Thanks, Jimmy! The family memory was great, and I got an unexpected LOL from the makeup. Do-it-yourself?

Yes! It was the first time I’ve tried it, and I found myself wondering, “Is it safe to put this over my eye-lids and stuff?” Then I thought, “Pfft! Women do this all the time! They must have the basic safety issues worked out.”

@Jimmy

Great presentation and insight - another fascinating topic.

Wow, Jimmy, you look positively unhealthy with those dark circles and pallid complexion!  Good job! :)

I don’t know if the question is so much are scary/occult derived costumes OK, but is that really the best we can do in celebrating All Saints/All Souls days?
There were plenty of dramatic saints & saint-enacted drama like St. George & the dragon.Poor Fr. Damien would be scary to look at.Ditto for Saints Sebastian,Lawrence, Bartholomew,etc.And beyond the gore & drama there’s a huge message.
I don’t want to take the Puritan approach & cast aside celebrations, but I think as Catholics, we have a rich history to share with our children & the Eve of All Saints is a perfect time to do it & in a countercultural way.

go zombie Jimmy!

@Kathleen - in our family, we celebrate all Saints Day by going to Mass, and then flying kites (weather permitting) like they do in Guatemala.    All Souls Day has traditionally been the day that my kids, who go to the parish school, dress up like Saints and give presentations on their namesakes (or the saint of their choosing).  The whole school goes to Mass to pray for all the poor souls in Purgatory.  Halloween in our house is its very own thing - this year I’ve got a Perry the Platypus, a Spidey, a Sock Monkey, a Ninja, and a couple to be named later.  It’s a busy three days around here but I love it.

Kathleen I agree with you.  This year my 7 year old wants to be Blessed Miguel Pro.  My 8 yr old is St. Lucy.  In fact their principal at the Catholic School that they go to is not having kids dress up in anything unless it is a saint.  Awesome!!  What a great servant we have in him.
may God bless our efforts go pro active for Truth Faith and Love.

“As soon as children are able to play, they start playing pretend, and their games involve drama.”
That’s certainly a common aspect of childhood. However, most parents agree that all play should be monitored for safety, and religious parents usually consider spiritual safety as well.
For example: “But the things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God. And I would not that you should be made partakers with devils.” 1 Cor 10
Or: “Ye children of the Lord your God: you shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness for the dead; because you are a holy people to the Lord your God: and he chose you to be his peculiar people of all nations that are upon the earth.” Deut 14
Or: “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood [shall be] upon them.” Lev 20
So, it seems the elements of many Halloween costumes are directly against the teaching of God’s word. (There are no “good” witches, teenage or otherwise.) And there are many other citattions to the same purpose.

“Others have chosen to invert the popular celebration”
Indeed, many of the evangelical churches, which have come to stay away from Halloween itself, are having ‘Harvest Festivals’ with games and costumes and such, But why is it necessary for Christians to acknowledge an un-Christian celebration in any way? Can’t it be ignored?
Outside of the Bible- the best source of information about proper and improper religious practices, a little research should convince one that the original of Halloween was definitely not for children!

Doug,
It’s OK to celebrate All Hallows Eve.All Saints Day is a wonderful Christian holy day.Revelry is a good thing,unless you are a Puritan.
I agree with you about costumes that give a different message.That’s indeed harkening back to pagan times & you’re correct that the pagan “celebrations” were pretty grim(human sacrifice, etc).
By the way,I have(non-Catholic) Christian friends who don’t even celebrate Christmas because they are uncomfortable with the perceived connections to Winter Solstice & the pagan origins of the Christmas tree, holly, mistletoe, etc
I think we need to reclaim our holy days from the secular culture & commercialism. And in the case of All Hallows, take it back from the witches, vampires, & bats…As stated above by Eileen & Andrea, some Catholic schools & parents are doing just that.

Your mother may not have been playacting about the clown. And I respect her for that.

From “The Mummy” (1999):
Evelyn: You know, nasty little fellows such as yourself always get their comeuppance.
Beni: They do?

