I was in a diner and it was all decorated for Halloween and on the wall it read, "Happy Halloween."

I thought to myself, "I've never had a happy Halloween and don't want to."

I've noticed that more and more houses are being decorated for Halloween; even putting up lights. Innocent fun, they say, and don't get me wrong. I'm not a fuddy duddy, but I'm not one to promote Halloween because of what it now represents. That's not the way it was intended to be.

Like Christmas and all our Christian holidays they just turned out that way. Commercialized. I did some research and here's what I found out about Halloween. As did a lot of Christian holidays, it came from a pagan holiday -- the feast honoring the Roman goddess Pomona. Then they turned it into a religious holiday in commemoration of all saints.

It was called "All Hallows E'en." But like the devil does with everything he can, this festival became perverted with haunts and haunted houses, evil spirits, ghosts, goblins, witches, and other scary monsters to try and scare the living daylights out of you.

Now, say what you please, but it seems to me that that's not something Christians should be celebrating because there's an old adage that says, "Give the devil an inch and he will take a mile." How true that is! Lest we've forgotten, folks still have to be careful where they let their children "trick or treat," and they still need to check the goodies, because of evil people. I always think of trick or treat like this, "God treats; the devil tricks."

Back in the 1950s, out in the county nobody went trick or treating. They would have thought you had lost what little bit of sense you were supposed to have. Well, this old boy heard about it from his city slicker cousin, so he went out to trick or treat. The first house he came to he told the elderly lady what he was doing, so she gave him two cold biscuits. You may laugh, but with some syrup that was a treat.

I like what most churches do at Halloween. They have a hallelujah party which entails fun, food, and worship -- praise to God who has more power than satan, the witches, the ghosts and goblins.

As one preacher said, "We as Christians should be careful what we celebrate and what we tell our children. They're not stupid. They are very perceptive and when we tell them fairy tales for truths, all about old Saint Nick, the Easter bunny, and lots of ghost stories, then when we tell them Bible stories that defy human reasoning they seem to think they're just some more fairy tales told for truth.

One little boy was asked if he believed in the devil and he said, "No! It's like Santa Claus. He's my daddy." Please don't say amen to that.