Happy Halloween -- here's some Jesus Christ!
October 31, 2006
Why give out candy when you can proselytize?
Bruce Watters used to simply hand out candy on Halloween, just like his neighbors in St. Petersburg, Fla., until he decided the holiday's ghoulishness really didn't jibe with his Christian beliefs.
But rather than skip the neighborhood ritual, he's put a Christian stamp on it. For the third year in a row, kids will leave his porch with a piece of candy, plus a religious tract - a concise, colorful handout telling how to attain salvation through Jesus Christ.
"If they want supernatural, let's give them Godly supernatural," Mr. Watters says.
…Halloween, long associated with pagan traditions, is now high season for an old American tradition of evangelizing through tracts. The nation's four major publishers of tracts say they sell more at Halloween than at any other time of year, including Christmas and Easter. And the push is on to grow the seasonal market. This year, thanks to new glow-in-the-dark tracts, the Texas-based American Tract Society expects to set a new Halloween record by shipping out more than 4 million tracts.Wow -- lucky kids. I never got any religious tracts when I was trick-or-treating. When we built our Halloween bonfires around which to dance in Satanic rituals, sometimes it took hours to find all the kindling.
