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How we celebrate today

Halloween- this is one holiday that offers the opportunity for a lot of controversy. Everyone has their reasons for celebrating or not celebrating.
Here we celebrate simply. We don’t decorate with witches, ghosts and goblins but we do dress-up and we do trick-or-treat. We don’t trick-or-treat our neighborhood in town- we skiddaddle before the swarm moves in. We go to 5 places: Gramma and Grampa W’s, an elderly lady (a trick-or-treat tradition from when I was quite young), the kidlets’ Great Gram and finally Nana and Poppa (my parents). We enjoy a special supper at Nana and Poppa’s house with my brother and his family. We watch It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and the kids eat a few choice pieces of candy.
[My SIL has felt convicted not to celebrate the day at all in any way. And that’s okay.]
Yes, we also make jack-o-lanterns. We read Liz Curtis Higgs’ Pumpkin Patch Parable before we carve our pumpkins. And discuss as a family how we are lights that shine for Jesus.
Our church hosts a “Pumpkin Patch Party” the Sunday before Halloween. The kids dress up (all nice- nothing scary or such), play games and get candy. Next year the church plans on doing “trunk-or-treat” for the children and as an outreach.
My kiddos get plenty of candy. We pour it all into one big bowl and then scoop half of it out and put it in a bag. Mr. Steady takes the bag of candy to work and shares it. We’ll eat the candy for a week or so and then scoop some more out for Mr. Steady to take to work.
We have done a regular school day here at home as we had a Pumpkin Party with our homeschool group yesterday (pumpkin theme day- no costumes and no candy- but really great pumpkin chili!). We’re in and out of the house enjoying the crisp sunny fall day and the kiddos are excited about dressing up tonight. We’ve made it a harvest day- too, with a nature study and project and fun food to eat. The kids enjoy the change of pace (and orange colored milk!).