Don't Miss An Opportunity
When our older children were little, we made a point of celebrating Halloween by attending our church Harvest Festival. It seemed as though it were an acceptable means of allowing the kids to dress up and get candy without the hype of the secular aspect of this pagan holiday. As our children grew up, they began to ask to go trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. Since we knew most of the people in our area, we allowed them to go out with my nieces and eventually our older sons. I began to view this annual event as a night of candy begging, and I even wrote a poem about it in college!
What I neglected to explain to my older children was the pagan meaning of Halloween and the correlation of All Saints Day. I missed an opportunity. But I realized that having an open discussion would give them a basis for their own investigation of the holiday. So while you help dress your kids up, you prepare them for a night of asking, "trick or treat," and you get ready to sort through the candy they receive from well-meaning neighbors, think about ways you can jump start a conversation about how Halloween began and some of the religious aspects of the day.
Blessings!
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