OT: Halloween

No! We do not in any way celebrate Halloween or other holidays. The reason we choose not to is based on Bible principles. If you research the origin of Halloween you will find how it is anything but Christian. The short version of why, the  Celt’s; as the fall approached, celebrated the harvest with a week- long harvest festival. However, on one specific night during that harvest festival the souls of their dead loved ones would roam the earth.  To hide themselves from their dead loved ones (whom we all know were actually demons since the dead are aware of nothing) they would dress in costumes. So we avoid anything having to do with such holidays. That’s the very short version. There is a lot of good information out there and the history channel has a great Origins of Halloween show we enjoyed in the past but I’m sure it’s on their webpage this time of year.

This of course is our choice, we know it’s not everyone’s believe and we are not offended by others nor judge anyone who does participate in such holidays.   : )

Yes, we just think it’s fun.  My kids know the truth about demons, etc.  They enjoy dressing up and getting candy. 

We do to a point.  We dress up in nice things – princesses, last year our then-2yo was a train engineer, angels, those sorts of things.  Hubby has dressed up as a Packer fan (scariest costume to be in when you live in MN ) and he and I sometimes dress up in our Renaissance costumes (we also enjoy RenFest & dress up for that, too, so our costumes double).  I joke that if we had 3 boys instead of 3 girls I would dress them up like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo or some other trio.  😛  One more boy and we could do Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.  LOL We go trick-or-treating, but we live in a small town, so the people are all very friendly.  Yeah, there are some bad costumes, but not like it was in our old neighborhood in the city.  We also discuss with our kids why we don’t do scary costumes or haunted things with our decorating.  They have never questioned it, and our oldest is now 9.  None of them seem scared of the scary stuff in others’ yards, either.  We also carve pumpkins.  But that is all.  We aren’t into the scary stuff or other highly unChristian things.  We understand where Halloween came from, but to our culture, that’s not what it’s about, so it’s not celebrated as the original holiday was (kind of like Christmas and Easter).  We realize it’s all in fun, and while we may not like *how* people celebrate it, the *why* is not necessarily bad.

Every year I kind of rethink all of this, and every year I come to the same conclusion, so I guess that’s good?  🙂

Another reason why we decided to drop it was the financial aspect of the holiday.  Some years we were spending $30 to $50 for candy to pass out, THEN add 4 costumes (homemade, thrifted or purchased) at $10 to $30 each and we were often spending over $100 for just one day of ‘fun’.  We decided to take a small portion of that to have a Fall party and then we also pick out a new educational item to purchase.  A K’nex set, DVD set (like Jeff Corwin or Liberty’s Kids), a book for each kid, whatever.  They love the new traditions and have told us they like it better.

I am like bookworm and we have had harvest partys or we go other things with like  minded families.  For us though also we like on 10 acre plus lots and going door to door is not that at all.  As Crazy said it gets so expensive and we don’t eat candy normally anytime so why would we go get a ton of it and then.. give it away or throw it away.  No we don’t have the money for that.  We have done a chili cook off before at someone’s house with bonfire and it was a blast!

We celebrate much in the same way as Sara B. and mccormickmomma. I hate to say we “celebrate” cause we don’t go all out (I don’t have any decorations other than pumpkins, sometimes carved, sometimes not). My decorations, such as they are, are more like Fall decorations, not Halloween. My kids like to dress up, go about a neighborhood or two trick-or-treating and maybe go to a harvest festival at a church (but that is rare). My oldest doesn’t like to dress up anymore so he stays home and passes out candy with grandma and grandpa. I usually make chili for dinner so we just come home, sort the candy, and eat chili.

Our church doesn’t do anything for Halloween (no festivals or anything like that) but someone (usually an older person) might give the kids a bag of candy or pencils.

We have lots of friends/family that fall into both camps…we (our family) completely respect what others feel led to do or not do.

The past 2 years we have gone camping at a state park where they have a Harvest Weekend. It is always the weekend closest to Halloween but they don’t call it Halloween. They do have some things like a Haunted Hayride, but they also have a fun hayride that is just a hayride with no spooks. The haunted one is way away from the other festivities. One of the things we love about it is the old-fashioned games they have for the kids, like ring toss on old glass bottles and pin the tail on the donkey and stuff like that. They also have fun areas for sidewalk chalk, storytelling (which again, you can go the “haunted” route or the historical one which is so fun and about the local area).

So for us Halloween is what it was for us as kids, a fun family time where yes, our kids get way too much candy (but we donate a lot of it to a local dentist who sends it to troops overseas and pays the kids per pound), and get to dress up. The last 2 years they have had to come up with their costumes from our existing collection of stuff, so no cost involved. And we don’t allow anything ghostly, ghouly or scary. Last year we had a couple of animals, a pirate and something else that escapes me. My oldest son went as himself LOL, but the campers handing out candy wanted him to have some too. He took it knowing we’d give a lot of it to the dentist for troops.

This is what works for us. We don’t however go to our church’s Fall Fest, because it is WAY OVERDONE to us. They take in hundreds of pounds of candy, have glow lights, and just go crazy with it in my opinion. I personally think the church should be different. The event we go to at the campground is very simplistic and imaginitive and very family-friendly. We also carve pumpkins, but again nothing scary and our kids never ask to do that anyway.

Just wondering if you all do Christmas trees? I have gone back and forth, but I love our tree. Still it has very pagan origins as well. So hard to figure it all out.