When I was a kid, there was always one kid who was not allowed to participate in Halloween. This is true of my sisters’ grades, and my cousins who went to different schools. Every single time, if the kid wasn’t getting bullied and picked on, he was experiencing the precarious limelight of being the subject matter of children’s inquisitive little minds, e.g. “What’s wrong with their family?” “Are you diabetic?” “Don’t you like Halloween?” (they often always wanted to participate, and to this day still hold a grudge for that) “Can’t you afford a costume?” or, my favorite,
“Are we offending your god?” – little sister, 4th grade, 1987.
I remember some neighbors would hand out bags of chips and pretzels. My neighborhood isn’t that big, but from what I rememer, we got the GOOD stuff. Regular size candy bars at some houses, and my next door neighbor gives out cans of pop.
Oh, and someone in another thread mentioned Halloween cards-my grandmother used to send me and my sister Halloween cards when we were little.
Cripes on toast, people. There are two memes in this thread…
The original rant. That is, people who don’t let their kids trick or treat and are holier-than-thou about it, won’t shut up about it, whine about the sugar, and so on. I think we’re all in agreement here that that’s obnoxious.
The hijack pile-on by the halloween defenders. Fine, you love halloween. Fine, you love halloween a WHOLE LOT. I think calling someone selfish and a bad mother, and saying her kids will grow up to be twisted misfits is simply going way too far when you’re just talking about a holiday.
I saw nothing at all in grayhairedmomma’s post that resembles the attitudes ranted about at the start of this thread. In a nutshell, her position was “Being a parent means deciding what, based on your values, is best for your children.” She offered her perspective without directly passing judgement on anyone else. The pile-ons in this thread indicate a general feeling that you teach your kids what you believe is right and wrong, but only as long as it doesn’t stray too far out of what’s normal for our culture, or else your kids will be weird and unpopular. Nobody else is bothered by this idea?
I don’t personally think there’s anything wrong with halloween, but I respect that other people might think so. If they’re obnoxious about it, that would annoy me, but quietly doing their own thing is fine by me. I’m certainly not going to jump on them and insult them for living a different lifestyle. It’s not child abuse, it’s just a holiday.
I don’t remember ever having a greedy trick or treater - not one. They’re all (in two states) polite and thankful for whatever they get. Plus it is nice to see the kids. I’m sorry that my kids are too old (and gone) to TorT anymore.
The local paper today had an article on the churches that forbid “supernatural” Halloween costumes. One person, from another church, thought it odd that they allow kids to dress up as gangsters who really hurt people but not as ghosts who don’t, not actually existing,
Now this is really outrageous. I’m a bad mother because I’m not being hippocritical and celebrating a holiday I don’t believe in? I know what it’s all about. It just isn’t for me. If my kids decide they want to celebrate when they become teenagers then that’s their choice, I won’t be even mildly disappointed. I’m not stridently campaigning against the holiday or demeaning anyone who participates.
This is the conversation my oldest and I have every year at this time (she’s 8 now):
Her: Mommy, how come we don’t celebrate Halloween?
Me: Because I don’t see a positive, good message behind it. Plus it has too much association with violence and gore for me to be comfortable with it.
Her: Oh. But you get a lot of candy!
Me: You have candy in your snack cabinet.
Her: Oh yeah, can I have some?
Me: Sure, but not a whole lot.
Her: Ok goes off to the kitchen
As for having to sit to the side and look glumly on while everyone else is having fun - it doesn’t happen. I keep the oldest (and when the youngest starts school, her too) home on whichever day the school decides to celebrate Halloween. I’d never make her suffer like that - I know that would be torture for a little kid. It has become a day that we lounge around the house and just chill. If there is a good movie out she wants to see, then we’ll go see that. She looks forward to what has become a day she gets full pass to play hookey from school while everyone else has to go.
If this makes me a bad mom then I embrace it wholeheartedly.
I don’t necessarily think you’re a bad mother, but I find it odd that anyone needs to find a positive, good message behind every activity a child engages in. Sometimes fun is just for fun. Each to his own, though.
Grayhairedmomma, I’m a little torn here. I’m sympathetic to the argument that you shouldn’t feel like you have to do something just because everybody else does. I put the kibosh on plenty of things my kids would like to do but which I don’t think are suitable. At the same time, I wonder about your characterization of Halloween as negative and lacking a good message. It seems pretty harmless to me – costumes, going around the neighborhood with your friends, getting candy. And not just harmless, but actually fun in a way that kids look forward to for months. To me, the fact that your kids ask about it every year suggests they’re sort of hoping you’ll finally say “yes.” Because, as your post makes clear, this is your decision, not their decision.
I’m also left wondering what other things beside Halloween you don’t let your kids do. Not that I have any right to ask, but I have to admit I’m curious.
Well let me lay out all my bad mothering so everybody can see just how twisted and unloved my children are:
We don’t do Easter Egg hunts, we celebrate the religious aspect of Easter.
We don’t celebrate Halloween.
We don’t do Santa Claus. We celebrate the spiritual aspect of Christmas with some gifts and gluttony but no belief in Santa.
Again - I’m not strident about any of these. There is no discussion about people who do celebrate these parts of these holidays. As a matter of fact I was very insistant that she NOT ruin the fantasy for any kids who still believed in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. I’m not out to change other people’s beliefs or attack them for what they do. To each his own.
