The orange Halloween lights went up early this year. And in our neighborhood, there seemed to be a lot more of them—along with tiny ghost dolls hanging from trees, cobweb-like fabric stretched across porches, plastic spiders perched on roofs, and bloody plastic hands emerging from cardboard gravestones. For some reason, Halloween seems to have become a bigger deal than it used to be.
What motivates people to buy nine or more Bibles? A good question, asked by Kimberly Winston in Publishers Weekly (October 9). A good answer, I suppose, would be “because they each have eight or more friends who need a gift.” Or “because they have targeted eight or more people for conversion.” Or “because they are smugglers who would sneak Bibles into more nations where that book as a document of freedom is still unwelcome.”
A large majority of Americans consider Sunday the most enjoyable day of the week, according to a 1998 Gallup poll. Few Century readers would wish for a different answer. However, as autumn once again evokes rueful ministerial jokes about ending worship in time for the congregation to get home for the football game, some may think that Sunday has become a little too enjoyable. Has what was once a "holy day" become a "holiday," a day given to secular leisure rather than to sacred rest and worship?