WorldNetDaily: Church's anti-Halloween flier upsets family

In fact, we hear that this family is so upset that they've filed a complaint with the Elletsville (IN) police department!

Now I don't know the law in Elletsville, so I don't know whether a church that puts up fliers on people's doors can get run in by the police. Nor have I read the flier, and I think WorldNetDaily put up an incomplete story when they failed to include that flier's image, or at least a link to it. So I don't know whether this family has as much reason to fear vandalism as they seem to be displaying--the story says that they installed an alarm system on their home after they got the flier.

Several points:

1. Having an alarm system for the home is a wise decision, anyway.
2. Frankly, if anyone is going to commit vandalism, it's more likely to be Halloween celebrants than Halloween protesters. That family should stay for a Halloween season in Shillington, Pennsylvania, where neighborhood kids throw corn on people's front doors--or at least they did forty years ago when I lived there. Nor is Shillington the only burg noted for the frequency, the lack of subtlety, and often the severity of Halloween pranks.
3. Absolutely any message from the church, that pricks the conscience about dabblings in evil, is going to offend somebody. But last I checked, people did not have a Constitutional right not to be offended. As long as that flier did not threaten direct physical retaliation on behalf of the pastor or the board of deacons, I see no reason why such a flier ought to be unlawful or legally actionable.
4. Nor would it hurt to think about Halloween and its origins. Halloween is a real, current high holy day for the practitioners of Wicca--which is a poor man's (or poor woman's) version of the direct worship of Satan. The original name is the Festival of Samhain--and Samhain is the Lord of Death in the Druidic faith from which modern Wicca borrows heavily. Bottom line: Samhain is Satan, and Halloween is about Satanism.

The Roman Catholic Church gave Halloween its current name by promulgating "All Saints' Day" for the very next day. The RCC is famous for co-opting pagan holidays. Consider Valentine's Day (Roman Lupercalia), Easter (Babylonian Ishtar), and Christmas (Roman Saturnalia; Druidic Yule). Halloween literally means "All Hallows' Eve."

But mere co-optation is a poor substitute--and falls wide of the mark, anyway. Worship of the saints is a holdover from the deification of Roman emperors.

Better to promulgate a truly new holiday, in celebration of the harvest. In that way, that old standby, the pumpkin, still has its place--but not with a face wearing a silly grin, that actually represents a captured and tormented soul.

People really need to think about what they're doing--especially when continuing to observe a "holiday" dedicated to scaring people half to death.