Confessions of a Former Halloween Junkie
Earlier this week, I got a phone call from my sister. We live three hours apart, and with eight young children between us, phone conversations are tricky and limited. Even with a 3 day old infant, though, my sister sounds chipper as she reflected on this summer-to-fall transition we find...
Honey, what shall we do with our kids on Halloween?
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify. (1 Co 10:23) Spending all my childhood and early youth in native Romania, I have to admit that I am not (yet) emotionally involved with all the...
Being Authentic All Year Long
Are you hiding behind a mask when it’s not Halloween? Listen as Fr. Gregory Joyce speaks with Fr. Stavros Akrotirianakis on encouraging young people to be authentic and remove their everyday masks. Fr. Stavros recently published a new devotional book for the Nativity/Christmas Season titled, Let All Creation Rejoice, which...
What Is a Saint?
Our primary goal at the Orthodox Christian Network (OCN) is to share the truth of Orthodoxy with the world. Our secondary goal is to generate fruitful conversations that strengthen us in our own faith and increase our ability to share it in meaningful ways with our fellow human beings. This is why...
In Defense of Hallowe’en
As I recall, I was always a black cat—not so much because black cats were thought to be evil and witch’s familiars or anything. I just loved cats, and so thought black cats were cool. My neighbour usually dressed up as a hobo, but me—I was always a black cat....
The Walking Dead
Every year at Halloween, Americans entertain themselves with television shows, movies and weird stories about the walking dead. It is a strange fascination, probably because we do not like death and do not really know very much about it. We no longer bathe the bodies of loved ones who die,...
Ancient Christianity Confronts Death and Halloween
I remember well walking the streets of our cozy steel-mill suburb of Pittsburgh with our two- and four-year-old sons in a wagon, flanked by our neighbors and their children as we went off trick-or-treating. Without leaving even the first block, I thought, “Toto, we aren’t in Kansas anymore!” Whole front...
