Should you and I be involved in the celebration of Halloween?

Finding the answer to this question has been an interesting journey in itself. I interviewed several people and then researched what many leading Christian writers, authors and spokesmen have written about the subject. I also searched various websites like www.christianitytoday.com, www.focusonthefamily.org, and www.cbn.com to read what others might be saying. What I found was an agreement on the origins of Halloween, but a mixture of recommendations about allowing our children to participate in this super-charged media driven holiday.

The origins of Halloween are Celtic in tradition and have to do with observing the end of summer sacrifices to gods in Druidic tradition. In what is now Britain and France, it was the beginning of the Celtic year, and they believed Samhain, the lord of death, sent evil spirits abroad to attack humans, who could escape only by assuming disguises and looking like evil spirits themselves. Read On

America's sweetheart, the actress Sandra Bullock, is being dragged into an unpleasant legal battle to prove that she is a better parent than her husband’s former wife, the star of more than 100 pornographic movies.

Bullock is backing claims by her husband Jesse James, the television celebrity, that they have made a good home for Sunny, his five-year-old daughter.

His ex-wife Janine Lindemulder, 40, star of such video titles as Mrs Behavin’, Sleeping Booty and Dyke Diner, disagrees. She has just been released from a six-month prison sentence for tax evasion.

When she was in jail in Oregon she reportedly sent her former husband a bitter text message that read: “U win. Sandra finally has her baby — congratulations.”

The tattooed blonde remains in a halfway house in Los Angeles until the end of this year when she can seek custody of her daughter. Read On

HOUSTON CITY COUNCIL PRAYER In Houston, Texas, a legal battle is brewing over the city council's practice of praying before meetings. Plaintiff Kay Staley has filed a federal lawsuit against the city. She says the long-held tradition of opening the meetings with prayer violates the Constitution. "Just because it's always been doesn't make it right," she said. "There are lots of people who feel this way. I do. Most people are afraid of their jobs, or their friends." The suit says that allowing prayers of any faith violates the so-called separation of church and state. However, one city council member called the lawsuit frivolous. Attorneys for the city say there are legal guidelines for allowing prayers at public events. "I think they are publicity stunts," Council member Mike Sullivan argued. "I don't think it's a genuine concern. Nobody has come before to do this at the city of Houston that I am aware of." Senior Assistant Attorney Don Cheatham said, "I think what we need to do is review… and make sure we're in conformity with current law." It's not the first time Staley has butted heads with the city over a religious monument. In 2003, Staley sued to have a Bible monument removed from a Harris Country courthouse. Three years later an appeals court ordered the monument removed. CBN reporting.

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER There may be some truth to the saying that all women will eventually turn into their mothers, with a U.S. study finding daughters age and wrinkle like their mothers. Plastic surgeons used facial imaging and 3D computer modeling to study the aging process and found that daughters' faces tend to follow their mothers in terms of sagging and volume loss, particularly around the corners of their eyes and lower eyelids."Studies of facial aging up to the present have largely been observational and subjective," the team from Loma Linda University Medical Center in California said in a report published by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). "This study applies state-of-the-art facial imaging and three-dimensional computer modeling to measure changes in the aging female face." The study, presented at an ASPS conference in Seattle at the weekend, was based on examining 10 sets of similar looking mother-daughter pairs aged from 15 to 90 to measure changes in the aging female face. Mothers and daughter have the same skeletal and cellular make up. Researchers Matthew Camp, Zachary Filip, Wendy Wong and Subhas Gupta, all plastic surgeons in California, found that volume loss in the lower eyelid began when women were aged in their mid-30s and continued to progress teadily through life. They said these findings may act as a further guideline for cosmetic rejuvenation of the eye region. Eyelid surgery is one of the most common cosmetic procedures, used to get rid of crows' feet around the eyes and sagging to make the face appear younger. ASPA figures show that it was the fourth most popular cosmetic surgical procedure in the United States in 2008.

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