Halloween: Take it or Leave it? We Leave it.

Some bloggers that I love have been chatting Halloween again...  I really appreciate these conversations among civilized and gracious women who believe all the same essentials of the Faith and can have an agreeable disagreement about their various takes on non-Church holidays and popular American cultural. 

So, um... can I get in on the dialogue??

I wrote the majority of this post last year after Halloween.  When I finally got around to finishing it, it was sort of a non-issue because by that time everyone had moved on to Christian parents' next favorite topic... Santa.

I'm pretty sure that all sides of this Halloween thing have already been covered and the debate has already been had, but if you haven any thoughts on the topic and want to chat respectfully here, I'd love it!  (Bonus points and gold stars to all of us who can comment and disagree with charity and respect!!) 

So where am I coming from??  My parents were overtly less than enthusiastic for Halloween.  We still got to celebrate Halloween when I was a kid, but with some fairly strict guidelines... only handmade costumes (no money to be spent thrown away on store-bought costumes.  EVER.), no objectionable or scary costumes, no scary movies, no Halloween parties, no haunted houses, no haunted hayrides, no haunted anything, but... you can go trick-or-treating and you can eat whatever candy you get :)  And you always, always say thank you when you get it.  

I recall Halloweens of yore when I dressed up as a Crayola crayon, a bar of Ivory soap, and a Mexican man (??) And I remember heading out on crisp nights with friends and an adult.  Always an adult.  And I recall how bizarre, creepy, and uncomfortable it was to go to neighbors' houses - people that I knew well and liked a lot - and have bloody skeletons greet me or red-eyed ware wolves dare me to take a piece of candy.  What the heck??  They didn't spend any other night of the year pulling out all the stops to scare the innocent little neighborhood kiddies.  I don't necessarily recall being scared.  (I was far too aloof and serious minded to be duped by that stuff... hmmm, sounds like me today...)  But I recall being disturbed.  I recall the feeling in my gut that told me this wasn't right.   

It's my impression that in general, Halloween has become only more gruesome and grotesque as the years have passed.  This is not to say that many people - including many lovely families that I know and admire and that we count as friends - love celebrating Halloween and enjoy the holiday with their children in good-spirited fun while minimizing the weirder aspects that "creep" up. I love kids in creative costumes as much as the next person, and I think it's fun to get candy and treats and to party.  (Oh no, wait, I'm a introvert, remember?  I don't love parties.  But, mmmmm.... candy!)  But I think that it's getting harder and  harder to avoid what's objectionable when you leave your home on Halloween; we can't control other kids' costumes, or the decorations on the neighbor's porch, or the unsettling displays in the stores, but we can control whether or not our kids see it.

We've chosen to skip Halloween.

I intensely dislike the aspects of Halloween that celebrate evil and normalize what is grotesque and unnatural.  I don't feel comfortable exposing my children to mutilated bodies or blood-sucking creatures as entertainment.  (We encountered plenty of this when, in a momentary lapse of judgement, we took the kids to a presumably harmless neighborhood "Trunk-or-Treat" night. Ugh.)  They have plenty of exposure to good vs. evil in the real world, in stories from the Bible, lives of the saints (in which a mutilated body may be unavoidable, but it is in witness to Christ and holds the promise of everlasting glory and is not about wacky fun on an autumn evening) and other stuff we read - classics beyond reproach, like The Chronicles of Narnia, come to mind.  For the most part, especially in Scripture and in the books we read, evil is evil, not entertainment, or something to imitate.  It's not for play-acting, or something to laugh at, or something intended to shock and awe.  It's always a consequence of original or actual sin.  It's not a disguise, or a trick, or role play. It is a real and present danger to body and/or soul that should not be taken lightly.  I cannot abide the aspect of Halloween that treats the unnatural, the gruesome, and the disgusting as something fun, comical, or "just for kicks."  And regardless of what standards of costumes, movies, activities I would hold for my own family, once you're out on Halloween, there truly is no way to anticipate what you may encounter.  A grotesque mask once seen, can't be unseen, and that's wretched for the mind's eye.  (I have an awful one in my head from several years ago...)  But what if it's more than once?  And what if it's celebrated or made light of?  Repeated exposure to what is evil and grotesque presented in that light  (fun, comical, just for kicks, not-a-big-deal-would-you-please-just-lighten-up-Theresa) may, in my mind at least, deaden our natural reactions to things that we know are wrong.

It is that desensitization to what is evil and unnatural that I fear for myself and for my children.  I do not want to shelter my children from what is evil in the world.  I want to train them to recognize it and react - whether it be fight it, distance themselves from it, seek help, call out in prayer...   When my children, now and in the future, encounter something evil or unnatural, I want them to shudder and know in their gut that "this is wrong," and not to think, "oh, this reminds me of a Halloween mask I once saw."   

This morning (remember I wrote this last year...) I had my first frank conversation about all this with Aaron, who is seven.  He brought it up and kept saying, "I don't understand why people who believe in God think it's fun to dress up as something that's bad."  Me neither, bud.   I don't think I'll ever warm to the idea of emulating that which is disgusting.  Kids dressed as cowboys, princesses, unicorns, and knights?  Super Cute.  Kids learning about and dressing as holy men and women of God?  Awesome!  That's why I'm so grateful to have the best that fall-time candy and costumes have to offer at the All Saint's Day celebration!  (here  are the kiddos costumes from last year)

I reiterate, that my thoughts on Halloween are purely how I approach it for my family and myself.   I'm fairly non-judgemental when it comes to how other families tackle this topic (or enjoy this holiday!)   As I mentioned, I have good friends on both sides of the issue and we've never, ever fought about it :)  My husband is a little less intense about it than I am, but we're in agreement and once we decided together we would "skip" Halloween, his most pressing concern  was where he would procure bite size candy bars if not from the kids' trick-or-treat bags.  (It's called a grocery store, Babe.  I'll take you sometime :) )  I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, to hear if you agree  with some (or all) of it, we can chat about how you view it differently, and I welcome you to charitably poke holes in my arguments, question my rationale, and maybe even change my mind!  Because when considering all the big ideas that go into raising a family in today's culture and in the Faith, it doesn't do anyone any favors to be stubborn about all the extras.  Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  And ultimately, my take on Halloween doesn't change that.