I don’t doubt that Satan is everywhere; my difference with Mickey is that the devil doesn’t use the same tactics with everyone.
My point was that there aren’t any written works about children’s festivals or even popular festivals in any writings that Mickey is going to recognize or at least not any except those pointing to an excess. The Desert Fathers were undeniably holy, but they didn’t write about the spiritual lives of children! They went into the desert specifically to do combat with the devil by a life of severe penances and self-denial, and so of course their writings are going to be from that perspective.
The way the devil attacks someone called to difficult aesthetic practices will be different than the way the devil would approach different “prey.” You don’t insulate a child from the devil by teaching her to see the devil in everything. You don’t keep her from evil by teaching her that it is dangerous to use her imagination or to have fun.
I’m not saying that Halloween, with its emphasis on death, the other-worldy, and unseen powers that can cause fear, doesn’t need to have a warning that cautions against lures towards the occult. That is a reasonable warning!
Still, a person who condemns carving and lighting up pumpkins and hanging bats and cobwebs because these things pose some threat to holiness can unknowingly misrepresent what holiness is. That is a real spiritual danger, too! There are millions of people who reject religion because they think that holiness and enjoyment of the pleasures of this world are mutually exclusive. That is a lie that the devil uses to drive a wedge between us and the love of God, too.
This lie even puts a wedge into the lives of many Christians, such that they have religion and holiness in one compartment and enjoyment of the pleasures God ordained for us to have in another. If we start putting God in one box and the good things of life in another, that inevitably takes our gratitude for these blessings away from our enjoyment of them. We start looking at enjoyment itself as a sin, and therefore think that avoiding sin isn’t even a realistic goal for a “normal person.”
I understand that Mickey has some legitimate points. I think the blanket condemnation of all of Halloween, though, is a mistake. It is right to tell others what is forbidden. It is not right to forbid what is allowed; that tactic, because it is not fully based on the truth, can actually play into the devil’s hand.