JesusWeen is coming...

This is no joke. There really is a Christian religious group calling for believers to put the Christ back in Halloween.

From jesusween.com:

Every year, the world and its system have a day set aside (October 31st) to celebrate ungodly images and evil characters while Christians all over the world participate, hide or just stay quiet on Halloween day. Being a day that is widely acceptable to solicit and knock on doors, God inspired us to encourage Christians to use this day as an opportunity to spread the gospel. The days of hiding are over and we choose to take a stand for Jesus. “Evil prevails when good people do nothing”. JesusWeen is expected to become the most effective Christian outreach day ever and that is why we also call it” World Evangelism Day”.

Started in 2002, it's basically a more organized hybrid of the "harvest party" alternative celebration — promoted by some fundamentalist groups to keep their kids away from trick-or-treating — and controversial religious cartoonist Jack Chick's appeal to witness to children by giving his religious tracks at the door instead of candy.

(via chick.com)

In the case of JesusWeen, participants are encouraged to dress all in white and distribute bibles and tracts. And the movement has spread into Canada.

Metro reports that a 40-year-old Calgary pastor named Paul Ade, who says "I don’t believe Halloween represents anything close to God or close to Christianity". They are currently recruiting through direct outreach to likeminded congregations, as well as through Twitter and Facebook.

Again from the JesusWeen site:

"While we hope to impact more nations from next year, our focus for this year is to make major impact in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton in Canada; focus on Maryland, Houston and Dallas in the USA; and London in the UK. In reality JesusWeen will be held by small groups, individuals or by churches in thousands of public locations and from home, therefore it’s not restricted to any particular city. The goal is to have JesusWeen groups (Jesus Winners) in every city and every nation spreading the love of Christ on October 31st."

They point out that "The dictionary meaning of Ween is to expect, believe or think."

Unfortunately, that is not what "ween" means in the parlance of our times. (Warning: Urban Dictionary is mostly written by teenage boys, and therefore highly offensive to everyone else.)

Holy unfortunate branding.