We don’t celebrate or participate at all. Why? Because Halloween originated as All Hallows Eve, a day to celebrate and worship the dead. I think even if I wasn’t Christian I’d find this a little creepy. The gore and nasties didn’t creep into our modern holiday, they were there to begin with and someone prettied it up for kids.

I have no problem with costume parties, masquerade balls, and even ungodly amounts of candy (my kid collects tons at Independence Day parades!) I just can’t pretend that Halloween is cute and fun when I know it’s origins. I think having a practicing witch in the extending family and knowing the ugliness that entails probably makes it all even more real for us.

I’m probably pretty old fashioned, but I have a feeling I’m not the only one.

Oh and when I was younger and used to go to haunted houses, the only way I justified it was that I knew it was real people behind those masks – I’ve been known to shove (or punch/hit/kick…) them when they get too close to me. In other words, I more or less went for the opposite reason most do – I hate being scared by all that stuff, so I’d go just to walk through it, always walking into each room looking for what was about to pop out, or walking through the woods knowing some chainsaw-bearing guy was probably around the next tree and just bracing myself to get through it. Kind of silly that I even went, now that I look back.

We like costumes, but we plan to do Reformation Day activities with our church. My husband wears a kilt and I wear my Ren Faire dress. Nerds. That’s how we rolls, yo.

We celebrate All Saint’s Day (Nov 1st) with the kids dressing up as Saints–you know, keeping to the original theme of what the celebration was intended for. No crazy blood and gore here, just a time to remember the saints that have gone before us.

Growing up we didn’t celebrate halloween because we our parents were against encouraging a “pagan” holiday. In Junior high I did a lot of research on the origins of holidays and was even more turned off by the history of this holiday. Because so much witchcraft occurs on this date, I’ve always found it a little creepy and been happy to stay on the sidelines. I know my beliefs, I didn’t see the reason to celebrate darkness and join in the acts of demonic worship – even though I knew many of my friends simply having a fun evening out. I simply didn’t want to be involved in something that seems to have such strong ties to demonic action.

Now, at 25, I am going to dress-up for the first time. I am not going to do anything my faith or conscience disagree with, but I will go out and have a fun time with my friends.

Whenever I have kids, I think I will probably allow them to celebrate in a tame manner (my childhood church usually had a fall festival or a movie night on Oct 31st).

I grew up not being allowed to celebrate Halloween. My parents felt it was a very unchristian holiday & instead we would go to church, where they had some sort of “harvest” festivities.

When I was young, I was in Christian school where many other kids weren’t permitted trick or treating as well, so I saw it as normal. When I transferred to a public magnet middle school I saw how unusual it was & researched the holiday. I tried to point out to my folks that it wasn’t some awful gore holiday, that the mainstreamers did that, but got little response. I thought Halloween was actually kind of neat, and as a theater kid how could I hate on costumes?!

There *was* one year my dad threw me a bone & dressed me in his Fatigues, took me to a neighbor friend’s house, & told mom I was at church. I got to go trick or treating, finally. It was fun to giggle with my friends as I clumped around in my dad’s huge boots! I gave all my candy to my friends (hide the evidence), washed off my face & changed clothes, & went home happy.

Now, as a Christian adult with a child, we do celebrate Halloween. Costumes (fun, not gore), pumpkins, hay rides, and most importantly-we talk about loved ones who aren’t here anymore.

Do I feel like I missed out on something as a child? Maybe. It didn’t have this “send-me-to-therapy” effect on me, but it was difficult to hear friends (especially during those sensitive tween years) talking about having a Halloween party & having to decline the invitation, which led to explaining why, which led to social awkwardness.

Doing what we do now? I think it’s a happy marriage of the two schools of thought.

Oh, and I LOVE a good scary movie. Maybe this is why?

Actually- the original theme was Samhain- and we celebrate that along-side the modern version of Halloween.
Samhain in the pagan’s new year, and marks a day of remembrance of the dead. (Shouldn’t be so strange to Christians who have glorified the death of their messiah and his resurrection- I’ve always felt that the Christian/Catholic faith in which I was raised was hyper focused on pain, death and suffering- not to mention the cannibalistic overtones of the Eucharist itself were rather weird.In any case, HERE is how the original day was observed before the Christianization of northern Europe and the usurping of pagan sabbats.

