I really don’t want to talk about Halloween.
I didn’t manage to prepare anything spectacular (read: anything) to celebrate All Saints’ Day this year.
I do, however, want to immerse my children in the richness of the liturgical year.
I don’t, however, have the energy to come up with any contorted logic about how dressing up as a zombie with bleeding eyes is actually a corking good, theologically sound method of laughing at the devil.
I do, however, let my kids wear costumes involving fake blood, severed limbs and terrifying mustaches, if the spirit so moves them.
I don’t, however, live in Amityville or Sunnydale, so as long as the little temporary pagans don’t show any particular interest in the occult or dark arts or whatever, they’re not going to slide into Satan’s arms because I let them think about creepy stuff once a year.
I do, however, understand the need to use caution.
I don’t, however, expect the candy to come home to me all by itself. Someone’s going to have to go trick-or-treating. Since I applaud myself for making it to the toaster and back without getting winded, that someone ain’t me; so that leaves the kids. But just to be on the safe side, I think it makes sense for Catholic families everywhere to cover their bases.
And so I present: a gallery of Twofer Costumes for Conflicted Catholics who can barely eke out one costume per kid, let alone one awesome one for Halloween and one inspiring one for All Saints’ Day. These ideas are suitably edifying for any church-sponsored party, but edgy enough to earn you all the Mary Janes and Raisinets you can eat on October 31, all without mom having to make two costumes to satisfy her Catholic children’s double lives. (Note: My sister, Abby Tardiff, thought of all of these brilliant ideas over the years, except for the ones that aren’t funny. Those are my ideas.)
These fall into three basic categories:
MARTYRS
It’s super easy to pick anything from the “gory” aisle, add a few props, and voila—martyr. Don’t like the ick factor? Don’t blame me, blame the persecutors! Be part of salvation history without looking like a sissy.
Hilarious on October 31:
but add a toga, and you’re ready to inspire:
Everybody loves a good sight gag:
especially when it’s Biblically sound:
And finally, you can terrify the normals with this fantastic cephalophoric illusion:
Or, well, terrify the normals with something from the more obscure annals of martyologies (hint: Bleach bottles become bishops’ mitres with a few strategic snips and some gold spray paint)
Not recommended: St. Agatha
HOLY YET ADORABLE SIDEKICKS
These ideas are suitable for kids who won’t stand for being left at home, but whose legs are too short to do any significant candy-collecting on their own.
Check it out: You wear a bathrobe and skip showering for a week or two, and you can pass as either an OWS protester
or St. Francis.
And who’s this tagging along behind you?
Awww, it’s da widdle wolf of Gubbio! Or a werewolf, take your pick.
Or you could fulfill your child’s persistent desire to be Shaun the Sheep,
and if you do a bad enough job on the costume,
you can probably pass as a reference to William Blake’s Christological poem “The Lamb,” especially if you follow him around repeating in a skeptical voice, “Little lamb, who MADE thee? Heh heh heh heh heh ... “
FLIRTING WITH BLASPHEMY
Take this idea, which clearly marks you as one of those people who may be a little bit too enthusiastic about Halloween for someone your age:
and rebrand it. With a few tweaks done in a sensitive and reverent way, you could easily be St. Christopher.
But don’t tell anyone it was my idea.
Who among us does not love a good toilet paper mummy?
Replace that sinister moan and lumbering gait with a fervent gleam in the eye and a distinct lack of rot, and you become, um, Lazarus:
But don’t tell anyone it was my idea.
What’s that you say? What are my kids going to be this year, if I’m so smart? I’ll give you a hint: So far I’ve made a long yellow wig, a golden fertility idol, a pair of little, round ears, and a cape that resembles black olive pizza. That’s right: We’re going, en masse, as the domestic church, and I just dare you to get in our way.
——
photo sources:
arrow prop, St. Sebastian, head on platter costume, John the Baptist, head in jar costume, St. Denis, mug shot, St. Francis, wolf costume, Shaun the Sheep, homemade sheep, piggyback costume, St. Christopher, toilet paper mummy, Lazarus
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Hit it out of the park again! I seriously want to come and play with you and yours.. LOVE it!! (and PS, you’ve shown my 10yo’s 31st costume, but not her All Saints party get up) HAHAHA
For the ambitious, grrl-power-inclined teen: Joan of Arc doubles as Eowyn from Lord of the Rings. Rock that armor, girls! ;-)
as a protestant who grew up not celebrating halloween but attended many an all saints’ party, i still get cognitive dissonance every year when my kids go trick-or-treating. i bet you could also substitute “conservative evangelical” for “catholic” and the suggestions would still work. (example: a friend of mine did, in fact, attend an all saints’ party as john the baptist with his head on a platter on year. that was before everyone got grumpy and the parties became overly sanitized.)
