Soul Pastor was telling us the other day about standing in line at an airport and listening to one of those know-it-all types telling his companions that Hallowe’en was a Christian holiday… fortunately someone set him straight. But considering that October 31st is the anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 theses on the Wittenburg door, maybe it ought to be a holiday of some sort. Len remembers, on the eve of All Saints Day. As for that day, as Jamie Howison put it, “Contrary to what you might imagine, All Saints doesn’t just act as a combined feast day for all of the big-name stained glass sort of saints… rather it commemorates all those who have shaped and formed us; both the well known and the lesser known people of God.” I love the idea of a feast to celebrate the “unknowns” in that “great cloud of witnesses.”

Back on to Hallowe’en, Robbymac posts some great thoughts even if some of them are technically John Fisher’s. I’ve thought about our religious history with Halowe’en… I recall some years back before we had kids, the church we were in would hold these ‘alternative’ parties for their kids to dress up in (nice costumes only) and attend. Finally one year nobody planned it in time and there was no alternative event; this was the year that the senior pastor decided to give away hot chocolate in his garage, and had a great time meeting his neighbours who all filed past and were happy to take a warm beverage on a chilly evening. After that, there were never any more “alternative” events. This year we did the same as last year… we packed up our kids and their costumes, darkened our lights, and headed off to… Missional Chickie’s house, where we took our kids went out trick-or-treating together and we also lent a hand to her efforts in serving up hot chocolate on her front lawn, as they’ve done every year for the past several. It seems that people in the neighbourhood know their house for the fact they can get hot chocolate on Hallowe’en, and several people remarked about past years. I don’t know what’s up with our neighbourhood, maybe just the fact that there aren’t a lot of kids on our street, but there are only about two or three houses on our whole bay that have their lights on and serve up candy on Hallowe’en.

Trivia of the day: from what movie is the famous line, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” Who said it? Image of the day goes to Kevin Cawley’s jack-o-lantern photo… I laughed out loud, my wife just wrinkled her nose at it.

After the whole candy-collecting operation, the kids did what all kids do at such times, digging in to their hoard. Ours don’t go overboard on candy all that much, and a while later, our four-year-old asked me for a snack. I was a bit dumbfounded why she would sit on a couch with a bag of candy beside her and ask for a snack, but she selected “toast” from the brief menu I offered. And a glass of milk. She was pretty tired, and on the way home she reminded me that she still wanted something else to snack on when we got home. “Something healthy, like carrots,” she said. “Carrots are pretty healthy. Like yoghurt.” Okay, for the record, she gets all this from her mother. Me, I’m wondering if she’d notice if I swiped a couple of chocolate bars from her stash.

The Trivia answer if you’re still pondering, is The Fly, and Geena Davis.