I hate halloween. People knock on the door having fun and there I am caught between wanting to be a cheerful, life-affirming Christian and believing that 'Halloween' is dangerous and a foolish thing to dabble with.

"But it's just a bit of fun" is what people always say. The trouble is that, while people are just trying to have fun they are, at best playing with and, at worst, celebrating evil in all its power. Surely people don't really want their children to become ghosts, witches, or monsters later in life, do they?

I was thinking about this today. I think celebrating 'halloween' is a bit like playing in a sewer. It is distasteful but it is possible to have fun. Indeed most people may be unharmed by it, but some will be swept away, and many more will catch minor infections which they may or may not realise came from the sewer.

Celebrating witchcraft may be fun, it may not touch many of the folk who do it, but there are real powers of evil in this world and they infect us all too easily and sweep some off their feet. God has an altogether better plan for us. He wants us to be clean, pure, healthy, and free, 'cos that's when we really can discover life and have fun.