On Second Thought

Halloween came and went, but I'm still confused on how exactly we should be referring to it. Do we call it Autumn Festival, Harvest Festival, All Hallows Eve, Hallowmas, or plain old Halloween? Last night we took the boys to a Mountaintop Carnival sponsored by Mountainbrook Community Church here in San Luis Obispo. It was simply billed as a carnival with no mention of being any type of festival. All four of us had a blast seeing all our friends and the creative costumes and games. While I understand not wanting to refer to the negative aspects of Halloween, I'm just a little confused on proper terminology. I thought I understood things until we tried explaining to our boys why we don't go trick-or-treating. I ended up researching the origins of Halloween for myself and that really left me confused.The History of Halloween Finally after much thought, we explained that what made Halloween negative, was the emphasis on witchcraft, evil spirits, and pagan rituals. Our boys seemed to understand that as long as we understood October 31st to be a time when we celebrate the "good harvest" from the year that God has provided and see that anything else is the foolishness of this world, then we can still have a good time.

The boys chose their own costumes this year and had fun trying to see how creative they could be. Dominic decided he wanted to be a tax collector because he said that even adults were afraid of the IRS. He decided against a costume at the last minute since only the "little" kids would be dressing up. Joshua came up with his own creation. We aren't sure what he was, but it was interesting. Something between a Jawa from Star Wars and a post nuclear conflict. He combined a Russian children's gas mask with a trench coat and a British Army scarf to create a unique outfit. He gave his character a strange long-necked appearance by putting the mask on top of his head, wrapping the scarf around his face so he could see through the fabric, and looking down. We all had fun and no one missed trick-or-treating or the witches and goblins.