Halloween as a Christian Mother

When I met my husband, I knew he didn’t celebrate Halloween and I knew why. I heard the reasoning behind it and I thought it was preposterous. You see he’s been a Christian his entire life, however he attended a church for a while that made him believe Halloween was for witches and witchcraft and for devil worshippers. The church had him believing that if you celebrate Halloween you are going against God and therefore you are sinning.

Preposterous right???!!!

So, I knew from day 1, I would not be marrying a man who would be sharing in my love for Halloween. In fact, it was a topic I brought up in our marriage counseling. Because it was important to me to know that despite his children from the previous marriage never getting to experience dressing up and trick or treating, he wasn’t going to prevent me from passing my love onto our future kids.

And to be honest, I brought it up in marriage counseling because I wanted our pastor’s take on the subject. I already knew he celebrated it since the church threw a party for the kids in the community on Halloween every year, but I wanted to know what he thought about it in the sense of witches, witchcraft and devil worshiping.

In a way I wanted another person whom my husband respected to tell him how preposterous these ideas of Halloween were. Which he did not do! Instead he told my husband it is a personal choice and as long as our hearts are in the right place then it isn’t going against the Lord.

So, after all that, my husband still doesn’t share my love. He still doesn’t get it. He still thinks the whole history of Halloween was for non-believers and he doesn’t want to take part in it. BUT he will not keep me from passing the love onto our future kids!!!!!! So, something good came out of it. I mean I don’t know if it would have been a deal breaker, but I do love Halloween and I’d hate for that to have been a breaking point. But now we will never have to worry about it.

As a Christian mother it is important to me to honor my husband as the head of the household, so I’m glad he said he won’t prevent me from sharing my love for Halloween with our children. He had some stipulations to go with it, but it was nothing I wasn’t going to be doing already.

First, he said he will not be handing out candy, period, so if I’m gone trick or treating with our little ones, our light will be off. Not that it matters, we live in the absolute worst neighborhood for Halloween, no kids!

He also said he will not be dressing up, so no “family” costumes in our future. Nor will he be taking our children to strangers’ homes and asking complete strangers for candy. And he will not allow our children to go alone.

That last one is a no brainer if you ask me. But also, the one before that, in today’s world it’s not safe to take kids to strangers’ homes, and most definitely not safe for anyone to go out at night alone! It’s Seattle after all!!!

So we agreed to do the following:

A. Go to the church event

B. Go to the mall for even more candy

C. Never ask for dad to dress up too!

D. Have a cut off time so a single woman and a single child wouldn’t be out too late. Again, it’s the city!

and

E. Double check all candy before handing it over to the kiddos.

As a Christian and a wife, it is extremely important to me to respect my husband’s opinion about everything that effects our family and our children. Even when I do not believe there is anything wrong with Halloween and at no point do I believe it has anything to do with witches, witchcraft or devil worshipping, but my husband has his beliefs, so we compromise. He will never share in my love for Halloween but I’m okay with that. Our babies will get to enjoy being a kid and I’ll still be able to respect and love my husband. As a good wife and mother should.