31
Oct

HALLOWEEN

   Posted by: pastordiehl   in Uncategorized

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When Anita and I began our family, we had to make a decision on Halloween with our children. We knew its dark history and wanted to raise our children with a spiritual emphasis and couldn’t reconcile ghosts and witches with our idealistic Christian faith.

Because our children socialized with other kids, we knew there would be pressure to join in the Trick or Treating. We were also well aware that it is normal childhood behavior for children to want to pretend to be someone else.

Our conclusion was to not openly ban dressing up and Trick or Treating, as that would likely cause a rebellion against our faith and standards, but to put a guiding hand to the make-believe. She we helped our children dress up like a princess or lumberjack. We rarely spent much money on costumes, but just used things we made or had around the house. We also guided the amount of candy gathering so as to not generate greed.

We felt this approach was relevant to the American culture and was not counter to our Christian faith or practice.

How do you deal with Halloween?

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 comments so far

Molly
 1 

We don’t do Halloween either. We had several teachings about the history of the “holiday” and decided it wasn’t for us. But last year Clayton needed a costume for a party and for other events, so we got a costume, and Ron tried to take him trick or treating (because that’s what all his friends were doing), but Clayton wouldn’t even go up and say trick or treat to strangers. So thankfully, Halloween has remained a non-conflict for our family!

October 31st, 2009 at 10:54 am
Tara Lilly
 2 

I guess we have made Halloween a more family event, dressing up and getting together with my sisters (there are 8 kids between us) to take pictures of the kids in their costumes and talk about how cute they are. We go trick-or-treating to just family and friends and neighbors we know, they get plenty of candy for their parents to eat that way! :) We have had some requests for costumes we didn’t like or approve of, we just said no and steered them to something we could agree on. I haven’t seen any real need to go into the history of halloween or anything like that, most people don’t know it so I don’t really feel that it has any bearing on the holiday any longer. It’s for selling costumes and candy now!!! I think many traditions have questionable origins but they are accepted widely, such as many wedding traditions that have pagan origins. Our kids love being out and about so it’s a chance to have a couple of hours of clean fun!

October 31st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Tammy Mack
 3 

When Sunshine was little we felt we want to let her have fun but didn’t want all the dark things that are part of Halloween. Because we were in the the military and didn’t know very many of the elderly people in the area to take she to visit like I had grow up with, we choose to have the Great Pumpkin visit and choose a “spooking Bible Story” like Jesus walking on the water or King Saul calling on the spirit of Samuel to read at bedtime.

October 31st, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Tara Lilly
 4 

Tammy, that was about the most creative thing I have heard of people doing on Halloween. Cool!

November 2nd, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Tara Lilly
 5 

Oh, and we always read the Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin story. They love the part about Snoopy and the Red Baron.

November 2nd, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Rene' Bute
 6 

We don’t do Halloween. My kids never have, but Chad and his kids have always done it, so this has created quite a conflict with the kids. So this year, I really did some thinking about it, trying to decide if it was really the big deal if the kids dress up, etc.
I guess to some extent that the dressing up (nothing scary or gory) isn’t that bad in the context of this day and age…and getting candy isn’t that bad….but it brings you to the point of crossing this line, and not crossing that one….this is ‘kind of’ okay, but that isn’t.
It’s just opens you up to a very gray area and trying to explain to little people why it’s okay to delve into secular (and pagan I might add) things as long as you only go part way.
I think you are much better off to draw a very straight and perfectly clear line. There’s no questioning as to where you stand, and where you want your kids to stand.
The kids didn’t trick-or-treat or dress up for school. But we do decorate the house for fall, but there are no ghosts, witches, or anything remotely Halloween-ish.
Of course, we don’t deny the kids candy, it’s just in a bowl, and they don’t go door to door begging it.

November 3rd, 2009 at 8:56 pm

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