What to do for Halloween?

Well, the question we ask ourselves every year is "what are we going to do for Halloween?" Nathan, our oldest, doesn't like Halloween at all. He's never expressed any desire to trick-or-treat; in fact, he's said several times he's glad he doesn't have to go. When the oldest doesn't want to do something . . . well, you know the other boys don't have any interest in doing it either! So we have never taken them out, but it's actually not so much because we are making a moral stand or have a deep spiritual conviction, but rather because our kids see the "ugly stuff" in stores and in people's yards, and they have instinctively recognized that as bad and pulled away. Now we have to decide what we are going to do--pass out candy? hide in the basement? go somewhere else? It's hard to know the best thing to do. I think that most people nowdays do not celebrate Halloween to celebrate evil, just as they no longer celebrate Christmas to remember Christ. They think of it as just a fun time for their kids to dress up and get candy. So I'm not opposed to passing out candy and deepening relationships with our neighbors (we live in a great neighborhood, by the way). But this year some old friends of ours invited us to go to Chuck E. Cheese with them, and our boys DO really like going there, so we've decided to do that. At our last assignment we would go to the rural house of some friends and have a party there, which was always a lot of fun. I think people feel sorry for our boys that they have not had the great American experience of trick-or-treating, but in fact, they have chosen things that they really do enjoy, so they feel sorry for the kids that have to walk by the scary fake witches and spider webs!

Claire