You can tell a lot about a person’s worldview from looking at their home’s front lawn and porch.
And I’m not referring to political signs.
American consumers are expected to spend upwards of $12 billion on Halloween this year, a dramatic jump from the $3.3 billion shelled out in 2005 for candy, costumes, and seasonal decorations.
It seems Home Depot is limiting customers to just one 12-foot “Skelly” skeleton and one 12 ½ – foot “Deadwood Skeleton” purchase per visit, a restriction driven by the fact the company has been selling out on the monstrosities. Each cost around $300.
A homeowner in Tennessee has apparently put together a “haunted house” so extreme that visitors are required to sign a 40-page waiver that warns: “Your hair may be chopped off, dentistry may be done, you may have a tooth extracted.”
The owner, who would probably want to be named, told a reporter, “My skill is getting into somebody’s brain and doing what I want with it for the show.”
According to most historians, the origin of the haunted house can be traced back to 19th-century England. In 1802, the French artist Marie Tussaud created a big stir in London when she sculpted and assembled a collection of “death masks” featuring the faces of guillotine victims. It was called the “Chamber of Horrors” – and at the time it generated an enormous cultural buzz.
Believe it or not, Walt Disney, long considered America’s icon of wholesome family fun, is credited with launching the modern-day haunted house craze. Opening in 1969, Disneyland’s “Haunted Mansion” became a huge hit, proving once again that Hollywood shapes culture in more ways than one.
Halloween’s pagan and dark roots leave many believers unsettled, leading some to ignore it altogether. Halloweens of my youth in the 1970s and 80s seem quite tame in comparison to the ghoulish and downright horrific displays that blanket neighborhoods today.
Its evil evolution isn’t coincidental nor detached from culture’s embrace of the wicked.
When violence passes for entertainment in movies, television, and music, is it any wonder that moral sensibilities would be dulled or eliminated altogether? Many of the Halloween exhibits we see are simply mirroring what Hollywood produces.
The sick is celebrated. The gruesome is glorified. The wicked is normalized.
When it comes to Halloween, we all probably know people who feel they can separate out the fiction from the facts of life. They might see “slasher” movies as innocent fluff – artificial suspense that doesn’t harm anyone and maybe brings back memories of their childhood with neighborhood friends.
But that would be an immature and unwise approach.
“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them,” urged the apostle Paul (Ephesians 5:11). He also wrote to believers in Rome, “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Ephesians 12:9). Solomon taught, “Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evildoers.Avoid it, do not travel on it” (Proverbs 4:14-15).
Many parents choose to embrace the innocent side of Halloween, including trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving, and bobbing for apples. Some churches have chosen to redeem the occasion by holding “Harvest Festivals” that feature these types of traditions.
Halloween’s gruesome rise, though, reminds believers we have a lot of work left to do in today’s culture. Anyone who “celebrates” the ghoulish trades Divine thrills for the evil one’s wicked chills.
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