How do you approach Halloween as a family?
Before the pandemic our children were all pretty young, so we were able to avoid a lot of the Halloween festivities. We once went on holiday abroad over Halloween (did you know that Halloween is a non-event in Spain?!), one year we took our son out of school for the Halloween disco (which happened to fall on his flexischool day), and on the other years our children were so small that it didn’t register with them.
Not so now!
This Halloween our children were older, restrictions were eased, and I don’t know if it’s just me, but Halloween was absolutely everywhere?! Even our boy’s tennis class had a Halloween fancy dress week.
And here’s the thing: our children are really drawn by it. Not the darkness of it per se (although we want to make sure that we are protecting them from dark influences). But they’re mainly drawn in by the excitement of it – dressing up, decorating the house, sweeties! To say that they can’t celebrate Halloween brings a lot of protest in our house.
A few years ago, we tried to teach them a bit about All Hallows Eve and Reformation Day, and while we’d heartily recommend discussing the historical origins of Halloween, this year we had a simpler aim – to outdo the appeal of the darkness with the radiance of the light of Jesus. We wanted to show that Christians can have more fun, Jesus is more reason to celebrate and the light overcomes the darkness. We didn’t want to retreat and avoid – we wanted to advance and win. We wanted to tell a different and a better story. We wanted to draw other families and children to the light too.
So we decided to host a light party.
The light party was on one of those wonderfully mild-weathered evenings during October half-term in our garden.
We recruited lots of people in our church life group to help with the practicalities and we (ahem, I mean the children) had a fabulous time.
This is what we included, but you could add all sorts of other things:
- We started in the daylight and ended after sunset
- We lit up the garden with Christmas lights
- Face painting (we kept it superhero or light themed)
- Apple Bobbing
- Pumpkin Carving
- Hot dogs
- Glowsticks
- Toffee Apples
- An impromptu disco with the disco light
- Hot drinks including hot chocolate with squirty cream and marshmallows
- S’mores on the campfire
- A lantern craft
- Storytime from our resident superhero
We used a story from Houses of Light called “Superlight”
It is a sweet, short story which tell show Jesus aka “Superlight” can overcome darkness. It costs a bargain 25p! And can be read aloud or given out as a tract. Houses of Light also sell tracts called “Alfie meets Superlight” which we gave out at the end of the party to all the children. These tracts include activities like discovering your superhero name and a word search. Very fun!
Would we do another Light Party?
In a word – YES! We’d love it to become an annual tradition. It’s really fun to have an autumn event that rivals Halloween, and it’s a wonderful way to disciple our children as well as reach out to others through the event.
For more ideas of how to reach out to your friends, family and local community, check out Houses of Light website or facebook page who can help inspire you to reach out this Christmas season.