*Traditional* horror stories are essentially morality tales, so they (and costumes relating to them) are not necessarily problematic.  The person guilty of some serious fault—covetousness, murder, dabbling in the occult, and excessive curiosity—inevitably suffer for their faults, only this time the direct cause of their suffering is uncanny.  That happened in the movie I just cited:  Imhotep, for his lust and regicide, is tortured by seeing the death of his beloved (who also suffers for the same reasons) and with failure and death when he is brought back, the Americans who open the box out of greed are drained by Imhotep, and even Evelyn’s sufferings are due to her inordinate curiosity. Yes, sometimes third parties also suffer, but that is a sad fact of normal, every day life.

I suppose another question, though, might be whether the play (and costumes) should deal with the truthfulness of the stories surrounding the costumes.  Kids dressing up as cowboys and Indians are, after all, dressing up as real people, even though the details of the conflict between white settlers and the native Indians are unlikely to be repeated in the child’s adult experience.  Dressing up as Superman or Gandalf is going into the realm of fantasy, but at least there were real moral truths in those stories (at least originally; I make no such claim about today’s comic books).  Vampires are an example of an iffy case, though.  If this were 1940, it wouldn’t be such a problem; then vampires represented real evil, and they were vulnerable to supernatural good.  Today, though, the mythology around vampires is very different, and their legitimate fear of crosses is brought up only to be mocked.  Some of this play, like some movies and TV shows, may not help prepare kids for adulthood, the way the legitimate play you describe does; it may instead foster unhealthy habits that will make them more vulnerable.

Kathleen: “All Saints Day is a wonderful Christian holy day,” you say, and that’s true in your Church. But don’t you find it significant that Jesus ‘put away’ all the ceremonies of Judaism with his death? Mt 5:17. And isn’t it true that the Lord instituted for Christians only the memorial [or re-enactment] of his death?
And you continue, “Revelry is a good thing, unless you are a Puritan”.  As you may know,  Peter referred to this very idea. “For the time past is sufficient to have fulfilled the will of the Gentiles, for them who have walked in riotousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings and unlawful worshipping of idols.”
I know that many of you are planning Halloween parties as Catholics, and that you feel that the acknowledged pagan roots of such holidays have been ‘cleaned up’ by the Church. But did you know there’s a direct Biblical precedent for that? It’s in the account in Exodus, and it shows the attitude of God and his prophet Moses [the typical Jesus] toward it.
Ex 5- “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Let my people go, that they may sacrifice to me in the desert.” And the ten plagues got Pharaoh to acquiesce. So,  into the desert they went.
Ex 32- “And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and made proclamation by a crier’s voice, saying Tomorrow is the solemnity of the Lord.” Aaron, of course, was the High Priest chosen by God himself, and he labeled the feast in honor of “the Lord”. Can’t go wrong with that.
Except: “[Moses] said: If any man be on the Lord’s side, let him join with me ... Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Put every man his sword upon his thigh: go, and return from gate to gate through the midst of the camp, and let every man kill his brother, and friend, and neighbour ... the Lord answered him: He that has sinned against me, him will I strike out of my book: ... The Lord therefore struck the people for the guilt, on occasion of the calf which Aaron had made.”
Much later the Law expert Paul wrote, “And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has the faithful with the unbeliever?”
At a party like the “Catholic” ones you folks have been planning, will you truly feel the Lord’s presence? “For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Howard, the Bible- ‘the Book the Church gave the world’, remember- is known to contain plenty of stories with “real moral truths” in them. In fact, one of the scariest is about a cold-blooded murder: “And last of all he sent to them his son, saying: They will reverence my son. But the husbandmen seeing the son, said among themselves: This is the heir: come, let us kill him,... And taking him, they cast him forth out of the vineyard and killed him.” !
Have you read all of them with your children? Perhaps using costumes based on Bible research? Have you considered the morals and lessons afterward?

I personally think we should not celebrate Halloween as a scary holiday but to uphold the teachings and lives of the Saints.  It is after all, the Eve of All Saints. We must remember all those who suffer during this time in satanism and witchcraft and the blasphemy that takes place at satanic rituals towards the Holy Eucharist.  Yes we live in a dangerous world but lets not participate in making it dangerous.