

[tobelieveinHim]

Huh? In USA do you have random kids knocking on your door demanding a wrapped gift?
That's strange, I've never heard of that one.


Sounds like an absolute nightmare to me.

It's starting to infect our country too. I keep telling my kids this is a USA thing not an NZ thing. But thankfully my kids are getting too old for that nonsense. My eldest had no interest in it this year.
Keep it in USA, you guys can have all the "fun", hopefully it dies out here.

I agree with most of what you said, but I definitely don't want it here, either. A lot of the decorations are scary to me, and I'm a pretty much adult for the most part. The Halloween decorations scare me.

Also, there was a video I saw that shows that kids are not supervised by their parents on Halloween, and just assume that the kids will not go with a stranger. The video proved every parent wrong, and they were certain their kid wouldn't step in to a strangers house. Halloween is a ripe holiday for , well, I won't say it.

 

[tobelieveinHim]

Getting gifts from family is very different to door knocking on strangers houses for junk candy.

Who ever said anything about "sin"
That word has no meaning to me whatsoever.

Kids love lollies. I don't actually think they care anything about halloween, they just want free lollies.
USA is fine, Canada would be my favourite American country though. Would love to visit Canada, it looks really beautiful in photos.
Not sure why you think I think the Americas is ewwwwww. I'm just talking about Halloween here.

Loll. I am American, and America makes me cringe sometimes, if not most of the times. Canada has it worse than we do. Never been there, but I have heard everything is more expensive. Only brush with Canada was online somewhere for me.
The guy was nice, but he had a lot of stuff to say, as well as they are a Monarchy. Monarchys are generally not the kind of societies to strive towards.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

I agree with most of what you said, but I definitely don't want it here, either. A lot of the decorations are scary to me, and I'm a pretty much adult for the most part. The Halloween decorations scare me.

There are plenty of decorations people put up for holidays that I hate. Or decorations I don’t like. The responsibility lies with me to moderate my exposure, not have others curtail their actions to suit me.

Also, there was a video I saw that shows that kids are not supervised by their parents on Halloween, and just assume that the kids will not go with a stranger. The video proved every parent wrong, and they were certain their kid wouldn't step in to a strangers house. Halloween is a ripe holiday for , well, I won't say it.

Pointless fear mongering. Even kids that are unsupervised by their parents are supervised by others and if they see a kid being led into a house, they say something. Rates of child abduction, rape, murder, or trafficking don’t increase on Halloween, making the “won’t somebody think of the children” nonsense just hyperbole.

 

[stevil]

Loll. I am American, and America makes me cringe sometimes, if not most of the times. Canada has it worse than we do. Never been there, but I have heard everything is more expensive. Only brush with Canada was online somewhere for me.
The guy was nice, but he had a lot of stuff to say, as well as they are a Monarchy. Monarchys are generally not the kind of societies to strive towards.

I live in NZ, part of the Commonwealth too.
Really, the King, Queen thing is a non event. Magazines like them, they chased Lady Di to her death. The queen did a speech every New Year, other than that, really they don't matter.

 

[tobelieveinHim]

I live in NZ, part of the Commonwealth too.
Really, the King, Queen thing is a non event. Magazines like them, they chased Lady Di to her death. The queen did a speech every New Year, other than that, really they don't matter.

I looked at what you have to do to immigrate to Canada, after I had been chit chatting with this guy for a little bit via status update, and Twitter, and fearing another President who isn't a conservative, for the worse of America, and a part of their two or three anthems that you have to memorize in order to immigrate there, is something about honoring their Queen,

And they explain why is that they are a monarchy in Canada. It's apart of one of their National Anthems.

There are two languages for Canada, one French, and one English.

The same guy I had been friendly with for a little bit, he posted a link to Mexicos immigration site when their site broke because Donald Trump was elected President.

 

[stevil]

I looked at what you have to do to immigrate to Canada, after I had been chit chatting with this guy for a little bit via status update, and Twitter, and fearing another President who isn't a conservative, for the worse of America, and a part of their two or three anthems that you have to memorize in order to immigrate there, is something about honoring their Queen,

And they explain why is that they are a monarchy in Canada. It's apart of one of their National Anthems.

LOL, once you get through immigration, no doubt you can forget all that nonsense. I bet the locals don't even know all the words.

 

[QueenOfTheUnknown]

I used to when I was younger. Now that I'm older I just eat the candy.

 

[CoreyD]

I used to when I was younger. Now that I'm older I just eat the candy.

I hope you mean "just eat the candy" like I would any other day, just as we would eat cake any day, without waiting for one "special" day, do do so.