The following post is actually a re-post from the entry titled "Un-American Activities". It discusses Halloween and since it is Halloween I thought it was appropriate to put it up again and hopefully give additional people a chance to read it.
Every year at this time it happens. For whatever reason, I end up disclosing to someone that we don't "celebrate" Halloween at our house. The person to whom I'm disclosing this usually looks at me like I'm guilty of assisting Al-Qaeda or other such Un-American activities. Let me take this opportunity to set the record straight on this whole "Not Celebrating Halloween" thing.
For a start, let me make some assurances. My family and I are not; (a). followers of some extreme fundamentalist cult (eg, snake-handlers), (b). against children getting an opportunity to accelerate the rotting of their teeth with hoards of candy, (c). bad neighbors, or (d). the type of people who see a satan worshipper behind every bush.
Both my wife and I trick or treated as children and, for the most part, we both turned out okay. Neither of us has had any bad experiences with Halloween. We simply don't believe in making a big deal out of a Pagan Holiday. Frankly, we're mystified that so many others do. It isn't so much that we're against Halloween as it is that we don't really see why it is celebrated in the first place.
As Christians, paganism is anathema to our entire belief system. However, we know many well-meaning people who are also Christians and feel free to go through all the usual Halloween celebrations. We don't think any less of them for doing so - unless of course they really go crazy with it. (then we just think they're generally weird anyway.) In fact, we do hand out candy to all the costumed kids in the neighborhood that come to our door. Our children don't participate in Halloween parties and they don't dress up in costumes but otherwise we don't make any big deal out of it.
Retailers, though, do make a big deal out of it. I'm convinced that the biggest reason most people get into Halloween is due to the fact that it is hyped by retailers. Aside from Christmas, this is a real money making opportunity. The fact that retailers go overboard in selling us on this event is just one more reason why we don't pay much attention to it.
Sometimes it is difficult to find good information about subjects like these. There is a wealth of information available on the internet. Unfortunately, it is difficult to distinguish between those who are overly hysterical and those who provide historically accurate information. If you are interested in knowing a little more about Halloween as a pagan holiday, check out this page written by a person that I know and trust.
Halloween is just a pagan holiday. "Celebrating" it isn't a big deal, but if your beliefs run counter to those of a typical pagan, you might want to re-consider.
I date the beginning of the Culture Wars on March 8, 1983. The occasion was a convention for the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida and the speaker was President Ronald Reagan. The speech would come to be known later as The Evil Empire speech. In it, Reagan declared the Soviet Union to be an evil empire. He went on to lament the "watering down of traditional values" and efforts to undermine religion.
Reagan was subsequently derided by the mainstream press for this referencer to the Soviet Union. The fact that this even made news was startling. For generations previously, Americans had accepted this as fact. It wasn't an accepted fact anymore - the Culture Wars were underway.
By Culture Wars, I'm referring to a society-wide attempt to undermine traditional values; an attempt to make all values relative and therefore flexible to the situation at hand. I suppose you could make an argument that this process really started with the hippies in the 1960's, but that movement was more about re-interpreting traditional values, than it was a re-definition of our entire value system. The Culture Wars will shape the future of our nation by changing our very perception of Right and Wrong.
Prominent conservatives have written about the culture wars too. Some have even gone so far as to declare that they are over and conservatives have lost. I think such declarations are premature. The battle for traditional values is far from over.
Several factors have contributed to a new vitality. The popularity of talk radio and "balanced" news outlets like Fox News, the use of the internet as an alternative news source, and a new breed of politicians and others not afraid to publicly address these issues in a straight forward way. In the era before widespread availability of cable television and before the soaring popularity of the internet, the three big networks seemed to have a stranglehold on the dissemination of information. Now that's no longer true. Society has many disparate ways of receiving and interpreting information.
Yet, there are still struggles that remain. The most recent example concerns Lt. General William Boykin, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. General Boykin made the mistake of actually letting his religious views be made public. In speeches given to religious audiences, he made references to the devil as our true enemy and related his belief that the only true God is the judeo-christian God. He asserted that our battles aren't just with flesh and blood, but against more sinister forces of a spiritual nature. The mainstream press and the liberals are outraged. How dare someone presume to actually know Truth?
However, what the General said is not outlandish or evidence of fanatical beliefs. Recent surveys point to the fact that a large percentage of Americans hold these same beliefs. It is only the liberals who see these statements as evidence of some fiendish right-wing plot.
