LINUS, THE GREAT PUMPKIN, AND DEMONS: Foam Tombstones, Plastic Skeletons, and Spiritual Warfare
Every October, we decorate our homes with plastic skeletons and paper bats, never realizing that the genuine spiritual warfare happening around us makes these decorations look like child’s play.
The Peanuts Parable
Charles Schulz gave us Linus Van Pelt, that blanket-carrying philosopher who spent every Halloween night in a pumpkin patch. While Charlie Brown collected rocks in his trick-or-treat bag and the other kids gorged on candy, Linus waited faithfully for the Great Pumpkin to rise from the most sincere pumpkin patch and deliver toys to all the good children.
The irony cuts deep. Linus possessed unwavering faith in something completely imaginary, while the culture around him dressed up as representations of actual spiritual forces they dismissed as fantasy. We watch him shiver in that pumpkin patch year after year, missing out on childhood fun for a myth, and we feel that particular ache of watching someone believe so hard in something that will never come.
His sister Lucy mocked him. His friends abandoned him. Even Sally, who briefly joined his vigil, stormed off when she realized she’d missed trick-or-treating for nothing. Linus remained, wrapped in his security blanket, demonstrating the kind of faith Scripture tells us to have – except he aimed it at the wrong target entirely.
The Comfortable Lie
The autumn air carries more than just the scent of dying leaves and pumpkin spice. Streets fill with miniature witches clutching candy buckets, while yards transform into makeshift graveyards with styrofoam tombstones. We’ve turned darkness into decoration, evil into entertainment, and somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten that behind all the costumes and candy corn, a real battle rages for human souls.
Halloween has become our culture’s way of domesticating fear. We hang rubber spiders from doorways, knowing real black widows hide in our garages. We drape synthetic cobwebs across bushes while actual decay happens all around us. Children dress as vampires and demand candy from neighbors who lock their doors the other 364 nights of the year.
The commercialization runs deep. Americans spend billions on Halloween each year, second only to Christmas in decorating expenses. We’ve transformed ancient fears into profitable ventures. Haunted houses charge admission to manufactured terror. Horror movies premiere to packed theaters. Even churches host “trunk or treat” events, trying to reclaim the night with controlled doses of safe scares.
This sanitization serves a purpose. By turning our fears into foam and fabric, we convince ourselves we’ve conquered them. The skeleton on the lawn can’t hurt us because we bought it at Target for $19.99. The witch decoration stays exactly where we hung it. These threats obey us, bend to our will, come down when November arrives.
But what happens when we apply this same dismissive attitude to genuine spiritual realities?
The Inconvenient Truth
Scripture doesn’t mince words about the existence of evil. The apostle Peter wrote that our adversary prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Jesus himself cast out demons, spoke directly to Satan during his temptation in the wilderness, and warned his disciples about the spiritual forces arrayed against them.
The biblical account of Satan reads nothing like our Halloween caricatures. No pitchfork, no red suit, no cartoonish horns. Instead, Scripture describes him as an angel of light, a deceiver from the beginning, the father of lies. His first recorded words in Genesis involved twisting God’s commands, planting doubt with surgical precision: “Did God really say?”
Demons appear throughout both testaments, possessing individuals, causing physical ailments, recognizing Jesus’s divine authority even when humans didn’t. The Gerasene demoniac lived among tombs, possessed by so many unclean spirits they called themselves Legion. The boy brought to Jesus suffered seizures as a spirit threw him into fire and water, trying to destroy him. These accounts don’t read like metaphors or primitive misunderstandings of mental illness. They describe specific encounters with malevolent entities.
Modern Western Christianity often treats these passages with embarrassment, filing them away with Old Testament dietary laws as cultural artifacts we’ve outgrown. We prefer our faith scrubbed clean of supernatural elements that might make us look foolish at dinner parties. Healing? Sure, but through doctors and medicine. Miracles? Perhaps, but subtle ones that could have natural explanations. Demons? Well, that’s getting a bit medieval, isn’t it?
The Spiritual Battlefield
Paul wrote to the Ephesians that our struggle isn’t against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities, and powers of this dark world – against spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms. He wasn’t speaking poetically. The early church understood they lived in contested territory, that every prayer meeting could become a confrontation, that spiritual warfare wasn’t metaphorical but literal.
Consider what this means for us today. While we hang plastic bats from trees, actual spiritual battles rage around us. While children pretend to cast spells with toy wands, real occult practices ensnare teenagers through online communities. While we watch horror movies for entertainment, genuine evil manifests in human trafficking, addiction, and systematic oppression.
The occult has rebranded itself for the digital age. Tarot readings happen over video calls. Astrology apps send daily horoscopes to millions of phones. “Manifesting” and “speaking things into existence” sound like self-help but echo ancient occult practices. We’ve replaced the word “witchcraft” with “spirituality” and called it progress.
