Halloween Practices

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ThyKingdomCome

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Ok, so how do you approach Halloween Costumes with your kids?
  1. We don’t observe Halloween at all.
  2. We observe Halloween more as All Saint’s Day Eve. Costumes are required to have a saintly or religious theme.
  3. We allow costumes to be secular, as long as they are not scary/gruesome etc.
  4. We allow scary costumes.
  5. Other.
    Those who chose 1,2,or 3, how do your kids react to the restrictions?
 
Halloween scares me. It’s billed as all good fun but seems nefarious and insidious.

I have four kids and last year we got together at church and got all the kids to dress in white and give out little prayer cards.
 
I grew up with halloween, scary costumes and all. So did my parents. We do it. It’s definitely cultural, for who knows how long. It is ok to give someone a good scare, and another to really scare someone. I always get a kick when someone tries to pretend to be still, as if they were a halloween decoration and then jump up.

Maybe because I really don’t believe in ghosts, vampires, and mummies. But I see nothing wrong with a harmless prank to make some one jump or startle them.

I loved a good chance to meet my nieghbors for a quick hello, I like seeing the kids in my neighborhood. I like being able to recognize that the boy who rides his bike up and down the street to a parents face.

What I detest are Hollywood Horror films that are centered around Halloween and Evil compared to a prank… I also detest expensive Princess dresses that are marketed to my daughter at the Disney Store. Thank goodness for handme downs.
 
I have heard both good and bad. At school the children are Saints only. There is also a party that evening at one of the retreat centers for parents and children. At home for years we did the costume thing (no evil costumes) when I homeschooled I made it my kids art project to make their own costumes. (they were quite unique George Washington, a salad with Paul Newman head piece for the salad etc.) I have read the druid theories and because I don’t believe that this was the reason we trick or treated I did not make an issue out of it. As long as All Saints Day is stressed in the celebration you have for your children I think that is what matters most.
 
Halloween is a new thing for me. I’m born and raised in Norway and in my childhood and teens we knew about Halloween, but it was considered to be an American holiday/celebration along with observance of Valentine’s Day.

Now the later years both Valentine’s Day and Halloween have reached Norway and the celebrations is escalating every year. It was purely commercial interests that initiated the observance of those two days in Norway. They wanted to sell more stuff and make more money.

Now I live in Canada and here Halloween is an establised tradition. Since I don’t have any kids of my own I don’t have to consider what to dress my kids in. But if I had kids I would probably dress them up in something very cute. Last year I got a visit from the cutest little “tweety bird” ever. She was escorted by her dad dressed as Sylvester the cat.

We do stock up on candy, fruit and fruit juices. So every little goblin, ghost or tweety bird get a lil’ bag .
 
Halloween for us was nothing more than trick-or-treating, or going to a friend’s house for a fun, harmless party (apple-bobbing, apple cider, candy). At school, we dressed as our favorite saints. Nothing wrong with it if kept in the right context.
 
I always went to church on All Saints Day when I was growing up. But I also went trick-or-treating and went to Halloween parties too. I don’t see anything wrong in enjoying both the spiritual and secular parts of the Halloween holiday.

Peace be with you,
 
I voted ‘other’. We have a family parish theme costume party on Halloween night at our church that is a big hit SO much fun. Last year was a cowboy theme, we had a 50’s theme once. But my all time favorite was the Medieval theme. I dressed up as St. Joan of Arc and won the best costume award! I was the “Knight-Joan”, and my friend was the “Martyr-Joan” (flames sewn in to her gown, with a stake tied to her back).
People go all out - it is a lot of fun because entire families dress up together and the kids love it.
 
