Hot Christian Girl Halloween

On celebrating after not celebrating, and the meaning of fear.

My participation in Halloween is mostly in service to my kids - especially my younger son, who treats it like a national holiday.

Several years ago, as a toddler - noticing that our neighbors were decorating their houses more elaborately than we were - he angrily asked his father, "WHY ISN'T THE HOUSE DECORATED? I WANT TO TURN THE FRONT DOOR INTO A SCARE HOLE!”

The next year we remedied the situation, somewhat.

Not sure if this qualifies as a “scare hole,” but it scared me.

No Demon Children Here!

I’m used to it now, but this enthusiastic embrace of Halloween is SO different from what I experienced growing up. I was a little kid in the 1980s - the height of the Satanic Panic - and as evangelicals, we were particularly cautious about “celebrating evil” and always stood at a remove from the festivities.

We even avoided the term “Halloween” - couldn’t give the Devil that win. So we called it “Harvest Evening” instead, often celebrating at church parties or with our Christian friends at home, bobbing for apples in my parents’ basement and exchanging candy amongst ourselves.

Photo by Talal Ahmad on Unsplash. Bobbing for these is, in retrospect, probably not the most hygienic children’s game.

Trick-or-treating, if we did it at all, was usually restricted to friends and close neighbors. One year we knocked on the door of a family from church, who was handing out Christian tracts along with the candy, spreading the Good News to the little ghosts and goblins.

No “scare holes,” either

The number-one rule for us was no scary costumes: no witches or ghosts in this household! We didn’t want to “glorify Satan.” So we were limited to animals and storybook characters - once I dressed up as Little Bo Peep.

One extra-godly year, I visited friends dressed as “Sarah in the Bible” - wearing a collection of thrift-store purchases we’d assembled in an effort to approximate our vision of biblical garb. In a picture that I think still exists somewhere, I’m about seven years old, wearing a flowing dress with a scarf draped over my hair, walking in the front door of my extremely-not-religious grandfather, who must have had his own thoughts about it.

Not my Halloween costume - can’t put my hands on that picture right now - but this is just how I normally dressed at that age. This is me making log cabins in second or third grade at my Christian school.

But the restrictions really didn’t bother me, because there was still candy involved, and my mom got creative with our wholesome costumes. Around age 3 or 4, I desperately wanted to be the Pillsbury Doughboy with his white hat and adult onesie. My mom bought a yellow pair of footie pajamas - the closest thing she could find to a doughboy suit - and tried bleaching it, repeatedly. When that failed, she determined that I should instead be a bumblebee: in now-faded yellow PJs, black pipe cleaners affixed to a whirly cap for antennae, and a stinger drawn in permanent marker on my backside.

Tired Moms and Slutty Old Men

These days, I think back on so many Halloween costumes for my children, and they all kind of blur together: the dragon, the cow wearing cowboy boots, Medusa with his little plastic party favor snakes tied into a wig - and countless superheroes.

I’ve generally discouraged abject blood and gore - it still feels a bit distasteful, at least to me. There are plenty of real-life things to be afraid of, and I’m sympathetic to the idea that dwelling on fear and darkness isn’t helpful. But I understand now, after more years of participating in Halloween and all its festivities than those years removed from it, that the real purpose is coming together, and knocking on our neighbors’ doors.

My kids have mostly gravitated toward fun and fanciful stuff anyway, although there has been the occasional scary mask or Grim Reaper. They don’t appear to have been harmed by that - at least no more than I was harmed by trick-or-treating as a woman specifically chosen by God to give birth at age 90.

As an adult, most years I’ve attended Halloween gatherings dressed as “A Tired Mom” because - while my younger/child-free/more energetic friends were dressing up in edgy and creative costumes - I long ago lost the drive and energy for that level of effort.

There was the one year, though, when I got so tired of the “slutty” costume trend - which mostly follows the formula of “woman + career + make it sexy” - that I decided to put my own spin on it: I went to a party as a “Slutty Old Man.”

Fishnets + heels + low neckline + old man mask + bottle of wine = ready for Halloween circa 2014

The empty pillowcase

It’s bittersweet now: with one kid in high school and the youngest in middle school, I realize this chapter is coming to an end. It won’t be long before there will be no more costumes, no more pillowcases or pumpkin baskets full of candy for me to steal…I mean tax…while the boys are at school.

And yes, the older moms all warned me, annoyingly at the time - but it does happen so, so very fast.

This storm trooper is not nearly so tiny now (2014).

The oldest is doing his own thing with his friends. But the younger one is still prepping a weird apocalyptic costume that I can’t really explain (it involves a bow and arrow and a special flashlight; that’s all I can tell you), and is eager for trick-or-treating. So we’re doing it, at least for one more year. There’s a lot going on right now in the news, as you may be aware, and it’s an inconvenient time for me to be home, but I’m wedging Halloween in between everything else because I know full well it might be the last one like this.

In 2015, when I was in the thick of campaign reporting, my editor - a mom of four older kids herself - insisted I go back home to be with the boys, then 8 and 4. I remember wondering if it was really necessary - there would be so many more Halloweens - but I went home anyway. As my boys migrate toward young men, I think I now understand why she insisted.

So this Halloween - sorry, Harvest Evening - I’m trying to savor every moment, in all its bittersweetness.

Nothing prepares you for how quickly those superheroes start learning to fly (2016).