I’m a Halloweenie

I love Halloween. Not just because I’m a horror film addict or because I love costumes and candy but because of what it represents. As a kid, my family went BIG for Halloween (oh and we were Catholics) and it’s one of the few holidays you can go BIG for decorations wise and not have it be weird. For me, Halloween meant family time. We’d have a neighborhood parade and then a party before we went trick-or-treating. My mom and dad always dressed up. It was honestly a magical time. I like that it symbolizes the entrance of winter and emphasizes the fall but most importantly, I love that it shows that our country is accepting, of everyone and every boy and ghoul.

 

I am not a religious person. I am a spiritual person but I don’t adhere to one religion. Our country was not founded on religion but on freedom from religious persecution. Halloween for me is one of the few holidays free of religious influences. You can try to say it’s a pagan holiday and the dead come back to life yadda yadda but I don't think of it as some religious pagan holiday. To me it's just an awesome holiday where I get to dress up and hand out candy and get scared. It has influences, sure, but it's not a holiday that adheres to one religion. The pagans have influenced other "Christian" holidays and we don't mind those. If you look at the holiday of Easter and ask what bunnies and eggs have to do with it that’s because the Christians incorporated pagan practices to convert them. Everyone can be tricksters. Pagans worshipped a goddess of fertility whose symbol was a rabbit. They painted eggs as offerings in hopes of a good harvest/growing season. If their offering was accepted they’d see a rabbit!

Seeing Halloween as anything more than a harvest festival with deeply rooted traditions of dressing up and “trick-or-treating” is just weird to me. Don’t read so much into it. Enjoy the costumes, enjoy the magic and enjoy the fall. 

Thanksgiving and Christmas are nice. I do love me some Turkey. Thanksgiving has been taken over as a religious holiday which I guess it is but I’ve always seen it and have been raised to see it as a time to give thanks for what and who we have in our lives not for what God has bestowed us. However some of my religious people refuse to see it as anything but a time to give thanks to God. The first Thanksgiving was with “heathens” who didn’t believe in god or understand a prayer. It was a THANK YOU to the heathens which helped them survive. But to each their own. 

Christmas and I used to be friends when my mom was alive. After my mom, the biggest Christmas lover of them all, died Christmas took on a much more sinister, depressing and terrifying tone than Halloween with its “traditions” ever could. I don’t like Christmas not just because of the loss of my mother but because it’s all about what you can buy. I hate gift giving, I hate receiving gifts (truly). If Christmas is about loving your fellow man how about you just tell them that or do some volunteer work or just spend quality time with your family. Some people do. I intend when I have kids to make sure they know the holiday is NOT just about gifts but about love. Love for your family. Love for your fellow man. Love for the season. 

I’m working on loving Christmas again it’s just hard with all the commercialism and spoiled, rotten flavor of it all. Christmas Day is beautiful, after the presents are unwrapped and it’s just family enjoying each others company. Leading up to Christmas I want to poke out my eyes, burst my ear drums and hibernate.

I’m not trying to advocate Halloween or tell you it’s better than it is. I’m also not trying to put down any other holiday. I am merely expressing my opinions on the matter. This is how I feel. This is why I do the things I do. I’m me.

Halloweenie

Little Leila as a Witch!

I couldn’t imagine the fall season passing by without the joys of Halloween. As a kid every year for Halloween my neighborhood would have all the costumed kids start at one end of our main street and we would parade, with the high school marching band leading the way, to a party house.  Once we reached the party house there’d be food and festivities – bobbing for apples, hot apple cider, pumpkin carving. It was some of the best memories of my life. My mother would make all our costumes from scratch and we spent just as much time as a family, carving pumpkins and trick-or-treating as we did with any other holiday.

It bugs me, personally, when people prevent their kids from partaking in the dress up, fantasy and family time that IS Halloween. I understand some people do it for religious reasons, which I find a little ridiculous. Halloween is in no way a religious holiday I think the closest it has to being religious is All Saints Day and Day of the Dead. Both are rooted in Catholicism, not “Satan worshiping.” Halloween is in no way a devil-worshipping, sacrificial, bringing the dead to life celebration. It’s rooted in a million myths and beliefs but it is not a religious holiday. While were on it, technically, neither is Thanksgiving. Think about it you think the Native Americans who joined in that meal understood who the pale skins god was? No? Thanksgiving to me is a time to come together and be grateful for one another, not necessary to be thankful to an almighty entity.

No one said you have to join in the haunted houses mayhem that is plentiful during the celebration. Carve happy faces in your pumpkin instead of a scary one.  I understand if you want to keep your kids away from the terrifying parts of Halloween, sure. Then do that, but there is no reason you have to cut out the fun holiday fully. If your child wants to spend time with her friends and dress up as a princess, is that wrong? Isn’t that what she does during her imaginary tea parties? Except on this day she can go out and be rewarded for her fantastical costume and adorableness.  I had friends as a kid who had diabetes and they would go trick or treating and sell their candy to their parents – Ha!

Our carvings 2011

Bottom line: I am in love with Halloween it has always been a time of the year where the temperature cools and family time begins (next in line – Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all big family celebrations). Halloween is a celebration of harvesting and ushering in the winter. It’s when the leaves change colors and you can wear that awesome scarf again. Whenever my husband and I have kids, you better believe if they come to me with their big beautiful eyes and ask me if they could please be a fairy for  Halloween and go trick-or-treating, I will buy a sewing machine and get on it. I will not push Halloween on my children. I don’t think any of our lifestyles should be pushed on our children. If I, as a meat eater, discover my child doesn’t like meat, guess what? I’m not going to tell them they can’t leave the table until they eat their meat. If Halloween scares my child I will not force them to participate. But if my child comes to me excited and sees and grows from my Halloween enthusiasm, I’m running out and buying more pumpkins.