Halloween: The Dos and Don’ts

Until I was in junior high, I had never heard that is was wrong for kids to go out trick-or-treating on Halloween.

I grew up in the church, and my cousins and friends who did the same all went out as well. We dressed up for public school, where the Sunday School teachers and church elders taught and smiled at our silly costumes. (I went as Orko one year and Garfield another. There may or may not be photographic evidence.)

This was pretty much the way it went for years. Kids dressed up, ran around town, and sometimes got together afterward to play games. The only worry for us in the mid-80s was the scare of checking for razors or needles in our candy — we never thought about scary things like the occult or Satanism. Even our church (a fairly conservative one) let the kids sing a song about Halloween at one of the concerts; I believe it had to do with God seeing through our masks to love us as we were or something like that.

So the whole “should kids go out on Halloween?” question was never an issue in our house. When I was in junior high I discovered the now-discredited Mike Warnke and all of the anti-Halloween media that came along with him. It was really my first hint that people equated all of those silly costumes and kids yelling “Boo!” when you opened the door with evil. And I’m still there; I want kids to have a perfectly good reason to run around the neighborhood and ask for candy.

While this holiday is controversial, it wouldn’t hurt to get a good view of the history of Halloween. Yes, some groups have co-opted it for their own ends, much in the same way Valentines Day has been taken over by those selling promiscuity and Christmas has been taken over by those selling consumerism. We here wouldn’t endorse the modern excesses on any of these days, either.

With that in mind, here’s a list of what I think are some good dos and don’ts for this weekend. If you take the kids to the neighbors to trick-or-treat or take them up to the church to have a party — both are fine. But take heed nonetheless:

• Do Let your kids play dress up for one day. If you want to curb the blood and guts, that’s completely understandable. If you’re worried about skimpy outfits seemingly designed for little girls, I’m with you there. Still, there are thousands of possibilities.
• Don’t make your kids dress up as their favorite church reformer for Reformation Day. In Protestant circles (specifically those in both the Lutheran and Calvinist backgrounds), it’s become fashionable to rebrand October 31st as a day to get all the family and kids together to commemorate the start of the Christian Reformation. While it might be a good church history lesson, that’s not exactly something that may translate as “fun” for children. The daughter probably doesn’t want to be “Martin Luther’s wife” again this year (female reformers are scarce), and your poor son can’t even pronounce Huldrych Zwingli. Besides, this could get a little gory: many reformers were burned at the stake, provided they weren’t beheaded first.
• Do have candy ready for the kids. If you’re sensitive to the diabetic kids or worried about all that sugar, find some alternatives like pretzels or Play-Dough.
• Don’t hand out tracts or answer the door just to tell kids you don’t celebrate Halloween. John Fischer has a great essay about being a light to the neighborhood by simply handing out candy and enjoying the festivities.
• Do watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. If you want something a little different and historical, listen to the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which aired the night before Halloween in 1938 and caused enough panic that Orson Welles famously went on the air at the end of the broadcast to chastise the audience.
• Don’t go out trick or treating if you are over 13. If you are in college or older, expect to say the line “I got a rock” more than once.
• Do take the kids to a church-sponsored event that has games, candy, and other little kids running around in costumes — if this event is incredibly fun and aimed at giving the kids a memorable night as opposed to keeping them away from “worldly” influences. Let them have fun for the sake of having fun, just like their friends at school or next door are.
• Don’t sponsor a “Hell House” or something similar. Total absence from God’s grace probably shouldn’t be considered a form of entertainment.
• Do dress your kids up, and do take a lot of pictures for future humiliation at graduation or weddings.
• Don’t dress your dog up for Halloween. Really. They don’t understand it, and cannot be blamed for leaving a “treat” on the couch later on:

In hindsight, nevermind. If this is what Halloween does to dogs then maybe there’s something to all of those warnings about the evils of the holiday.