Saturday, October 26, 2013

Witches and Zombies and Ghosties - Oh My! Part IV

Hi again! Today is the last part of my series of posts on Halloween. If you've stuck around this long, you have a formal invitation to be my best friend! :) If you're just joining us, be sure and go back and read parts I, II, and III!

When I started to write this, it was just supposed to be a little post venting about some of the issues I have with Halloween. I never dreamed it would turn into something so long it had to be broken up into 4 parts to make it a little easier to read. But, as often happens, I sat down and started writing, and then I started researching, and one thing led to another - and here we are!!

Just a little story to end this thing:

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the store with my daughter (who is almost 7), and she told me we needed to get some Halloween decorations, because it was almost Halloween and we hadn't decorated anything for it. She had mentioned this in passing a few other times, so I decided it was probably time to discuss it and settle the issue.
I explained to her that I don't decorate for Halloween, and pointed out to her that most of the Halloween decorations we saw were witches, skeletons, ghosts, spiders, and the like, and that those were not nice things, and I didn't want to celebrate them. After we discussed it for a while, she saw what I meant, and agreed with me that those things weren't really things she wanted to celebrate, either, but she was still feeling a little disturbed that we had NO decorations at all. (I rarely decorate for any holiday but Christmas, except for a seasonal tablecloth and (maybe) centerpiece on the dining room table, and some sort of seasonal door decoration) I told her that I would be happy to find her some fall decor - pumpkins, leaves, scarecrows, etc. and that made her happy. (We now have a cheerful scarecrow residing in our front flowerbed, and she has a small one in her room, among other things).
Similar to this little fellow. (Source)
I didn't realize how much she had taken our little talk to heart, though, until yesterday. 
Each day, when she comes home from school, she brings a binder with her completed papers for the day; one of these was a math sheet, on which they were learning about adding doubles. At the bottom of the page, it told them to draw pictures to demonstrate the problem - specifically, witch hats.
I looked it over and didn't see any witch hats.

My child had taken me seriously when I told her that we didn't want to be having witches around. In place of the witch hats, she had drawn cats. (Hopefully she got her teacher's permission before she did this.) 


So, what was the point of all of this?
Mostly just a chance to vent a little, but hopefully, if there were any questions in your mind about Halloween, and if Christians should celebrate it, maybe this has helped you, or at least made you want to find out for yourself what it's all about! Personally, it's always made me somewhat uncomfortable, and in recent years, has almost made me downright upset seeing how far some people seem to take it. Lately, a lot of what I've been seeing is people dressing up as zombies and dead people, axe murderers, etc. and it just seems to me that it's basically turned into the glorification of every thing bad and disgusting - and I want no part of that.

Disagree with me? Feel free to tell me so in the comments.Won't be the first time somebody hasn't agreed with me, and I imagine it won't be the last! :) I'll still love you anyway!

Now for some happy pics so that you can see I DO let me kids have a little fun every once in a while!!  We painted pumpkins last week - we carved pumpkins the week before, but they didn't even last a week and they were leaking all over the place, so we threw them out and started over. 


The Artiste - she likes everything to be perfect, and usually has a meltdown at every drip and streak
The Next Picasso - he's very into abstract art. The design on his pumpkin is, in fact, a cat.

Dad even got in on the pumpkin painting - his canvas was a bit smaller, though.



The finished products. If you look real hard, stick your tongue out just so, and squint a bit, you can almost see the cat face on Jonathan's pumpkin!


And, yes, we do like cats. And we like them to be anatomically correct, so these even have tails.  :)

I hope you've enjoyed my little jaunt into Halloween-land!





(Note 11/1/13: I wrote another post today to better clarify my intentions in writing this series of posts. Go check it out, here!)

No comments: