R. Scott Clark on Halloween, Sabbath, & Culture

[Claudiu]

https://heidelblog.net/2021/09/what-to-do-about-halloween-on-the-sabbath/

I was pleasantly surprised, considering RSC's R2K, to see this post. He doesn't provide the strongest defense in my opinion, but it is a defense nonetheless in holding the line and resisting the downgrade of worldliness and the cult entering the Church in the last 200-300 hundred years and especially the past few decades.

 

[Jack K]

I don't view Halloween as a pagan (or syncretistic) religious festival that we must shun on that account. Sure, anything that causes people to think about death and the dark world will reveal some of their religious leanings, but my neighbors don't treat it as a religious event. I think we can participate with care.

But the culture's shift with regard to Halloween falling on Sunday is sad to see. When I was young, it was assumed throughout the neighborhood that festivals and trick-or-treating would be done on Saturday in such years. Now, that kind of respect for the Lord's Day and Christian worship has virtually disappeared, probably because believers themselves have lost that respect. My family will still have some candy on hand Saturday evening, in case any neighborhood kids come by then. But I don't really expect to see any.

 

[hammondjones]

But the culture's shift with regard to Halloween falling on Sunday is sad to see.

Yes. Indeed, I was recently dismayed to learn that I had to explicitly ask for a little league team for my son which did not practice on Sundays (not a competitive league). And I think that would have been almost unthinkable 1 generation ago in the Bible Belt. Actually, "when I was a boy" elementary teachers often wouldn't even assign homework on Wednesday nights due to the preponderance of mid-week church activities.