Hallo-what?
8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Philippians 4:8 NIV)
How do you feel about Halloween?
As I was growing up, I didn’t see what the big deal was. My family never celebrated All Hallow’s Eve as a holiday. The end of October to me meant fall leaves, pumpkin carving*, and going to our church’s Harvest or Hallelujah party. We didn’t watch much T.V., but the shows we were allowed to watch were very family centered, so the scary element wasn’t there. At least, I don’t remember it. The reason I don’t remember was that it was never made a big deal.
*Yes, I realize pumpkin/jack-o-lantern carving has some negative, pagan connections, but that’s not what our family focused on. It was a fun, creative, messy activity that we loved.
The questions I usually get when people find out that we didn’t celebrate Halloween as a kid are pretty typical…
Didn’t you feel left out? Nope. Not one bit. We usually got to pick out our own special bag of candy from the store the day AFTER Halloween (50% off baby!). And I bet we had a lot more fun inside the nice warm church playing games than trick-or-treaters were having in the cold South Dakota weather going door to door.
Did you miss dressing up? Nope. We still got to dress up for the harvest parties, the costumes were just kid-friendly, non-scary, fun stuff. My sister and I dressed up a lot anyway and frequently bought face paint just for fun.
Don’t you think you were deprived of an essential part of childhood? Nope. Our family made our own memories, and lots of them, and that’s what counts.
My hubby person’s family is not as conservative as mine, so he had different experiences. He went trick-or-treating and did all the typical halloween stuff. When he found out that our family did not participate in Halloween activities, he was intrigued. He understands and respects my parents’ choices, and when it came to chosing what we would do with our own children, he was very open to my heart’s point of view.
So….we’ve decided that our family is going to follow my family’s tradition of not making a big deal of Halloween. Notice, I did not say make a big deal of ignoring and shunning Halloween. Our goal is not to make other people feel bad, or to scare our boys about all the evil in the world. Our goal is to glorify God with what we chose to celebrate, and that is what Philipians 4:8 says so well. We want to CELEBRATE whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy.
So, I will be taking Jeremiah to an AWESOME harvest party held at a local church. He will be dressed as a Ninja (and yes, I think there are some good, noble things there 
) and will go from room to room with 300 other kids playing awesome carnival games with Bibical themes. He will win some cool prizes and get way too much candy. Then, we will come home and carve pumpkins and make pumpkin pie and talk about all the amazing things God has blessed us with.
Some of you may be asking, how do the boys feel about this traidition? More on that tomorrow.
Blessings!
Hannah
