A deliberate mother’s guide to Halloween

How does a deliberate mother handle Halloween?

Does she work to make Halloween educational or meaningful (maybe delve into the history of Halloweeen or talk about the pros and cons of “scary”) or just accept it as a mostly meaningless but fun holiday?

Does she make the cutest homemade costumes ever for her kids or shy away from the whole dressing-up thing, worrying that it’s a waste of time and effort and doesn’t really advance her kids’ most important needs?

Does she make lovely homemade treats, embrace the candy, or strive to keep her kids away from all the sugar?

Does she plan fun parties and/or run her kids around to every Halloween celebration out there, ensuring they don’t miss out on any of the fun, or does she keep her kids away from the craziness and do some simple family activities at home?

I know wonderful mothers who handle Halloween in a host of different ways and I think that what really matters that we take a little time to think about what we really want Halloween to be for us and for our kids and then plan accordingly.

After years of trial and error with the various aspects of Halloween, here are some things we’ve found work well for our family:

Meaning
In our family, we talk a bit about the history of Halloween each year and Halloween has spurred some important talks about “fun scary” vs. “bad scary” and “fun tricks” vs. “mean tricks.” But ultimately, I think Halloween is mostly about plain old fun and doesn’t need to be deeply meaningful. At Easter and Christmas, we really talk about the “reason for the season” and share beautiful moments as we get into giving and think about specific aspects of our faith. At Thanksgiving, we’ve got several traditions that focus us on gratitude. But at Halloween, we just dress up and eat candy and have a good old time for the most part. To me, Halloween is a time to let the kid inside us out for a while, pretend to be something we’re not for a day, eat more candy than we should, and just plain have a good time.

Costumes
I grew up with a mom who sent us down to the dress-up drawer full of random old clothes to create our own Halloween costumes. We got creative and it all worked out fine.

My sister and brother ready to trick-or-treat
But I remember sometimes wishing that my mom, like some of my friends’ moms, was a little more interested in making super-cool Halloween costumes.

So when I became a mom, I was determined to support my kids’ Halloween costume dreams. I was pretty proud of the theme-based Halloween costumes we did for a few years and the kids love looking back at those pictures and remembering how cool their costumes were (they were actually pretty simple but hey, I made a real effort and the kids were thrilled).

Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and Captain Hook

As the kids got older, while I offered to help them make whatever costume they really wanted, my husband and I decided that the kids would need to use their own money for costume accessories or supplies. When they needed to put in the work and the money for costumes, it was interesting to see how simple their costume needs became! Now the kids are excited to recycle old costumes, adding in a few new accessories to spice things up.

If you look at this series of photos, you’ll see a lot of similar elements reused. Plus the kids found that it worked great to borrow and trade costumes and pieces of costumes from other families and shop after-Halloween sales for great stuff to use the next year. We’re stuck in a bit of a pirate, ninja, princess or fairy, and super hero rut. But everyone’s happy!