As Halloween quickly approaches and stores begin to stock up on costumes, candy, and decorations, I begin to feeling very much “alienated” from society because my family and I do not celebrate this holiday. Television and movie theatres quickly turn to blood and gore to entertain the masses. Everywhere I go, I can see signs of celebration of death and dying. That has been a part of this society for as long as I can remember and I am brought to mind 1 Peter 2:11-12 in which he writes:
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
That is exactly what we are; temporary residents (sojourners and exiles) of this place when our true home is prepared for us in heaven. We must keep watch over our lives and the lives of our children. How difficult this is at times like this! I was driving on the I30 and a very large bulletin-board advertising some horrorfest with a naked woman smiling while a monster smiles over her back. Have you seen that? Seems to be everywhere now. Also, I read an article in the Dallas Morning News regarding the costumes stores are selling this year. Read it yourself online. It tells about children’s costumes that will shame French maids. That saddens me that any parent would dress their children in skimpy outfits and present them as objects of sex.
There is nothing wrong with playing dress-up, but Tonja and I prefer the dressing-up to be educational and edifying to our children and other children. We heard of a homeschool group celebrate Reformation Day (which happens to fall on Oct 31 as well) in which the children dress as 16th century Christians, give skits, do Reformation artwork, and such. This is what I talked with the SFC staff about and we are considering that for next year but this year proved too soon to organize. This is not only good and fun for the children, but it can be quite fun for the adults as well as there is a lot of old hymn singing, old recipes, and games. Want some horror added to it? We can always burn someone at stake. Any volunteers? Wait, didn’t I see Neall wear a bright orange Volunteer shirt at the Living Stones picnic?
One blog I appreciate which has posted on this subject is Tim Challie’s blog. He is on a discussion group Jeff and I belong to and I find his responses insightful. Read his post on the subject for more thought. Let me know your own thoughts.
Grace and peace,
dale
I read an interesting article on John MacArthur’s website. Here this the link…
http://gty.org/resources.php?section=articles&aid=231305
I agree with MacArthur’s article. He always puts grace in his criticism of things. Thanks for the article link.
My wife and I are having a little party on Reformation Day, and I’m dressing up as Martin Luther. Well, it’s really just a monk custume, but I’ll carry my Luther translation German New Testament and spout out some shocking Lutherisms to my unwitting party guests. I even thought of giving myself a tonsure to really have a realistic costume, but I don’t think I’ll do that. Oh, and I’ll tape up the 95 theses to my front door. It’s not as cool as nailing, but it’s a metal door.
Hi Stephen, Great to hear from you and even more so that someone is actually going to put thoughts into action. Where exactly do you get these monk outfits. I am not aware of an monastery nearby. I found a few for my little girls (16th century milkmaids), but not for adult monks.
We got my monk costume at one of these giant Halloween stores. It isn’t that fancy. I could probably hold a lightsaber and call myself a jedi just as easily.
My original plan was to dress like a 17th century Puritan, but apparently nobody else does because such clothing just does not seem to exist. My wife does have a funny round hat like you see some Puritans wear, but that’s as far as I could find.
We had our first Reformation Party this year! It was fun! http://onebeggarsbread.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/reformation-day-discovery/
From this post you can click over to see lots of photos and explanations of the games and story, etc. It was REALLY fun, and I think we’ll do it again next year. You could easily do this as outreach as well. We didn’t this year, tho.