~by Katie**
I think celebrate may be too strong of word for many of us, but most LDS families happily participate in the family-oriented aspects of Halloween.
The following pictures were taken at a Halloween party that our ward (congregation) had. Everyone came dressed up — adults and children — and usually “Fall” type of activities take place such as apple bobbing, jack-o-lantern carving and costume parades. As a kid, I trick-or-treated until I was around 12 years old. My parents felt it was something more for little kids to do.
What about costumes? We had a few rules at our house (other families may do things differently). The costume needed to be modest, not gruesome or scary, and not expensive. After that, the sky was the limit. One year my sister was a hot dog. I tried to be a vacuum once, but couldn’t quite figure out the logistics. One year my mom stored the costumes for the ward roadshow [an original play], so I used those costumes. For my own kids, it is about the same. Lately, my daughter has been wanting to dress up a little scarier (witches, vampires, monsters). We discuss the costume options and figure out what will work best. For this last Halloween, my daughter wanted to be a vampire, but was grossed out by the thought of fangs and blood. So she decided to be a Vegetarian Vampire (I promise, this was not Twilight related).
What if Halloween falls on Sunday? This can be tricky because we believe in keeping the Sabbath Day holy, which usually means refraining from activities that cause people to work and be away from their family and/or detract from the spirit of the day. Again, different families may make different choices, but when I was young, I remember a time when it fell on a Sunday. My mom was also the Young Women President [working with the young women ages 12-18] at the time. They decided to have a Young Women’s activity to help the kids trick-or-treat at members homes on a Saturday. It was lots of fun. With my own kids, this has happened once. Again, the Primary had an activity on a Saturday at the church, similar to a trunk-or-treat [families park in the parking lot and children walk from car trunk to car trunk to do their trick-or-treating]. On Sunday, my daughter spent the the night giving out treats to neighborhood kids. She had fun and we felt that we were able to still keep the Sabbath Day holy.
To those who live where Halloween is a holiday, what (if anything) do you to enjoy the day?
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Here are some pictures provided by other Mormon women of costumes from Halloween past.
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I enjoyed this, thanks! I would like to add that usually masks are not a good option. Masks have a way of making people feel anonymous and people might do any number of things when they feel anonymous than they would do otherwise which is why they are not allowed at church parties or even at school parties in our area.
In Utah our kids got to wear their costumes to school (no masks), but in Oregon they don’t get to.
We always have pizza or chilli for dinner, and afterwards I usually take the kids to a few houses then we switch and my husband takes them to a few.
When the kids get home we check the candy, see who got what, make trades, and enjoy a couple treats before bed. I’m glad Halloween is a Saturday this year so they don’t have to be up early for school the next day!
My family will go trick or treating on Saturday, and to the ward trunk or treat party the Friday before.
I’m going to have to regulate candy consumption this year!