Ok… I grew up without the option of trick or treating.
My mother didn’t “celebrate” Halloween and didn’t want us three girls out there asking for candy either.
My mom was a single mom… three young daughters… English as a second language… scary day… threats of poisoned candy. As a grown adult, that makes sense to me. It was about safety, security and saving money on three costumes. To be fair, she usually bought us a bag of candy and let us have at it… but no dressing up. Of course, as a child, I just felt like it was another thing we didn’t get to do.
Finally, when I was 12 or 13, my mother finally let us get dressed up and get candy at the local mall. And after about a half hour of begging, she also reluctantly let my sister, Renee, and me go through the haunted house that was there. It was FAN-stinkin’-TASTIC!!! I can still remember the thrill of it all. Maybe it was independence. Maybe it was some strange kind of bonding with Renee. Maybe it was the mere sick scariness of it all. I still don’t know.
What I DO know is that Halloween and trick-or-treating is still a pretty big controversy in the Christian circle.
I’ll be honest.
Brian and I take our kids trick-or-treating. They get dressed up… in whatever Holly’s kids were the year before (why buy a new costume when they don’t care what they are yet, right?) and we walk with them and their friends around the neighborhood asking for candy for about an hour. We then check through the candy bag, give them a few “safe” pieces of candy, let them run off a sugar high together, eat a few pieces ourselves, then throw away the rest.
We talk about it each year with the girls (7 & 9) & they pick. So far we haven’t “done Halloween” but they do go to a harvest festival @ Grandma’s church.
It’s a tough one… one of the girls fully sees it as celebrating satan and wants nothing to do with it, while the other likes the fun of getting to dress up – and they both like getting candy!
Personally? I kinda miss dressing up, but I like that my kids are really thinking about what the holiday is about. And yes, we talk about Christmas the same way… but I’m sure that’s a totally different post.
yeah. i actually honesty see “harvest festival” as a christian way of celebrating halloween. sure… it’s a different name… but kids still dress up and they still get candy.
lame.
I think the main problem I have NOW is how “evil” it gets portrayed. As a kid it was just fun… now everywhere you look there are bones crawling out of the neighbors yard and giant mummies looking down at you from every window. A couple of years ago our neighbor turned their yard into an uber-creepy cemetery – and yes, my kids were freaked out each time we drove past it – numerous times a day.
Dressing up I don’t have a problem with. We limit the candy, so that’s not a problem. Yes, it has a Christian background… but it’s just gotten so… yucky.
Oh well. Maybe next year we will do something more, but this year they chose the “church alternative” (SRSLY – there isn’t a difference in my mind, but whatev).
i feel pretty fortunate that we don’t have any of those REALLY scary houses in our area. i’m not sure i’d be that into taking my kids door to door to that either.
i was never allowed to trick-or-treat as a kid. we’d be dragged to these weaksauce “hallelujah parties” at church where we had to dress up as Bible characters if we dressed up at all.
my mom wouldn’t allow us to give out candy to trick-or-treaters either. so all night long, we’d have to hear the constant knocks on the door and rings of the doorbell, and we’d be “hiding” in the tv room ignoring them all.
grrrrr.
but yeah. i’m not bitter.
HA!
not because i feel deprived of anything specifically wonderful or amazing about halloween. but because of the judgment and religiosity in which i was raised.
girl… i am WITH you. hahahaha!!!
but my mom DID pass out candy… and christian tracts. EMBARRASSING!!!
well i dont have kids but i trick or treated until i was 14. it was amazing. we went as a “neighbourhood” and it was always fun. There were adults with us and rules, but it was a blast.
we always had some killer Halloween parties too. just sayin.
you should party with us. that’s all.
maybe halloween 2010? wish i would be there for this one though….that would be cool.
I was not allowed to trick-or-treat as a kid either. My mom was very paranoid about poison, violence, etc. She finally let me go when I was 17 years old w/ some friends from school. Short and dressed as a clown, people thought I was young enough to do this
It was a first and last experience as I entered college and that’s just too old (except for my in-laws, they gave us candy if we knocked). We did get to have sleepovers at our house on Halloween weekend but were only allowed to watch Mary Poppins or Grease (I know, right?) nothing scary. We have taken our own kids around our small cul-de-sac for the last 3 years and they love it. I think it’s fun to pretend to be an animal, princess, safety hero, etc. As a Christian, I honestly don’t know how playing dress up and knocking on doors to ooh and awe at their cuteness equals idolatry or evil. I know the day has different significance for some cultures and people but for us it’s just a great night of playtime. As for the candy, they get 2 pieces after we’ve gone through it that night. Then we put rest in a bucket and they can have 1 pc as a treat after dinner on some nights till it runs out. As their chaperones, we take our fair cut.
it used to totally mean something different… but i totally agree… it’s so different now.
