Halloween

Halloween is a wonderful time for kids. It's a KIDS ONLY holiday, although I think parents are stealing it from kids these days. I hear a lot about parents' costumes and parents' fun, but not a lot of kids fun - sometimes kids fun is a chore on the way to having parents' fun, and that's not the priority.

As I watch my daughter, Molly, making costumes for her two little ones, I am delighted that she sees how the very young child needs to participate in the whole family's excitement and delight during holiday season.

Halloween is the first of three very important holidays in our culture and tradition.
Halloween is a children's holiday, Thanksgiving is family holiday, and Christmas is a religious holiday: Self, Others, God. We must know ourselves, love one another, and then take that to the altar of our God. Anyway, that's how I see it.

Getting to know self, means letting down the barriers to self. Dressing up as a funny, frightening, or peculiar character allows a child to make believe, to experiment with being someone else just for a while. Going out to show off this other self is always told on the faces of children: they hesitate, they smile hoping to gain the others smile, and then they burst either into tears or laughter depending upon their acceptance.

It's a big day simply because the inner self of the child is at risk, and making him comfortable and feel loved is a great part of building blocks for real self esteem.

When a little girl dresses up as a princess, do we regard her as beautiful, magnificent, regal? We should. It's just for a little while, and it is so important to that inner self. To be thought of as beautiful, good, and well worth fighting for are the things that make girls the strong, thoughtful, careful women they should grow to be.

When a boy dresses up as a frightening beast, a soldier, a knight, a warrior, do we respect him, do we give him momentary lauds? We should. He will one day be the warrior king of his family. He needs to know he can do that well - right from the beginning.

There is a marvelous web site about the history of Halloween HERE. It dispels a lot of negatives about the beginnings and the religious or non religious myths surrounding Halloween. It's also in the links.

Halloween was always one of my children's favorite holidays. We've lived in an actively haunted house for 30+ years, so we live around ghosts all the time. We are the first stop on my town's haunted house tour. Newburgh is an old town, and LOTS of things have happened here. Our last sighting was in September. I was napping in the Plum room, and I noticed the air conditioner was struggling. Suddenly, the temperature dropped about 25 degrees as the closet door opened....