Do you celebrate Halloween?

Do you celebrate Halloween?

  • Yes, sure do

    Votes: 76 85.4%

  • No, we don't. Please explain why if you don't mind. :)

    Votes: 13 14.6%
  • Total voters
    89
nesser1981

nesser1981

Sweet Shoppe SugarBabe
Just curious if you do or don't. And for those of you that don't, why not? If you don't mind saying.

As a kid I grew up in a small southern town where churches out numbered stores, most of my friends didn't celebrate Halloween because of their religions. So, I'm just curious.
 
We do! we celebrate the fact that the weather is finally gorgeous here in TX, the kids can put on costumes they love and be super cute, and I get tons of photo ops and can use those wonderful Halloween kits!

also - in our neighborhood, trick-or-treating is just like in the movies! practically the whole neighborhood is out walking the kids around (usually the little ones), everyone is so friendly, the grown ups have a great time chatting while the kids hit up all the houses for candy!

We have our kids in a Baptist PDO (parents day out) program, and they don't do Halloween. They do a "noah's ark party" where they encourage the kids to dress as animals! it's cute too. I think it goes back to the fact that Halloween isn't a Christian holiday...
 
I'm torn about this - my kids are allowed to go out trick or treating in our housing complex where we know everyone (with us, or their grandparents) but I hate doing this. Halloween was downright scary for me as a child, and I stopped going out trick or treating at 6, my choice, I just hated it. I don't understand a holiday celebrating evil!! That makes no sense to me! However, while we do not decorate or make a big deal about this, my kids will be allowed to go trick or treating. Halloween is not celebrated or acknowledged at the kids public school, and I'm really happy about that.
 
once upon a time ago I did not celebrate halloween for religious objections. But then I came to a place in my life when I decided that it is not an evil holiday and it is just what you make of it. (pretty much like anything in life. LOL) So my oldest son did trick or treating for the first time when he was 6 years old. Our church started having a "harvest festival" on Halloween too. It was like a carnival and so fun! He did that for a few years before he decided it was "for the babies". Then we went many years without celebrating (well I don't know how much celebrating we ever do... just the trick or treating, nothing else really). Then I had Logan and we just started trick or treating when he was 4 years old. So for the next few years we'll probably celebrate, and then once Logan is done trick or treating we will treat Halloween as any other day.
 
g8rbeckie said:
We do! we celebrate the fact that the weather is finally gorgeous here in TX, the kids can put on costumes they love and be super cute, and I get tons of photo ops and can use those wonderful Halloween kits!

also - in our neighborhood, trick-or-treating is just like in the movies! practically the whole neighborhood is out walking the kids around (usually the little ones), everyone is so friendly, the grown ups have a great time chatting while the kids hit up all the houses for candy!

We have our kids in a Baptist PDO (parents day out) program, and they don't do Halloween. They do a "noah's ark party" where they encourage the kids to dress as animals! it's cute too. I think it goes back to the fact that Halloween isn't a Christian holiday...
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Pretty much us too. It is about the only time we see most of our neighbors out at once, its just a big party, but since we go out early with the kiddos its a very PG party! Our church has a similar Harvest party with activities too on a different day. But we don't do all the spooky, scary, evil stuff either. Heck the real spiders, snakes, bugs etc here in TX are scary enough for me!
 
I grew up in a very close knit neighborhood/town. I take my girls to the neighborhood I grew up in to go trick or treating. Once Emma starts school here we'll probably go around here. Our town is so small that I don't really worry about her getting into trouble. She's waaay too little to go by herself yet.
 
We don't really celebrate "Halloween" but our church does a Fall Festival and the college my husband works at does a big festival also so my kids get to pick out costumes and dress up and play games and get lots of candy. It is just alot different time now than when I was a kid so we don't go door to door for candy. Our youth group does the Fall Festival at church and they do a wonderful job with it. Our kids have a blast!
 
Beckie - My son's school just did an Ark Party too. Each kid brought a toy from home that was the same animal as their costume so they could march two by two. It was adorable! I just love the idea.

Any we do a non-scary version of Halloween as my son is hypersensitive to all the scary stuff. We go to pumpkin patches, make fun treats, trick-or-treat on our cul-de-sac to people we know. That's about the extent of it.
 
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Well, we were taught as a child that it was an evil holiday. Our church had "Hallelujah Night" - LOL!! I never once went trick-or-treating as a kid.

Now that we have kids, we always have some kind of church carnival thing to go to, or a friend who has a kids party. Last year, we took our kids trick-or-treating on the golf cart around our neighborhood. It was seriously so much fun. This year, hubby's bringing home a tractor and trailer (he owns a landscaping firm) and we're having lots of friends and their kids over to trick-or-treat around the neighborhood together.

