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OT: Halloween

Tagged: Christmas tree, fear not halloween party, Halloween, holidays, Reformation Day

This topic has 53 replies, 41 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 8 months ago by apsews.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 54 total)

Author
Posts
September 25, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Amber
Participant
Does your family celebrate Halloween? Why or why not?
September 25, 2012 at 6:42 pm
Bookworm
Participant
No. I’m personally not opposed to dressing up in general, but our culture has taken Halloween wayyyy out of whack and it’s a contemporary demonfest. True, some little kids look cute dressed up like bunnies 🙂 but most kids are paranormal/superhero/wicked characters and the whole mess is now unsavory and unpleasant and just makes me shudder. We have a household Fall Party with innocuous games, videos, and even some candy/treats, but it is not on Halloween and there is nothing supernatural/paranormal about it. I just can’t quite see myself greeting Christ to come into my home as I dress my kids up like goblins and go hit the neighbors up with threats for candy. 🙂
September 25, 2012 at 7:21 pm
kymom
Member
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. : )
September 25, 2012 at 7:22 pm
crazy4boys
Participant
Ditto what Bookworm said. We do the same thing.

September 25, 2012 at 7:31 pm
meagan
Participant
Yes, we just think it’s fun. My kids know the truth about demons, etc. They enjoy dressing up and getting candy.
September 25, 2012 at 7:33 pm
Tristan
Participant
Nope, we don’t either. Agreeing with others, don’t mind kids dressing up for play at home, but don’t like the unsavory Halloween stuff. We don’t trick or treat or join in at all. We also do not participate in the Santa and Easter Bunny madness that detract from our Savior’s birth, death, and resurrection. Which means we even skip our church’s Christmas and Easter parties some years when those are going to be present/prevalent. (Sad, isn’t it, that a church would promote Satan’s broken replacement for the real reasons we celebrate? You would think that at least at church the focus would be on the Savior. Some years it is, but many years they do Santa and the Easter bunny for the kids.)
September 25, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Sara B.
Participant
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? 🙂
September 25, 2012 at 7:56 pm
mccormickmomma
Member
We celebrate halloween much in the same way as Sara B. described. My kids love to dress up (we actually go the the thrift store around this time of year and get multiple costumes for each child for our dress up box that we play with all year long). My favorite part is that it is one of the few times of year where the whole neighborhood participates in something together and you get to see all of your neighbors. I don’t do scary decorations or costumes either.
On the other hand we make a pretty big deal out of All Saints Day (November 1st), take off school, celebrate it in royal fashion, so overshadowing Halloween.
September 25, 2012 at 8:02 pm
crazy4boys
Participant
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.
September 25, 2012 at 8:11 pm
ServingwithJoy
Participant
No, we don’t celebrate Halloween, based on our personal convictions and these scriptures (and others like them):
*2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
* Deuteronomy 18:9-11
When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.
* 1 Corinthians 10:23
“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive.
It is hard for me to see how celebrating the occult is consistent with these scriptures. It is also hard for me to see how ‘trick or treating’ is constructive for Christian kids. Permissable, sure. Beneficial? I don’t think so.
It is confusing for our children (and our non-believing friends and neighbors) to see us ‘cave’ in to society on something that most people can clearly see is a celebration of the ‘dark side’. It always cracks me up to hear Christians try to justify Halloween as just a tradition…all you have to do is look at the decorations (skeletons, ghosts, witches), costumes ( mummies, murderers, zombies, etc…), or ask someone what a ‘Haunted House’ is all about (blood, murder, fear). Basically it is a holiday designed to celebrate everything Christ died to save us from. Hard to be the light if we are merging with the darkness…all in the name of ‘fun’ or ‘fitting in’.
Don’t get me wrong – I know the Lord loves you even if you are celebrating Halloween! I just think we would be happier Christians with a bolder witness in our culture if we put our light up on a stand at times like Halloween. It is an opportunity to be different – the good kind of different. The ‘salt and light’ kind of different, you know?
For us, the contradiction of our witness for Christ isn’t worth dressing up or candy. Besides, our lives are full of the joy and peace of Christ! We can have the best party in town any day of the week :).
September 25, 2012 at 8:13 pm
Misty
Participant
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!
September 25, 2012 at 8:13 pm
missceegee
Participant
Ditto Sara B. for us.
September 25, 2012 at 8:15 pm
my3boys
Participant
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.
September 25, 2012 at 8:18 pm
melindab72
Member
The kids dress up but we don’t go trick or treating. We participate in some other event where they get candy. But I’m not so into the candy part. We focus this time of year on Autumn, not halloween. It’s easier to do when you homeschool and stay out of the stores as much as possible.

September 25, 2012 at 8:45 pm
LDIMom
Participant
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.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 54 total)

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