Halloween Creatures

 

Here's a poem I wrote in keeping with the season.

 

Halloween Creatures



Wisp of smoke or waterless cloud,

No door can keep it out;

Straight from Hamlet or Macbeth;

A restless, wandering spirit.

 

See the track upon the ground

As Satan slithers by;

Listen when the rattle sounds,

Avoid the forked tongue.

 

Sonar guides it through the night,

Its wings spread like a cloak;

Bloody teeth and lapping tongue

Betray its source of food.

 

Robbed from a grave at midnight

To become an anatomy lesson;

Bones suspended from a hook

Resembling a hangman's noose.

 

Gloomy barn corner houses a web

Where sits a poisonous predator;

After sex it kills its mate,

Making itself a widow.

 

Which sinister creature takes the prize

For most creepy and terrifying?

Not ghost, rattlesnake, vampire bat,

Skeleton or black widow spider.

 

Without costume, make-up, or mask

To enhance or hide its features,

The scariest creature of all

Stares back from my mirror.

Give the Devil His Due

I haven't dressed up for Halloween in years--not until Saturday, when my writers' group read at the Lake County Library. None of my writings fit the theme, so I volunteered to get Edgar Allan Poe to emcee the event.

On the way to the library, I tuned into Christian radio station WMBI and listened to the host and his guest discuss whether Christians should participate in Halloween. Nobody asked that question when the guest was a child or when I was growing up. My brothers and I always dressed up and went trick-or-treating on Halloween, and my minister father never called it a pagan holiday or worried about its effect on our young minds. It just wasn't an issue in those days.

I admit it. I let my children dress up and go trick-or-treating when they were young, and I hand out candy every year. For me, it's still a non-issue.

In his preface to The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis said, "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them." So yes, we do need to give the devil his due. But what is his due?

My edition of The Screwtape Letters includes quotes by Martin Luther and Sir Thomas More. According to Luther, "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." And to shorten the Thomas More quote, "The devil . . . cannot endure to be mocked."

Are we really showing an unhealthy interest in the devil when we let our children go trick-or-treating on Halloween? Or even when we dress them in red suits with horns and a tail and give them a pitchfork to carry? If it has any meaning at all (and for most people it doesn't), isn't it closer to scorn and mockery?

Yes, Satan is a force to be reckoned with, and both Christians and non-Christians should be on guard against him. But his influence is more subtle than what occurs on Halloween.

Christians give the devil too much due when we forget that there are three things he is not. He is not omnipresent (God allows Satan to walk this earth but he cannot enter heaven without God's permission); he is not omniscient, or he would have known better than to enter Judas and bring about his own defeat; and he is not omnipotent. God, and only God, is in control. When we view Halloween as a threat, we take Satan too seriously.

So give the devil his due--but no more.