“Doing” Halloween.

It’s a thing I’ve been thinking a lot about in the last month or so.

Pookah is at that age, where he is fascinated by the idea of Halloween, witches, ghosts and goblins and dressing up in costumes.

But I don’t do Halloween.

I grew up getting dressed up in a costume, and then being taken to my father’s barber shop to get my treats and MAYBE to my neighbor’s house to trick or treat. ( and that depended on the year  because some years, my neighborhood was a little….rough….)

And I thought that was grand.  ( Even though my mother took the candy and gave me a few pieces every once in a while. *strong side eye*)

Now as a parent, I was going to take the high road and say: we don’t do Halloween.

He goes to a Christian school, so I knew they weren’t teaching it there.

But my Pookah has a mind of his own…and Disney Jr.

He wanted a costume.

He wanted to go trick or treating.

He wanted to try candy corn( which to my everlasting regret, he thought was too sweet).

He wanted to do Halloween.

And I let him.

Because I realize that even though I don’t do Halloween, I do celebrate the Harvest, the changing of the seasons.

I put out the pumpkins, I buy the mums.

We go to the pumpkin patch, we go pick apples at the apple orchard.

We carve the pumpkins.

As usual with parenthood, I learned that until I’m actually there, in the thick of it, I don’t actually KNOW what I’m doing.

What I do know is this:

I believe in letting children dress up as their cartoon heros.

I believe in make believe.

I believe in teaching my child about living, life and the harvest.  With a story about Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin thrown in for good measure.

So we will eat the candy.

We will attend a harvest festival tonight at Church.

We will trick or treat in the house( I don’t know my neighbors like that and all my candy needs to be gluten free.)

We will take photos of cute kids in costume.

We will celebrate the harvest, fall, and carve pumpkins.

And that is all.

I think it will be fun.

What about you? Do you “do” Halloween? Why or why not?