Let the children have a night of fun. I prefer organized halloween parties, due to the safety factor more than anything though. Keep the night in perspective and have fun. 👍
 
i don’t go out for halloween( for a few reasons), but i will celebrate the eve of All Saints( what’s funny is my mom was born on all saints)😃 !

podo the hobbit:blessyou:
 
Podo2004 said:
( what’s funny is my mom was born on all saints)😃 !

podo the hobbit:blessyou:
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My second cousin was born on all saints!! (she will be turning 1 year old this year too!) I don’t go anymore. One of the reasons: candy has way too much sugar, and is not healthy! lol-some people call me a health nut!!!😉 Which I don’t mind.😃
 
My wife is a halloween baby, born in '66 at 6:00pm. We always give out candy and decorate the house in scary motif. We even play the haunted house sounds.
 
There’s an interesting article on this subject at:

americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac1099.asp

The author points out that death and evil are important realities, essential to a full understanding of our faith. She thinks it’s fine for children to wear scary or gruesome costumes for one night out of the year, as long as they don’t glorify evil. If you followed her guidelines, costumes like these would be appropriate:
  • a skeleton
  • St. Thomas More with his head under his arm
  • St. Lucy with her eyes on a plate
  • an ugly, green, warty witch (a stereotype that’s sure to arouse the ire of the “Wiccan Anti-Defamation League”! 😉 )
  • a horrible vampire who’s afraid of crucifixes and holy water
Of course, a lot of truly bad stuff does take place on Halloween…so I can certainly respect those families who don’t celebrate it at all. The author compares it to Mardi Gras, and we all know how that can get out of hand. :eek: But I think it’s possible to celebrate both holidays in a devout and meaningful way, without sanitizing them so much that we lose the fun and excitement altogether. Otherwise, our children might look to satisfy their curiosity about the “dark side” somewhere else (like in the goth culture, or worse).

Personally, I’m looking forward to setting up a “haunted house” where the kids stick their hands in bowls of peeled grapes, spaghetti, and cottage cheese! 😛
 
Our children get to choose a bag of candy and a video from the store. We order a pizza and enjoy family time.
 
The kids have never asked for scary costumes and I really don’t intent to suggest them.

But we give out candy and they trick or treat.

After all, we’re Irish Catholic, we INVENTED Halloween 😉
 
Here it is getting popular in Holland but still more kids will
participate on St. Martin´s day (November 11th). Kids will go out then with lanterns singing songs about St. Martin and people will open doors and give candy and fruit. Every year I organize a St. Martin´s parade for the kids of my parish.

Emmy
 
These are interesting perspectives. I’ve always disliked Halloween - not for religious reasons (although lately, glorification of evil does seem to be everywhere), but because it annoys me. I’ve always hated feeling like I had to exclaim at all the costumes kids were wearing, or pretend I had to be scared by the little goblins etc. Even growing up, I dreaded having to bother making a costume. Yet, here we are in this culture, and as much as I would love to live in an Amish world (Catholic style of course), I don’t. I fear that if I try to turn Halloween into All Saints Day Eve, my kids will feel unnecessarily restricted. While I think it’s good to teach your kids that they shouldn’t always follow the crowd, I figure they’ll have plenty of times in their lives when they’ll feel different from the secular world - I don’t want to overdo it. So, it seems like a great solution is to celebrate Halloween, and then make a BIG deal out of All Saints Day. This way, they won’t be missing out, but will have MORE holidays than the other kids! The only catch to that, is I’m stuck being extra festive about something I don’t like (blaaaaghhh) and having to make double the costumes.
 
I love Halloween and my kids have dressed in scary costumes as well as cute ones. They demonstrate a clear and lucid understanding of the difference between reality and fantasy. If they did not, I would be more concerned. The worst they ever wanted was the guy from Scream. They knew nothing about the movie, just thought the mask was cool.

They dress as Saints or Holy people for school so they get two costumes. I don’t think the neighborhood is ready for JPII (my elsdest’s choice last year) to knock at the door looking for candy. 😃
 
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dhgray:
Our children get to choose a bag of candy and a video from the store. We order a pizza and enjoy family time.
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Interesting…😃
 
I grew up in the 50’s and no one ever talked about Halloween as a day to glorify satan as you hear now. It was always just a fun time to me. Heck, I never knew about the Druid thing until a couple of years ago.

And the best part was we had the next day off! And the poor public school kids had to go to school.
 
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