It felt so good staying home tonight, gutting pumpkins with hubby and doctoring up the seeds with the girlies. Acappella singing “This Little Light of Mine” in the background and chicken stir-fry sizzling in the skillet.

My theory on Halloween is that it’s not worth losing friends over. Every year I’ve struggled with not wanting my girls to feel like they’re “missing out”, and you know what? They aren’t. Halloween is a big deal to my in-laws. We used to participate, dressing the girls up as princesses, ballerinas, ladybugs… and my middle daughter dressed as “Mary Had A Little Lamb” for about three years in a row. (Hey, it was a fantastic costume hand-sewn by yours truly! And middle’s a puny lil thing, youngest is growing into middle’s shirts and jammies, etc)

Clarification: When I say “participate”, I mean we’d go to Grandma’s with frosted pumpkin cookies for everyone and show off our cutenesses and then make a couple more special stops, dropping off more cookies as we made our short trip back home.

Last year we went to a church-sponsored Fall Festival. That felt even more like “Halloween” than dressing up and making the family rounds. Not for us. So my youngest had no idea what Halloween was about. We had dental appointments in town today, and of course, ran into some adults dressed…weirdly. She has now had an education about October 31st.

My oldest tried to prepare youngest for some cousins stopping by that would be dressed as witches. Oldest said very seriously, “they’ll be dressed like little old ladies in black, sweetie”…hee hee. Sigh.

I realize my viewpoints on dressing children as witches is antiquated and borderline offensive to most who see it as harmless. I *try* to give the benefit of the doubt, but knowing that the Wiccan religion is alive and well, and that there are actual colleges of witchcraft, well, seeing little ones treat it lightly kind of makes me sad. I know they’re only doing it in fun. Deuteronomy 18:10-12 and Exodus 22:18 show us God’s view of witchcraft. Why emulate something He condemns, even in fun?

So back to tonight. We bought candy at the Christian book store…strawberry cremes with scripture verses printed on the packaging, and we stamped crosses and verses on white treat bags before filling them with a variety of candies. When you live out in the country as we do, you don’t get many trick or treaters, and the ones you do get are usually family.

We had two! They brought us treats as well, which was the best of them! In case my oldest sister is reading this, thanks for the dirt cups…the worms were a real hit with 3 year old! After supper, she was happily digging in and said, matter-of-factly, “Is this out of Aunt K’s garden?”

And for the record, the pumpkin seeds we roasted were nasty. Definitely not as yummy as last years. Not sure what I messed up…

But all in all, still a very nice evening!