How to Ruin Halloween!

Little kennie ham, the purveyor of multiple pseudo-Christian ministries (Answers in Genesis, the Ark Park, and the Creation 'museum') is trying to take any fun out of Halloween. In a post over on his blog, "Sharing Christ with Trick-or-Treaters" and offers his view on how 'trick or treating' should happen. He wants you to:

• Buy one of his booklets to hand out instead of candy (A Biblical and Historical Look at Halloween)
• Or try "reverse-trick-or-treating" when you bring a basket of goodies to bless your neighbors. Include a gospel booklet with your home-baked or store-bought treats. 
• Have a family discussion about this day with a DVD (Halloween, Paganism, and the Bible), it's by the same guy who wrote the booklet 
• Get kennie's “Halloween Learn and Share Kit”, which includes the previously mentioned booklet and DVD and also two different kinds of dollar-bill sized tracts.

Yes, each and every one of his alternatives to costumes and candy involve purchasing something from his store.  He's not just after having others do his preaching, he wants you to pay him for the privilege!

I enjoy Halloween, I always have.  It's one of my favorite holidays.  The best part is all the kids coming to the front door.  The costumes are terrific and it's just plain fun!  When my daughters were younger, trick or treating was usually limited to 2 hours.  For the first hour they would go trick or treating and for the second hour they would help us give out candy to the other kids.  They loved both parts and, to this day, still love it as much as I do.

My local town has a Halloween Parade and several stores filled with Halloween accompaniments.  We decorate inside and out, in fact this weekend we'll be putting up some lights, spiders and webbing, and corn stalks.  The evening before trick or treating my daughter, granddaughter, and I will be hand carving several pumpkins.  The next evening we will thoroughly enjoy giving out candy and seeing the incredible costumes and cutest kids!

I choose not to preach to those kids and their families.  I have no idea what religion they might be, so assuming they would even welcome preaching is hubris personified.  But we know why kennie wants us all to preach his party line -- he doesn't accept any religion but his own.  Remember his 'World Religion Conference'?  He advertised it as:

"Join us for the World Religions Conference July 24-27 and please share this with friends and family members who might be interested.More than ever, Christians need to know what other religions believe and then learn how to reach the lost souls mired in them." (World Religion Conference)

Did you note the phrase 'how to reach lost souls mired in them [religions other than his own].  So he doesn't even recognize that people coming to his door might not appreciate preaching his narrow viewpoint.  I pretty much can picture what will happen next year, if I did as kennie wants -- very few kids coming to the door!  The kids might not remember, but I am pretty sure the parents will.  Having a light on won't make much difference, the neighborhood kids will avoid my house!  Following kennie's suggestions would only ruin a perfectly fun holiday.  Little kennie's not going to ruin this holiday!

I am sorta curious if anyone bothers to go to kennie's house for Halloween?   I wonder what his house looks like, probably something more on the order of a mansion, like many other Evangelical preacher's homes.  So I bet you don't even get past the gate.

In closing I have to post this.  It has nothing to do with kennie and his whining.  It's just cute.