Chilling, Thrilling Halloween

Hey, I admit, I went trick-or-treating as a kid. I understand the spiritual reasons why our children need an alternative these days, not to mention the safety factor. But I did--and I had a blast. My family didn't know Christ back in those days, so we really didn't consider that the holiday celebrated death, the devil and spiritual darkness. I now know the origin of Halloween began as a religious observance of saints in the church. But as a kid, it was a chance to fill our pillow cases with as much free candy that we could gather in a few hours.

A few days out, my mom would let my brothers and I make a trip around the corner to Owl Rexall drugstore to purchase a Halloween costume. They were made of a cheap material that you would pull over your regular clothes. I'm sure that if a lit match touched the material, one would become a human torch. The mask was plastic and held to the back of the head with a stretch band that always hurt because it would get caught in my hair. There was usually a hole where the character's mouth was. I would spend all night unconsciously pushing the tip of my tongue through the slit. I had cuts on my tongue for days afterward. Some years, as we got older, we wouldn't even wear a costume. The anticipation that built up amongst the friends on my block was like a balloon about to pop. Just moments before we were to begin our evening of gathering candy, I would rip the pillow case from my bed and race out the door to haunt the neighborhood.

Some houses went all out with decorations and sound effects. We're talking the 60's here, where technical challenges like sound systems, lighting and fog were insurmountable by the average family. Nowadays you can find all you need at Walmart. I loved the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and they had a really scary (for that time) record called Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House. Creative folks had the record playing over their stereo that they hid somewhere in the bushes in front of their house. One family decorated their porch with spider webs and a stuffed dummy next to the candy bowl. In one case, a neighbor rigged a speaker in a dummy's mouth and stood to the side with a microphone, out of view, to scare the kids who dared to snag the candy. We were frightened out of our minds when the dummy started talking. At that point, the candy wasn't worth it.

Halloween is a great time of year for our church in Murfreesboro. We serve some 20,000 locals with free candy, music, rides and a humongous cake walk. We take the opportunity to show families that Jesus loves them. Many people start coming to our church because of our Hoedown event every year. I enjoy seeing the creativity of the costumes. Even so, I still have great memories of our simple Halloween adventures back in the day. My mom told me many years after that as soon as we crashed into bed with exhaustion from trick-or-treating, she and my dad would rummage through our candy bags to pilfer some of the good stuff for themselves like Snickers bars and M & M's. She said they left plenty for us. Funny, I never noticed any missing.