According to the old ways, the year was marked by not only the solstices (the longest and shortest days) and the equinoxes (the 2 days each year where a perfect balance between day and night, dark and light was achieved); but by the “cross-quarter” days. Falling in between Mabon (Autumn Equinox) and Yule (Winter Solstice) is the cross-quarter holiday Samhain. Samhain, pronounced “sow en”, which later gave rise to Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, falls on October 31st and November 1st, and is considered the New Year, in the Wheel of the Year. Linguistically, Samhain is a corruption of “Sainfuin”, with “sain’ meaning summer, and “fuin” which means ending- thus Samhain is “summer’s end”.
There are many aspects to this holiday. Samhain was the third in the trio of harvest festivals, with Lammas and Mabon being the first two. It was also the the New Year for the ancient folks. This celebration was also held in honor of the ancient sun god’s death, thus becoming a day to reflect on death and our own eventual demise. It was the night when the veil between our physical world and the world of the spirits was thought to be the thinnest, and that we might actually make a connection with those lost loved ones during that time. It was for this reason that some customs arose: setting out a dinner place for those loved ones that had already passed, lighting a candle and leaving it in a window to help guide the spirits of ancestors and loved ones home, Celtic tradition always held that those who passed during the year had to wait until Samhain to pass to the other side. They often lit a fire and it burned continuously until the Spring Equinox (Ostara). They also lit bonfires at sunset in honor of their gods and goddesses and to guide home the souls of those passed. They placed lit candles inside of hollowed-out pumpkins or gourds to keep evil spirits away.
Samhain is a time of family and friends, an affirmation of friendship and family bonds. Traditional colors of Samhain are orange, black, brown, yellow and red (Sound familiar?). Symbols include pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns, brooms, masks, the cauldron, bats, black cats, spiders,apples, nuts, oak, leaves, marigolds, and gourds. The themes of Samhain are death and rebirth, reflections upon our lives, honoring those who have passed and the end of summer. It is a time of reflection., looking backward and wrapping up old projects and releasing their energies so that the new year can be faced anew and fresh.
Remember. Reflect. Release. Revolve. Renew. Rebirth.

As a kid we were always pretty traditional with Halloween. Dress up, trick or treat.

We do this with Eddie too.

But since I am a Spanish teacher and we have Mexicans in our family now, we also do El dia de los muertos (Day of the Dead) on Nov 1. It’s like Samhain in that it is to remember and celebrate those who passed before you. We light candles for them, and someday I hope to teach my kids about the art of creating alters to celebrate our family members who are no longer with us.

Dia de los muertos was originally celebrated by the Aztecs in July, but like most holidays, when Christianity took over, it was moved to be closer to All Hallows Eve so it could be demonized.

Just look at Christmas. Jesus was mostly likely born in March or April, but Christians put it on Dec 25 to take away from the pagan holidays.

The Halloween “season” for us isn’t about the devil (which as Goddess pointed out is ANOTHER Christian injection into the holiday to make it evil), it’s about fun and remember those who were here before us.

Growing up, Halloween was a fun day to celebrate and have fun getting dressed up and getting candy. I always have to laugh when people say they don’t like it due to all the candy gorging, but we never did. We enjoyed counting out our stuff, eating a couple pieces that night and a few here & there afterward, but usually most of it was found ages later by my parents who threw it out!

We are continuing the fun traditions with our child. We go to the pumpkin patch to get pumpkins, carve/paint/draw jack o’lanterns, get dressed up, and go out for a bit of trick or treating. Our house is near a church so no one near us goes out. It’s actually kind of sad to me. I enjoy the fun part of the holiday and leave out the scary.

As our daughter has gotten a bit older and I have learned more about the traditions behind Halloween, we have tried to include some aspects of Samhain/El Dia de los Muertos. We try to remember those who have come before us and their importance in our family and the traditions that we carry on because of them. I don’t feel that this detracts in any way from Halloween. We can do both and enjoy/remember.

