Halloween-y or Hallowon’t-y

This is us 2 years ago. A fabulous Children’s Pastor decided to do trunk or treat. Can you guess who that was? It was Daryl, Pam or both of them. I’m not sure who comes up with ideas & who decides, but they started that ball rolling. It was AMAZING! We had such a turn-out. And fun was had by all.

Here’s my van UFO.

See the alternate Alien family in there. Yup, that’s Davynoo, Livboop, & Gabeleck. My third eye is losing it’s lashes, but that’s ok.

And this is our car last year.

Well, you can’t see the car. Hannah & I were hanging out in the cargo area of the suv. In case you reside under a rock & haven’t seen the show, I’m Lola Luftnagle, Lilly’s alter ego.

I guess I showed you all that to tell you how much fun I have dressing up and how much I get into that part of Halloween.

There has been a lot of chatter on the Jesus Blogs I visit about this subject. Churches doing alternative parties, people shunning Halloween altogether, letting your kids trick or treat, the Scare the Hell out of sinners outreach programs and so on.

I love trick or treating.

There I said it.

When I was growing up, Halloween was just a fun time to dress up and get free candy (and a possible trip to the hospital to have it x-rayed). That’s it. It was spooky, but in a fun way and we at it up. Literally.

Our church had a Haunted House IN THE CHURCH when I was little. Not an outreach, but a fundraiser. And not your benign spaghetti noodles as brains and grapes for eyeballs stuff either. It was dark with fog machines, strobe lights and screaming soundtracks. I’m sure there was more, but I can’t remember it all. I do remember being assigned the spot under Dracula’s coffin to grab people’s feet as they came closer for a good look. Yes, it was a real coffin and a real Christian dressed as Dracula to lie in the coffin. Gasp! Oh, the Horror!

AND I trick or treated as a kid. Almost every year. I loved it. Costume planning was a big deal. Come to think of it, it still is. Did you see the pictures?

There was the one year I couldn’t trick or treat because of Mono. I was devastated. As devastated as you can be at the tender age of 8 when putting the cat in the fridge & wearing a slip as a veil for pretend weddings in the hallway are your best pastimes. (Yes, I did both of these, one more than the other.)

So I couldn’t trick or treat. What did I do? I handed out germs candy. I’d like to do a case study to find out if a Mono outbreak occurred just after Halloween in Lake City, SC that year.

That makes me wonder what all of the poor kids with swine flu are going to do this Halloween. Should we run candy under those blue lights they have in the nail salons? Probably not a bad idea.

Here comes the main point. My kids have never had a true trick or treat experience that they remember. My oldest was the cutest superman in the Naval Base housing when he was 1, but it’s been Harvest Festivals ever since. I love Harvest Festivals but I do feel like my kids have missed a great experience. And the fact that we don’t have anything going on at our church frees them up.

So this year I have decided to take them trick or treating. The downtown neighborhood were we live is prime real estate for it. Gabe wants to be a football player. Olivia is probably going as a flu kid with pjs & a flu mask. Davy said he wants a shirt with “COSTUME” on it. I love that all of these are either free or super cheap.

I’m curious. Do you feel strongly either way? What do your kids want to dress up as? And most important, what’s your favorite thing to sneak from their stash? Mine is the Caramels.