It is encouraging that members of the administration have come out in defense of General Boykin. Still, they need to be more aggressive in their defense and others need to speak up as well. The future of our nation rests on the fact that there is such a thing as right and wrong and that those concepts aren't malleable but are actually written on stone.
Ann Coulter recently did a column on General Boykin. Check it out.
During my brief experience in local government, I've come to the realization that democracy is messy. If you imagine a well oiled machine, humming along ever so efficiently you will be imagining the antithesis of a representative form of government. I used to think that democracy entailed a group of reasonable individuals grappling with difficult issues and finally coming to a decision after a careful and deliberate process. Now I know differently.
The reality is that there are a variety of reasons why people in government vote one way or the other for a particular issue. Sometimes the reason consists only of pride or it could be due to loyalty toward a specific individual or group. At other times, a representative will support an issue for reasons that are unclear even to that person. Debates about an issue are rarely centered on logic. Often, logic just sits at the periphery ready to be used as a handy prop in case it's needed.
Fortunately, all of this mess is an important part of democracy. If it's only efficiency that you want, you'd do well to look to the likes of Hitler and Stalin. I would imagine that most decisions made during their time in power were generally very logical and efficient, and also very disastrous. Somehow, the fact that democracy is a messy business is also it's strength. I don't understand it and sometimes it's really annoying, but it has worked pretty well for our nation and it works for other nations.
Right now it's easy to grow impatient with the rate of change in Iraq. It seems that every day we hear of unfortunate and tragic events. Yet, I believe that Iraq is slowly stumbling toward democracy. The messy state of affairs there gives me hope that Iraq will emerge from the ruin caused by Saddam into a vibrant, and democratic, nation.
Instead of the usual political, cultural, or religious fare, I'd like to take a moment to point out a great resource.
This site uses Movable Type. which helps me to post articles without having to worry about a lot of technical stuff. As a result, this site is "syndicated" with something called RSS. RSS allows anyone with an RSS Reader to view the headlines without having to revisit the page. This allows you to see, at a glance, whether the site has been updated - without actually having to pay a visit.
I admit it. I'm a News Junkie and RSS helps me to get my fix without spending a great deal of time every day visiting the relevant websites. In order to access various headlines when I'm not at my desk, I've written an RSS Reader that works from the browser.
The browser-based version contains all of the blogs and other news sources that I typically check on a daily basis. It's found here. Use it to visit some great sources of information.
Every year at this time it happens. For whatever reason, I end up disclosing to someone that we don't "celebrate" Halloween at our house. The person to whom I'm disclosing this usually looks at me like I'm guilty of assisting Al-Qaeda or other such Un-American activities. Let me take this opportunity to set the record straight on this whole "Not Celebrating Halloween" thing.
For a start, let me make some assurances. My family and I are not; (a). followers of some extreme fundamentalist cult (eg, snake-handlers), (b). against children getting an opportunity to accelerate the rotting of their teeth with hoards of candy, (c). bad neighbors, or (d). the type of people who see a satan worshipper behind every bush.
Both my wife and I trick or treated as children and, for the most part, we both turned out okay. Neither of us has had any bad experiences with Halloween. We simply don't believe in making a big deal out of a Pagan Holiday. Frankly, we're mystified that so many others do. It isn't so much that we're against Halloween as it is that we don't really see why it is celebrated in the first place.
As Christians, paganism is anathema to our entire belief system. However, we know many well-meaning people who are also Christians and feel free to go through all the usual Halloween celebrations. We don't think any less of them for doing so - unless of course they really go crazy with it. (then we just think they're generally weird anyway.) In fact, we do hand out candy to all the costumed kids in the neighborhood that come to our door. Our children don't participate in Halloween parties and they don't dress up in costumes but otherwise we don't make any big deal out of it.
Retailers, though, do make a big deal out of it. I'm convinced that the biggest reason most people get into Halloween is due to the fact that it is hyped by retailers. Aside from Christmas, this is a real money making opportunity. The fact that retailers go overboard in selling us on this event is just one more reason why we don't pay much attention to it.
Sometimes it is difficult to find good information about subjects like these. There is a wealth of information available on the internet. Unfortunately, it is difficult to distinguish between those who are overly hysterical and those who provide historically accurate information. If you are interested in knowing a little more about Halloween as a pagan holiday, check out this page written by a person that I know and trust.
Halloween is just a pagan holiday. "Celebrating" it isn't a big deal, but if your beliefs run counter to those of a typical pagan, you might want to re-consider.