My kids are still young enough that costumes and dressing up is still totally exciting…but as they get older and can actually eat all of that candy they get I can see myself wishing I could opt out of Halloween…

Jess
http://www.bubandteebs.com

Thanks for the blog. It was heartwarming to read. I don’t believe in Halloween. There is nothing in the holiday that glorifies God.
I also do not believe in the alternative church celebrations. It’s nice to have a different place to go for the night, but having a celebration at church just reinforces that its an ok day to celebrate.
For those that want to celebrate the harvest, isn’t that what Thanksgiving is for?
Especially in this economy, it would be nice if we could spend less on Halloween and give that money to the food pantry instead, etc.
I have a 4 yr and 8 yr old, and for now I am supporting their social life by helping them find costumes, but as they get older, we will eventually stop celebrating the holiday.

I grew up celebrating Halloween and until a couple years ago it was my second favorite holiday next to Christmas. I have been a Christian since I was 13 (No one else in my family is a professing Christian) but I still loved Halloween. When I met my husband and we were still dating he told me he was adamantly against Halloween – hated it with his entire being. Because as other people have said, regardless of its origins or how others may enjoy the day, it has nothing in it that glorifies God. After much debate over the subject, I was convinced because I looked at it for what it is celebrated as in our mainstream culture and decided that he was right – it is a day that glorifies evil for the majority of society, for the select few a day that is a pagan holiday (and I am far from pagan), or has Catholic roots in All Saints Day and I am not Catholic. So really, why was I celebrating to begin with? When I looked back at my childhood I realized Halloween was just another cultural “norm” that I had been raised into and enjoyed it simply because its what everyone else was doing. And to top it off my family had an obsession with horror movies that I was watching when I was WAY TOO YOUNG. I grew up with nightmares, and all sorts of messed up ideas because of what I was exposed to. So now, in my late 20′s I have stopped celebrating Halloween and we will not make it a part of our children’s upbringing either. (they wont be horribly ostracized anyway since we are homeschooling). And for those who think its wrong to celebrate at Church with a harvest day, I agree with the harvest part cause thats what Thanksgiving is for, but October 31st is Reformation Day – the day Martin Luther posted the 95 thesis and the start of the protestant reformation. So, we will be celebrating that holiday in our home because that is a day that truly transformed the Church and our understanding of the word of God.

Growing up, Halloween was declared as evil and my father went so far as to tell me about satanists who kidnapped children for their sacrifices and to be extra careful the whole month of October. Whew, what a heavy thought to carry each year as a child! Trick or treating was out, one year we carved crosses and doves into pumpkins (along with a heavy lecture about how we were not celebrating Hallowen). It was all just so serious and scary to me, I wish they had used more caution to explain things to me with more history and balance. Now that I’m an adult with two children of my own, I have rediscovered my love for fall and October. We take our daughter to hayrides, we visit the pumpkin patch and carve a face in it (which I know is actually a nod to Halloween, but I just tell my child that it’s about fall and harvest). I’m doing my best to slowly give her a more balanced perspective on why we don’t celebrate Halloween, but she’s still pretty young and can only understand so much. We do go to a local church for a family night out so that we’re not home in a dark house, because I remember doing that every year as a kid and it was scary to me. We’re trying to just make it about making memories as a family, something we do all year long regardless of the day. I’m looking forward to Nov 1st and the end to another Halloween season.

First off I don’t normally comment on anything, usually I just read and pass judgement silently. The problem these days is that too many people put to much emphasize on everything “bad”. Growing up and still now with 3 kids of my own, Halloween is simply a night to get dressed up and eat candy. Why read in to it more than that? Do my kids think that the holiday is a “day to worship the dead”, or an “ungodly” holiday. Nope not in the slightest. We have alot of fun picking and putting together costumes, ging to a pumpkin patch, having bonfires, and yes soliciting candy from our neighbors. I respect people individual beliefs and always will, but do not take away the right to celebrate from me and my family. We like it, have fun, spend time together, and it is the unofficial kickoff to our winter holiday season.

We do not celebrate Halloween because like Previous Posters have stated it is a day to worship the dead and in some countries they still do. I never celebrated it growing up and neither did my husband so we are well in agreement as to not celebrating it. We are christian and believe that if we were to celebrate a day with such dark origins then it would take away from our worshiping God. This is the reason we don’t, I know not all agree with it and I never try to push my beliefs on others but I really don’t understand the holiday. I don’t get why others celebrate a holiday with such dark origins. But that is just me, I have no issue with others celebrating it. I just don’t understand.