Young people especially find themselves drawn to these practices, seeking control in a chaotic world. They burn sage to “cleanse energy,” arrange crystals for protection, and consult spirit guides through meditation apps. What begins as aesthetic – the “witchy” look on social media – gradually becomes belief, then practice, then bondage.
The Power Dynamic
Here’s where the story turns. Yes, Satan exists. Yes, demons are real. Yes, spiritual warfare surrounds us. But – and this changes everything – they’ve already lost.
The cross wasn’t just about forgiveness of sins, though that alone would be enough. When Jesus died and rose again, he disarmed the powers and authorities, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross, as Paul told the Colossians. The resurrection wasn’t just victory over death; it was victory over the entire kingdom of darkness.
James writes something remarkable: Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Not might flee. Will flee. The being who challenged God himself, who deceived humanity in Eden, who accused Job and tempted Jesus – this being runs away when believers stand firm in Christ’s authority.
The demons Jesus encountered knew this hierarchy immediately. They begged him not to torment them, pleaded to be sent into pigs rather than face judgment, recognized him as the Holy One of God while religious leaders debated his identity. They understood power when they encountered it.
This explains why Satan relies so heavily on deception. He can’t overpower us in Christ, so he must trick us into surrendering ground we don’t have to give. He poses as an angel of light because his actual form would send us running to God. He whispers that we’re worthless, knowing that in Christ we’re beloved children. He suggests God won’t forgive that particular sin, knowing the blood of Jesus covers all.
Living in Victory
Understanding our position changes how we navigate the spiritual landscape. We don’t need to fear the darkness, but neither should we play with it. Paul warned the Corinthians not to participate in anything demonic, that they couldn’t drink from both the Lord’s cup and the cup of demons.
This means examining our entertainment choices with wisdom. Can we watch horror movies? Perhaps, but we should ask why we want to. Do we find entertainment in evil? Do we desensitize ourselves to spiritual realities? Some believers feel complete freedom here; others sense conviction. The key lies in honest self-examination and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s leading. What the Holy Spirit is telling you may not be the same thing he’s telling me… we all have our own unique personalities and leanings, and the Holy Spirit knows what we can and cannot handle responsibly without losing ground spiritually.
It means teaching our children truth alongside their trick-or-treating. They can enjoy dressing as superheroes and collecting candy while understanding that spiritual forces – both good and evil – actually exist. We don’t have to choose between fun and faith, but we do need to maintain perspective.
It means recognizing that our struggle against evil goes far beyond October 31st. The enemy doesn’t limit his activity to one night a year. Depression that whispers lies about our worth, anxiety that steals our peace, addiction that promises comfort but delivers bondage – these represent the real haunting in our world.
The Final Unmasking
Poor Linus, shivering in his pumpkin patch, waiting for something that would never come. His faith, sincere as it was, pointed toward emptiness. Every November 1st, he woke up disappointed, already planning next year’s vigil, never learning that sincerity alone doesn’t make something real. You can be sincere in what you believe… but you can be sincerely wrong.
We face the opposite problem. We’ve stopped believing in something that absolutely exists, dismissing spiritual warfare as superstition while living in the middle of the battlefield. We’ve traded the reality of spiritual conflict for the comfort of materialistic explanations, preferring pills to prayer, therapy to deliverance, positive thinking to spiritual authority. You can be sincere in what you believe… but you can be sincerely wrong.
Scripture offers us neither Linus’s misguided faith nor modern skepticism’s blindness. Instead, we’re called to clear-eyed recognition of spiritual realities coupled with confident trust in Christ’s victory. Yes, darkness exists. No, it doesn’t get the final word.
This Halloween, as neighborhoods transform into haunted landscapes and children become creatures of the night for a few hours, remember what’s real and what isn’t. The decorative tombstones will return to storage, but death remains until Christ returns. The fake cobwebs will blow away, but genuine spiritual entanglements require the power of Jesus to break. The plastic skeletons will go back in boxes, but the spiritually dead need resurrection only Christ can provide.
The Great Pumpkin will never rise from that pumpkin patch. But Jesus Christ rose from a tomb, defeating death, hell, and the grave. In him, we have something Linus never did – faith directed toward truth, power that actually delivers, and victory that’s already won.
Satan is real. His demons are active. The spiritual battle continues around us every moment. But we don’t fight for victory; we fight from victory. We don’t hope our faith will work; we know that greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.
This October 31st, while others celebrate fictional fears, we can walk in genuine freedom. Not because evil doesn’t exist, but because we belong to the One who conquered it completely. The masks will come off November 1st, the decorations will come down, the candy will be eaten. But the victory of Jesus Christ remains eternal, and in him, so do we.
Views: 16