Last night, my children joined in that annual tradition where ordinary boys and girls transform themselves into witches, pirates, princesses, Spidermans and various ghouls in the pursuit of collecting confectionery from nearby neighbourhood houses. Of course, I’m talking about Halloween, which is without question my favourite secular holiday that our society celebrates for the simple fact that for one day of the year, kids everywhere get to revel in the simple pleasures that come with childhood.
Without question, the world our children live in today is far different from the one my generation grew up in with new dangers like cyber-bullying and even identity theft in addition to those threats that we had to deal with as children. There’s also a greater pressure on children these days to Click to continue reading the rest of this entry
November 2, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I envy your kids for having parents who indulge this sort of thing. I was raised by someone who’d only come to this country a decade or so before my early childhood, and didn’t mix in well with such longstanding cultural traditions, especially if they smacked of something unfamiliar to her resolute-but-mostly-secular-in-practice, indiscriminately cynical Judaism. By the time I understood what Hallowe’en was actually about, I was too old to participate in it as a kid.
Hallowe’en is an opportunity to connect kids with something very valuable. I wish my mother had understood that better.
November 3, 2008 at 11:19 am
I always find it sad when people eschew Halloween on the grounds of its historical origins instead of focusing on how its celebrated now. Unlike Christmas, which is still very much a Christian holiday despite some secularization and over-commercialization, there are no tangible remnants of the theological origins found in Halloween that would make anyone believe it has any basis in a religious doctrine.
Besides, whether one lives in a pluralistic society or one abiding to a single predominant faith should not deter parents who wish to raise their children under any given religion from exposing them to other cultural and/or religious traditions. Education regarding the diversity of the world around them, instead of isolation from it, would serve their children far better in strengthening their understanding of their own faith in an ever-shrinking world. It would also lend itself to creating bridges of understanding instead of chasms of ignorance. After all, how does dressing up as pirate or a princess to collect candy really destabilize a child’s education of religious values? Granted, I’m no expert on two of the major faiths, but their similarities to the one I do know leave me wondering if this is more about a parent’s inability to properly educate their children about their faith instead of being about something that violates their religious values.
In any case, as I’ve taught my own children ‘to each their own’ and as such, Halloween will continue to be a holiday celebrated in our house. To that end, I have acquired even more Halloween decorations this weekend, including one that I have been bugging my wife to let me buy for years – my very own fog machine. Oh yes, next year we will take Halloween up another notch again.