Fall and all that!

So, it's Fall.... I have to confess I've been quite looking forward to experiencing Fall as, by all accounts, it is much more of a definite 'season' and distinct time of year in the US. It's the holiday season (as opposed to summer which is the vacation season) and, for us, it's our first fall and the only season we've yet to experience in Chicago.

We arrived to one of the most brutal winters in living memory (and that's only a slight exaggeration - everyone says it was the worst for ages!), Spring really never happened unless you count the week in May when the Park District plant the spring flowers in the city, and even Summer was not quite the heatwave we would have expected. To be honest, I loved this summer - it was warm and sunny without the intense humidity of last year and on no occasion was it too hot to go out with the children.

And so to Fall.... It seems that the 'holidays' are the coping mechanism to get through the last 3 months of the year. Halloween gives way to Thanksgiving and then, to a lesser extent, Christmas. By January, noone can bear to leave the house and everyone pines for warmer climes. The shops are completely full of holiday decorations and the well-to-do in Lincoln Park have their fall-colour garlands on their doors and their holiday table decorations out. I am so out of my element! Seriously, I try but finishing touches and interior design have never been my strong point. Carolyn Mahaney and her girls would be ashamed of me!!

I had anticipated that Halloween would be a bigger deal here and we've been discussing for months how to handle it as a family. I thought this would be a good place for me to explain why we won't be participating in any celebrations....

I just had a look on Wikipedia to see what their descriptions of Halloween and it's origins say so here goes....

"Halloween has origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain . The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year". Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient Celtic pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. "

"The ancient Celts believed that on October 31st, now known as Halloween, the boundary between the living and the deceased dissolved, and the dead become dangerous for the living by causing problems such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would frequently involve bonfires, into which the bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown. Costumes and masks being worn at Halloween goes back to the Celtic traditions of attempting to copy the evil spirits or placate them, in Scotland for instance where the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white....

On All Hallows’ eve, the ancient Celts would place a skeleton on their window sill to represent the departed. Originating in Europe, these lanterns were first carved from a turnip or rutabaga. Believing that the head was the most powerful part of the body, containing the spirit and the knowledge, the Celts used the "head" of the vegetable to frighten off the embodiment of superstitions.[The name jack-o'-lantern can be traced back to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, hard-drinking old farmer. He tricked the devil into climbing a tree and trapped him by carving a cross into the tree trunk. In revenge, the devil placed a curse on Jack, condemning him to forever wander the earth at night with the only light he had: a candle inside of a hollowed turnip.

Halloween imagery tends to involve death, evil, the occult, magic, or mythical monsters. Traditional characters include the Devil, the Grim Reaper, ghosts, ghouls, demons, witches, pumpkin-men, goblins, vampires, werewolves, martians, zombies, mummies, pirates, skeletons, black cats, spiders, bats, owls, crows, and vultures"

Now lots of people have explained to me at length that, here in America, the children only wear nice costumes and it all just a bit of fun but I just can't get away from the fact that so many of the traditions and common practices are rooted in practices of warding off evil spirits and making occult figures and practices out to be just something silly to be laughed at. As Christians we believe fully in the existence of good and evil and I don't want to blur the lines, especially where my children are concerned.

This viewpoint is presenting us with a few problems. At school all the children have been talking for weeks about what they will be wearing to go Trick-or-Treating or at the school Halloween parade. The shops are full of spooky costumes, skeletons, devil costumes and the like and houses are beginning to display gravestones and cobweb decorations. Plus we've had our first invitation to a party.

I don't want to offend anyone or judge them, but we won't be joining in. We are heading away for a couple of nights at the end of the month and we are going to have a Family Day out instead of the school parade. I have encouraged the children not to make a big deal about it, we will just quietly not observe the holiday. But everyone does think we are completely crazy!!! And cruel parents to boot for denying our children all the fun!


At this point, I really do need to praise my children. We've never participated in Halloween events and they don't want to. In fact, they have in the past been terrified by people wearing the 'Scream' masks and are very happy not to be trick-or-treating or going to parties. The problem I am having is that they are trying to convert their school friends and convince them not to celebrate it either. E refused to do an (unrelated to Halloween) activity at school because it involved a picture of a pumpkin and M likes to tell me exactly where all the Halloween decorations are in our neighbourhood so we can avoid them. Bless!

I'll let you know how it all goes............