We just focus on the fun part of Halloween. I agree that it is what you make it.
 
As a child I was forbidden to celebrate or even WANT to celebrate it or ANYTHING like it (not JUST halloween but any holiday the bible doesnt directly tell you that you CAN celebrate), so of course it back fired and now as an adult I love to let my children dress up and get candy and I love to GIVE candy to other children.

As a whole I really don't like it ... the decorations are just down right ugly and I do not do it to "celebrate" evil as it's history portrays....

but what is wrong with dressing up and asking people that WANT to give you candy to give you some?

A large part of how I live my adult life is the result of my childhood religion taking SO MUCH of my childhood away from me.
 
We do fun, not scary, stuff. Costumes, candy, trick-or-treating, fall festival, and even cheesy haunted houses sometimes (the kind that you get when 12-18 y/o kids are in charge and you giggle way more than freak out).
 
We do not for religious beliefs. We both grew up being taught it was Satan's holiday & we do not celebrate him. Although, when we have kids, we might take them over to my IL's church as they do a harvest festival. But, it's usually not on Halloween night. But, they still do the costumes and candy and stuff. So, who knows what we'll do when we have kids. lol But, it's just us for now & our puppy hates clothes! HAHAHA!
 
We were never taught it was evil or anything like that. It was just a fun night to dress up, get together with friends and get candy.

I love carving the pumpkins, the fun treats you and do and boy, Keira gets a kick out of it.
 
Hmmm...I'm not sure how to answer this one. I hate the actual process of Halloween, largely because my neighborhood seems to be a "dumping ground" of sorts for all kinds of people on Halloween night. Seriously, there are so many cars in our quiet little neighborhood--it's insane. People from all over town bring their kids here, many just dump them off with no supervision, etc. I hate that part--it just gets out of control. Not to mention how dangerous it is with all the cars and strangers...just blah. The last few years we've found something equally/more fun to do on Halloween night and the kids have been fine with that. I'm not a huge costume fan and neither is DS (DD loves them, though). It's just not a big deal for us, I guess. I do all the fall decorating, we carve pumpkins, etc...just not the actual trick-or-treating stuff.

This year may be a bit different b/c our church is doing a trunk or treat on Wed. before Halloween, so we may have to do costumes for that--I think it may be fun!

Sorry for rambling, lol...I'm just iffy about the whole thing.
 
we do. i grew up going trick or treating as well. thats all i ever really thought it was; dressing up and getting free candy, lol. i don't think of it as evil. OCT. 31 was the Celtics New Years eve celebration; the end of summer and harvesting and the beginning of winter. there is mention of the dead involved but whatever. it is what you make of it. i'm not a devil worshipper, lol. i'm not overly religous either. i do that in my own way.
 
well we dress our kids up and eat a crap load of candy....if that's what you mean by celebrating then yes we celebrate Halloween :D :D

eta we don't actually trick or treat we always go to the zoo for Boo at the Zoo. My kids have never actually gone house to house and probably never will!!!
 
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Like Jennifer... I don't care for all the parents dumping there kids in the neighborhood so that they can get more candy... and it just teas me off when there the high schoolers are out getting candy. So, I don't give out candy... we "aren't home"... but my kiddo does dress up... and I do have a few decorations out in the house... and come the night, we'll probably take kiddo over to grammy's or to Aunt Salli's so he can say "trick or treat" and that is it.
 
when i was younger we were really religious and my parents went WAY out of their way to not celebrate it - my whole life was sort of about not being like regular people and I don't think it was very good for me.... (living in a foriegn country as missionaries, not going to school, not allowed to wear or do what other kids were doing... it was very isolating)

so now I sort of go extreme in the other direction, i want my kids to be part of the normal childhood experience and for me I think halloween is a part of that. (not to say that I think not celebrating halloween is damaging to your child or something, for me that was just a piece of a whole extreme lifestyle and experience that I don't think was very good for me)

I'm still a christian, but I sorta feel like the only power "evil" has over halloween is what you give it... I just don't fear that stuff.
 
we don't do halloween. I did not participate as a kid, but we always did something special instead (out to eat usually) and we celebrated fall etc during the month of october instead of halloween. I enjoyed it really, halloween never seemed to be something I wanted anything to do with, and continue to do the same with ce.
 
We do.. sort of. We do the fall stuff, carving pumpkins, and the kids do dress up. We trick or treat at the mall here and my aunt's house and my cousins, etc. We do some halloween events in the community.. and they do have a Halloween party at Abby's school.
 
Halloween is my favorite holiday! I love to decorate the house, dress up the kids and go trick-or-treating. We don't view it as a religious holiday one way or the other. It's just a night to put on a costume, get some candy and have FUN!!!
 