I used to as a child…but now it is so regimented and unsafe that I don’t so how kids today could enjoy it…but I am sure many still do. I think Christians should have no problem doing something on that day as long as what they are doing is God honoring. If they want to dress up and have a party, which many of the young adults at our church do, or if they want to give out candy to kids, which we also do, or if they want to dress up and hand out candies to the young adults stuck working, yep we do that to…it can all be done…as long you know why you are doing what you are doing.
ABSOLUTELY! great points. we should always do all we do with the mindset of honoring God.
As a kid I celebrated Halloween.
We tend not to participate in the festivities with our kids. Now our neighbor for years has hosted a Hallelujah night and people go their and pass tracts and candy out. Our neighborhood is pretty hard hit. I’m not really sure how much witnessing or praying goes on. It really tends to be a big party.
As the kids have gotten older they managed to make up their own costumes and somehow end up with a ton of candy as they are going up the street passing out tracts (hmm). I don’t harp on them about it.
This year our church is having a concert so, I’m glad I won’t be home.
making up costumes is really the “funnest” part for big kids. i’m all about a good party and some sweet community. sounds like you have that in your neighborhood.
I never even knew Halloween existed until I became aware of US television. Never interested in it, and didn’t know that the name has a Christian background…until yesterday. I know, I’m way behind.
These days it kind of happens here, but not really. I’ve never met anyone who’s done trick or treating. I’m sure it will continue to pick up prominence in the future with further globalisationism. Note my hestitation to call it the Americanisation of the world
Meanwhile, I’ll be spending halloween mixing our latest worship recording, which will see me in the studio for 14 hours this Saturday……………….
isn’t it funny how christians have harped on it, but it has a christian background? everything is all just so mixed up nowadays.
Growing up in a non-Christian house we always trick or treated and didn’t think a thing about it.
Now that I’m an adult of child bearing age that follows Jesus, I still don’t see a big problem with it. It’s fun, about candy and dressing up and hanging out with your neighbors.
That being said there are a few houses in my neighborhood that I would DEFINITELY avoid because their decorations scare me when I drive my car past
there are a few scary ones by my house too. some people REALLY get into that stuff. not so much us. we like pumpkins
we actually trick or treat at our old neighborhood… where they pass out the BIG candy bars. hehehehe!
Ok, I feel so dumb asking this, but why do Christians think it’s bad? We went to a Catholic school and got to dress up for a Halloween party at school. We didn’t trick or treat because I lived in the country with no neighbors, but some years I would go with friends that lived in town.
We always went to Mass to celebrate All Souls Day on November 1st…
that’s not a dumb question. i don’t think ALL christians think it’s bad… just some. i know many believe it to be “satan’s holiday”… and with it’s background being mixed up with pagan beliefs, many just avoid it.
however… i really don’t try to give satan anything in my life… much less a whole day. seriously.
I agree wholeheartedly. If anything in my life felt like something ugly or evil was attached, it would be gone. But we never thought of it as any different than playing dress up.
Oh, and my dad took me through a haunted house when I was little and I almost threw up I was so scared. Let’s just say I’m not a girl who watches scary movies. EVER.
I don’t go all out celebrating Halloween. But for a different reason than people might think. It’s what it has become. When I was a kid, everything was seemingly innocent but now there is so much fear and violence associated with it. And have you tried to find a decent female Halloween costume? All of them are SO trashy. For crying out loud, they have a “naughty” Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz costume! This year I am going to a party but it’s a themed party and nothing scary or creepy. I don’t have kids but I’ll probably take them to some church event. Not because it’s some alternative to make Christians feel better but because I know my kids won’t be exposed to all the fear and unneccesary gore associated with Halloween.
Yep, I had the same childhood. Minus the English as a second language. We didn’t recognize Halloween… didn’t trick or treat… but every so often my mom would let us dress (nothing scary, nothing evil and generally all home-made) and take us to the mall or some church festival. For us too, it was the rumors of poisoned candy and at the time all the “good Christian mothers” didn’t let their kids trick or treat. I find this ironic because at that time we weren’t even going to church. But whatever. I survived.
oh forgot to answer the question: what i do now, always changes. some years i stay home and just pass out candy to the neighbor kids (and yell at the teenage boys who come by wearing a single bedsheet and except me to give them candy). or i’ll go to a halloween party (one year i won best costume when i came dressed as “fat elvis”). but this year, i will be in bed. recovery from surgery. i really know how to live it up.