The conservative war on Halloween (Interesting account of Baptist Holloween)

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The conservative war on Halloween
By Richard Millhouse Phipps


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Share this article Published: Monday, October 26, 2009

Updated: Monday, October 26, 2009

I grew up in the Baptist Church and was exposed to a profoundly backwards type of evangelical ignorance that I credit with making me the warped adult I am today.
One of the most confounding aspects was their hatred of Halloween.


The religious right believes that Halloween is celebrated as the birthday of Satan by Pagans and Satanists, when they perform blood sacrifices and what not.
Their reasoning is that if kids go out in costumes to knock on doors and collect candy, they are participating in satanic rituals and will burn in hell for it.
To escape this, most churches offer something called “Kids Fun Night.”
This is almost always billed as “the safe alternative to Halloween” and involves simple games (think ring toss or bean bag throw) in a church basement filled with straw and scarecrows.


In my day, no matter how pitiful your attempt was at winning, you got candy.
In fact, you could stop by each booth and take the candy without playing the game if you wanted.
It was an incredibly Christian act to give away candy like that, but God forbid you showed up dressed as a vampire, demon or Disney character.
That would bring frowns and nervous whispers all around and you were sure to be asked if you had given your soul to Jesus.


When I got too old for “Kids Fun Night,” I found myself being shoved in a van every October with the members of my youth group and taken to something called a Judgment House.

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