And we’re not a stick-in-the-mud holier-than-thou family. I’m always getting comments about how happy my kids are - there is lots of laughter and fun in our house. Aside from a few issues, I am a very laid back mom and very indulgent. As long as they follow the few rules we have (respecting me/other adults, behaving properly when we’re out and doing chores and homework on time) they have pretty much free reign to do whatever.
There are thousands of other pieces of our culture that my kids will have in common with their peers*. I think that in these instances it’s more important for me to uphold my beliefs rather than bowing to societal pressure.
And of course this is my decision - no one else is running this house but me. (Fortunately for me, their dads agree and not because of any pressure on my part.) As I said - when they grow up they’re free to make different decisions. But until then it’s up to me, as head of this household, to make these types of decisions.
There is plenty that we do that doesn’t serve any purpose except silliness. If Halloween was ONLY about getting candy and dressing up in a fun way, then I might reconsider. But it isn’t. All you see all month are bloody, violent, gory movies and shows about haunted this and that. If there weren’t the “trick” in trick-or-treat, then I might reconsider. But it’s not that way. And I just can’t get behind that.
*You wouldn’t BELIEVE how insanely excited the oldest is about the new Harry Potter movie.
Hm. Well, maybe you should do a little research on the subject if you don’t (at first glace) see anything good about the holiday. I assure you, it didn’t start out as gore and haunted this and that and blood fests. Unfortunately, Christianity tends to turn everything “not Christian” into “something evil,” and that designation has stuck to All Hallow’s Eve/Samhain. There are no end of happy traditions attached to it. Not the least of which, honoring your ancestors.
Crap. Hit submit too soon. I heartily recommend The Halloween Tree. Great animated video that explains all the wonderful meanings and customs behind Halloween.
At which point, they’ll be too old to participate in the most important Halloween tradition of all. You’re basically guaranteeing that your kids will never - not once in their lives - be able to engage in one of the central traditions of their culture. By the time you allow them to make their own decisions about it, they’ll be too old to participate in it, and that’s something they’ll never be able to get back. That stikes me as terribly unfair to them. Honestly, I really don’t see any way that your kids aren’t going to end up resenting you for this, and I don’t think anyone could blame them. Take them at least once, while they’re still young enough. Surely one night out of their lives isn’t going to be enough to unravel whatever moral lessons you’re trying to instill in them?
As I write I am having to pause to answer the door for all kinds of ghouls, monsters, fairies and the like. They love to come here every year because we always have the good stuff. We have a bowl with full sized candy bars like Snickers, Hersheys, Almond Joy, M&M Big Bag, etc. AND, there is a bowl of the small stuff like bubble gum, Hershey Kisses, Tootsie Rolls and the like. I tell them “Pick one of the big ones and grab yourself a handful from the second bowl”.
Meanwhile, Ms.Nic and Lil.Nic are out walking the neighborhood and seeing friends.
However, there were no costumes allowed at Lil.Nic’s Christian Preschool today and there’ll be no Santa there in December.
I’m with fessie, this is just a lot of fun for the kids and those who make a PC stink of this make my private parts ache.
I know the pain. My birthday is late November and several years, we celebrated my birthday by having Thanksgiving dinner with family.
and I hate turkey.
My daughter’s birthday is on Halloween, if it falls on the weekend, we have the party after trick or treating, if not, we just have it on a near weekend.
She’s right in that she can raise her kids any way she pleases, and it’s not right for us to impose our “values” on her family. But you make an excellent point here. I’m already in a bit of a panic, because even if I live a long and healthy life, I’ll only be able to cook maybe another 30-35 Thanksgiving dinners in my lifetime, and that just doesn’t seem like enough chances to do something that is very important to me.
And I’ve already cooked at least as many Thanksgiving dinners as times I’ve gone Trick or Treating. I’ve done the latter, tops, 12 times in my life, and I’ll never get those back. And I’ve had only half as many Christmasses gifted by a real live Santa. And the Big Red Lobster Man was such an important part of my holiday life that 6 seems like far too few occurances for that level of importance. I’ve got a lifetime of Santa-less holidays ahead of me. Adult life is long. Childhood is over with in an instant, and there are no second chances.
You’re right. Maybe she just didn’t express herself very well. Just the way she described kids being selfish and that they don’t need a holiday to make them moreso, just struck me wrong. She sounded, in that instance, like one of those bitter people who don’t really like their children, but are DAMNED determined to do their duty.
grey…, if that’s not how you meant it, I apologize.
I don’t know about others who were disagreeing with what you said. But for me it had nothing to do with your desires to not celebrate the holiday, but with your attitude that “children are selfish” and that people who do celebrate it are perpetrating a 'greedy" ritual of some sort.
As I explained in my previous post, the (paraphrased) “children are greedy and selfish, and this holiday just alows them to express their ‘natural’ greedy selfishness” is what struck me as “that kind of mom”.
Please note that I said “…shows what kind of mom she is” and did NOT say that you were a ‘bad’ mom. But I disagree with saying that children are selfish and greedy. No more than the rest of us, with some of us being moreso and some less.
Again, I apologize if you said that meaning something else and just weren’t expressing yourself the way you’d intended in that instance.
