We used to call them “fads,” but I don’t know what they call them anymore. Mini skirts were one of my favorites. We used to flash the peace sign and say, “Far out, man.” Some of those fad things lasted longer than others such as the expression, “cool.” It’s still with us to a certain extent.
I don’t know exactly when this fad started. It could have been before I was born. I just remember when I was a little kid on the 4th of July and Dad took this scary, red thing out of a box. When he lit it, sparks and smoke went everywhere. I was terrified of this little Red Devil. My brother laughed, but I was so terrified I made Dad put the little red devil back in the box after he stopped smoking. A few months later, my trauma was renewed when I ran into another kid trick-or-treating who was dressed in a devil costume complete with tail and trident.
I got through the next few years and was hoping the devil fad was gone from our culture when my fears were aroused by Anton LaVey who wrote the Satanic Bible. He made the pronouncement, “Do what thou wilt.” LaVey also managed to set up a church for Satan and gathered a fair-sized congregation. Following this were several scary demonic movies such as “The Exorcist,” “The Omen,” and “Mark of the Devil.” I didn’t despair. I had already dealt with my trauma and besides, these were just films. The Devil was not making a permanent spot in our culture. Or so I thought.
But the Goths rolled that back into my head. Black eyes, black lips, many piercings, all black clothing. It was especially unnerving when my own granddaughter began wearing black eyes and such. I still had hopes it would all go away. But it didn’t. At least my granddaughter saw fit to change.
The dress code for celebrities went satanic sometime in the near past. They now grace the stage with demonic looking clothes and give us that little signal where they put together their thumbs and pointer fingers in a kind of triangle to signify their alignment with Satan. Kids emulate them, of course and that’s a real shame. There are Satanists all over the globe taking place in rituals and all kinds of satanic signs and references are showing up in videos and movies. We even saw a very large likeness of the devil at the Super Bowl Halftime show in 2021.
The point is, Satan, the Devil, or Old Nick as some know him, is not a nice guy. He does evil things. He gets people to do evil things. There should be no welcome sign for him at your front door. He should not have a top spot in our media. His slogan should be criticized and ridiculed as selfish. We should laugh at him when he loses a fiddle match or any time he is outsmarted. He is a weakness that should not lead. When he gets rough on us, all we have to do is ask our creator for protection. Yes, we should laugh and love. Those are things that he doesn’t like. They are more powerful than he could ever be. And when he is done throwing out his fire and smoke, we should put him back in the box where he belongs, for there is a great difference between, “Do what thou wilt,” and, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”