We do Halloween as both a secular and a religious holiday (Samhain). I'm a Wiccan.:) The boys do trick or treating at one of the local trunk or treats, sometimes the Methodists, sometimes the high school, depends on where everyone else is going It's too rural around here for door to door stuff. The boys favorite part though is turning pumpkins into jack o lanterns. They love decorating pumpkins.

We have a silent supper on Samhain, which isn't actually silent. I make a meal out of foods that are seasonally recently harvested (apples, pork, pumpkin) and we set an additional place at the for those who have passed on. It's a special occasion to remember & celebrate our loved ones. Sort of a group wake. We talk about those we have lost, tell the boys stories of their paternal grandparents & my grandparents, who died before the boys were born. We share memories of people they know who have died, including our cat. We do a little prayer at the begining of the meal inviting our loved ones in spirit to join us and at the end we do a different one thanking them & sort of sending them on their way.

Having grown up Catholic, celebrating All Souls and All Saints Days as well as trick or treating I've never seen anything wrong with it.
 
Stacey42 said:
We have a silent supper on Samhain, which isn't actually silent. I make a meal out of foods that are seasonally recently harvested (apples, pork, pumpkin) and we set an additional place at the for those who have passed on. It's a special occasion to remember & celebrate our loved ones. Sort of a group wake. We talk about those we have lost, tell the boys stories of their paternal grandparents & my grandparents, who died before the boys were born. We share memories of people they know who have died, including our cat. We do a little prayer at the begining of the meal inviting our loved ones in spirit to join us and at the end we do a different one thanking them & sort of sending them on their way.
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I love this celebration! Whether you're Wiccan or Christian, it's a good tradition for honoring those who've passed and getting to relive some wonderful memories of those you miss :) We might have to do something like that this year.
 
gracielou said:
We don't really celebrate "Halloween" but our church does a Fall Festival and the college my husband works at does a big festival also so my kids get to pick out costumes and dress up and play games and get lots of candy. It is just alot different time now than when I was a kid so we don't go door to door for candy. Our youth group does the Fall Festival at church and they do a wonderful job with it. Our kids have a blast!
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Yep, that is us. I don't like "celebrating" evil. So we make it a positive.
 
we only started the past couple years. my kiddos got old enough to understand that we don't "celebrate" it per say but rather take the night to dress up and get loads of free candy. lol :p we also only go to people we know in the neighborhood. if the offer to go to a harvest type festival arises, we will do that instead of trick or treating. :)
 
Kat Stokes said:
Halloween is my favorite holiday! I love to decorate the house, dress up the kids and go trick-or-treating. We don't view it as a religious holiday one way or the other. It's just a night to put on a costume, get some candy and have FUN!!!
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Exactly!
 
In the UK, Halloween has never been that big a deal - you'd only very occasionally get trick or treaters when I was a kid, and my Dad would never let us go out (but I think that was 'cos he was a grumpy old man even then :p).

Its getting to be a bigger deal now, and I don't really have any issues with it becoming so, other than £! We try to make it into a fun thing for our son and keep it simple and small, going round to a couple of 'set up' neighbours and carving pumpkins etc.

To be honest, in the UK we have Bonfire Night (aka Guy Fawkes Night) on the 5th Nov, which is more fun 'cos of all the fireworks and bonfires. If you thought Halloween was a strange thing to commemorate then you'd definitely find this one even more of a weired 'celebration'. History is full of the macabre.
 
juliebee70 said:
once upon a time ago I did not celebrate halloween for religious objections. But then I came to a place in my life when I decided that it is not an evil holiday and it is just what you make of it. (pretty much like anything in life. LOL) So my oldest son did trick or treating for the first time when he was 6 years old. Our church started having a "harvest festival" on Halloween too. It was like a carnival and so fun! He did that for a few years before he decided it was "for the babies". Then we went many years without celebrating (well I don't know how much celebrating we ever do... just the trick or treating, nothing else really). Then I had Logan and we just started trick or treating when he was 4 years old. So for the next few years we'll probably celebrate, and then once Logan is done trick or treating we will treat Halloween as any other day.
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This is just exactly how I feel!

This year I'll be in Wash DC at my sil's, and her kids will get all dressed up and go trick or treating. They are already planning on what they'll have me wear! That's cool, and I look forward to getting pics and having fun with them. My boys are older, so maybe they'll hang out with friends or just hang at the house and pass out candy.
 
We don't 'do' Halloween per se. Rachel will dress up, and we'll go to a Fall Festival, and maybe Storybook Forest (walk through the woods meeting different storybook characters, and getting candy from them...no scary stuff). If we're home, we'll hand out candy if any kids come by, although to be honest, I hate seeing strange kids come to our door. No way would I let my kid go trick-or-treating to a stranger's house.
 
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