Halloween was one of my favorite holidays as a kid and, no, it was not because of the candy (though it did play a big part). I loved Halloween and still do because it was the one time of the year where everyone had fun.

No one was excluded from getting some candy and dressing up. Everyone was allowed to be a kid without getting ridiculed or judged. Whenever you drove around the streets, almost every house was decorated and kids, parents, and teenagers were all dressed up trick-or-treating on their block.

Yet nowadays you do not see much of the decorations and hardly any trick-or-treating. I mean, yes, there are kids who trick-or-treat, but compared to past years there are hardly any. More and more kids are only experiencing trunk-or-treat instead of actual trick-or-treating. I understand the worries parents have and Halloween being on week days can be hard, but it just seems a shame they will not be able to have that experience.

The experience some kids have is appalling because some churches host Hell Houses in lieu of haunted houses that depict gruesome acts sinners commit that cause them to go to hell and then show a scene of salvation in Jesus. This seems to be more of a scare tactic to evangelize people. For me I find these disturbing compared to anything else during Halloween as it uses sins, games, candy, gore, violence, and sex to attract people. It seems to be counterproductive to me and, in some cases, just wrong. One example is a Hell House that a Christian producer wanted to create where one of the rooms depicted the Pulse nightclub massacre. I mean really? I am glad it got shut down before it could actually happen, but it just shows how much the holiday (and, yes, it is a holiday) has been forgotten or changed.

Yet I think the saddest part of all of this is that if you replace this article about Halloween with Christmas or Thanksgiving it still rings true (of course not about the Hell Houses). The joys and spirit of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas no longer exist. That is the saddest thing.

Being thankful on Thanksgiving and appreciating all you have with family and friends is forgotten in lieu of the feast and the savings on Black Friday which happen the very next day. Thanksgiving used to be a time of the year where family and friends got together and appreciated all they have even if it was not a lot because they had each other, which was all that mattered. The same rang true for Christmas.

Christmas was the time where you did not care about yourself or the gifts you were getting, but instead about being generous to others, coming together as a family and community, and being unified. It was a time when communities came together and decorated their houses, sang christmas carols, helped each other out, and just had a good time together.

But just like Halloween, Christmas and Thanksgiving have changed as well... and not for the good.