#489: Thoughts About Halloween

No, this isn’t a discussion about whether or not Christians celebrate Halloween. Like Christmas, God knows the heart, and He knows if you’re worshiping the devil, or conjuring up spirits, or paying homage to Lucifer. If you’re celebrating any of those things, you’re probably not going to limit it to one day a year.

I personally don’t celebrate Halloween, but I do buy candy in the event some kiddo stops by my house. In my town at least, that is just about a thing of the past, because they have a downtown event where all the kids do their trick-or-treating at businesses, and that seems to whet their appetite for sweets.

What this post is about, is how our society changes things for our convenience. What brought this subject to mind is that, because many businesses aren’t open on Saturday, my town decided to celebrate Halloween tonight, so the little ghosts and goblins packed main street a day early.

Now if I were the type to celebrate Halloween, I might be a little perplexed at the idea of changing a holiday to a day that is convenient for us. And it’s that way for many holidays.

We don’t celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday on his birthday, we celebrate it on the Monday closest to his birthday. Why? So we can have a three day weekend, of course! And do we truly take the day off to celebrate? I know for me, it was just another day off work (before I retired). You would think that if we were truly taking a day off of work to celebrate, there would at least be parades, or programs commemorating his accomplishments. But nothing, just more ink on the calendar.

It’s the same as Presidents Day. And we even combined the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln into one, for convenience.

And Memorial Day, not on the day it was established, but rather the last Monday in May, again, for a three day weekend. Now where my grandmother lived in Missouri, they didn’t give a rip about what day the government told them; their Memorial Day was on the actual Memorial Day.

So all of these holidays that we must honor and celebrate, providing it is convenient for us.

The same holds true for God’s word; we honor what’s convenient for us. We find some loophole in the Bible as if we were a paid attorney looking for a loophole in a contract, and if we can’t find a loophole, we just interpret script the way we want, no matter how far stretched it is.

For example, most don’t honor the Sabbath Day anymore, at least the seventh day Sabbath that was created in the book of Genesis and solidified when God wrote the commandments on stone with his own finger.

“That was for the Jews only”, is what you’ll hear. “Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it Holy”…am I missing something? Where is the word “Jew” in that commandment?

“We celebrate the Lord’s Day”…which commandment is that in the Bible. Actually, you celebrate Sunday because the pagan Romans worshiped the sun on Sunday, and they were afraid the “Christians” would overtake them, so they lured the gentiles into celebrating the Sabbath on Sunday. Everyone fell for it except the Jews, because Christ was a Jew who observed the Sabbath Day, and they felt they were followers of Christ (at least the Messianic Jews anyway). The rest celebrate a 7th Day Sabbath, not because of Jesus, but rather because God made that the Fourth Commandment.

“We celebrate the resurrection of Christ”. OK, you celebrate Easter. What about the other 51 Sunday each year?

Do you celebrate communion? Yes, we do! So you wash each other’s feet? Ewww! Gross! No!!! That’s right…I remember the passage where the disciples asked Christ to wash their feet and He said, “Ewww, Gross!”

I know, I’m just rambling now. But if we were truly following God and Christ, we would do what they asked, and not just the parts that are convenient for us.

I keep waiting for the government to move Christmas to the closest Monday of that week, so we can have another three day weekend. Excuse the sarcasm…it’s just another service I offer.