Omg Kara that is such a great idea!!! I was thinking about what costume I could use, and with Simcha’s post she made me want to give it a Catholic twist so badly (I absolutely have no time to create and invent with my midterms floating around), but all the costumes available at the store were the usual maid, siren, cop girl, dancer, you know, the usual “I’m temporarily a porn star on Halloween”... So I was really uncomfortable with the idea of wearing those, and I don’t think anybody would understand Jesus and Lazarus in the non-Catholic world :“Oh Jesus and a Mummy” (not so cool) Thank you for the idea!!! (And no I am not too old for Halloween, in my country people my age gang up and go trick or treating in hordes ^_^, we have a Saint who ran away from her pagan father while hiding in a costume, so it is a heavy celebration)
I was Blessed Kateri Tekawitha/Pocahontas for many years…
A super easy dual costume is the Jedi Master. Play Obi-Wan on 10/31 and on the very next day go to your All Saint’s party as any number of Franciscan or Dominican monk/preacher (minus the light saber).
Great post!
and, for the little girl that just HAS to be a princess: Margaret of Scotland, Elizabeth of Hungary, Brigid of Sweden…
Ooh gosh. I hate Halloween. Making reasonably Catholic costumes for little ghouls who want to dress up as vampires and witches gets so complicated. Plus they change their minds every other day… We’ve got a clown, a Sam Spade, an Indian Maharani, and Luke and Leia Skywalker. Angels (even Archangels) just don’t cut it for the boys anymore.
My kid wants to be a missile. Yeah.
All I can think of is to make him a Patriot Missile. You know, after Saint PATRIck, of course. It’s going to say, “Come get some!” on the side - an oblique reference to Baptism.
CHRISTIANITY TOOK ALL THE PAGAN HOLIDAYS AND RITUALS AND MADE IT THEIR OWN. I PLAN TO ATTEND CHURCH AROUND HALLOWEEN. AN ENACTMENT RITUAL CANNIBAL CEREMONY WILL GIVE MY KIDS A GOOD SCARE!
And of course there is always Franciscan by day, Jedi by night.
Eldest boy wants to be a platypus for some reason. Also,one Ironman, one princess, and whatever else I can thin of for the babies.
Thanks be to God for having prevented this piece of cultural imperialism from firmly establishing itself in my country (France).
During the late 1990’s, France experienced a “Halloween” fad : the media blabbered an on about it, aggressively trying to import this “holiday” and to disguise the blatant fact that it was a creation of pure commercialism (we’re telling you, it’s an ancient Celtic tradition !), corporations tried to sell more unhealthy food and other junk by putting a picture of a bat or a pumpkin on it (Celtic tradition !), stores, small and large, dutifully complied and put up Halloween themed “decorations” (cobwebs, bats, orange stuff, all of which are, need I remind you, ancient Celtic traditions) and finally, parents forced their children to put stupid costumes on and go trick-or-treating.
And then, thank God, it failed miserably. Not, unfortunately, because everyone realized Halloween is a stupid, somewhat disgusting, meaningless holiday. But mainly because trick-or-treating is impossible in France, because cities are not organized in the same way as in America : there is no equivalent to American suburbia. No cosy, safe suburbias in which your kids can wander alone asking strangers for unhealthy sweets. Ergo, no trick-or-treating. And Halloween without trick-or-treating is even more stupid and meaningless that Halloween.
More power to you if you have fun “celebrating” this hollow, neo-pagan holiday, but am I glad it never caught on here.
We did the “twofer” a year ago. Our son had a “Zombie Prisoner” costume—a black-and-white striped shirt, pants, and hat, with a zombie mask.
Remove the zombie mask, add some glasses—voila, St. Maximilian Kolbe!
Angel of Death/Grim Reaper = St. Michael Archangel.
This is awesome!
I remember one year my brother was St. Sebastian and I was St. Thomas Becket. The sword kept falling out of my head but my brother’s four or five arrows stayed stuck in his chest, with the fake blood, all night long. It was a pretty awesome All Hallows Eve.
P.S. Love the Sunnydale reference
Oh, I thought the St. Christopher one was the kids from Boys Town - “he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” which would be a good costume come to think of it. two kids could be the boys and dad could be Fr. Flanagan!
This kind of falls under the martyr section, but my sister once went as St. Maria Goretti, complete with stab wounds and fake blood for the Youth Group Halloween party. I think she was one of the only kids who dressed up at ALL, much less in a costume that doubled for both Halloween and All Saints Day.
We love Shaun the Sheep in this house. The lamb was a really good laugh!! Thanks, also, for the bishop’s mitre idea. I was trying to figure that one out since one boy is St. Patrick for All Saints’ Day. The other is going as St. Stephen with tin foil rocks attached to his garb. They’re going for Halloween as a monkey and a puppy. I’m glad to have these twofer ideas for next year!
I am so grateful Thibaud showed up to provide the joyless, carping, overly serious critical element this article was so sorely lacking. ;-)
Not doing two-fer costumes, but we always do All Saints Day and I am always grateful for the costume clearance sales! I don’t really see how my son dressing up as a robot one night and St. Paul the next hurts anything.
I need help converting a Davy Crockett/Daniel Boone costume into something saintly. Any ideas? Can my kid go as Joseph Smith to his All-Saints party, or will he get flogged by the super Catholics?
@Uncreative: wasn’t John the Baptist kind of a wilderness guy? Coonskin hat, camel hair clothes, same diff…
Poverty of both mind and wallet have made us a two-fer family for years! Some of our better efforts include a policeman (St. Michael), a doctor (St. Luke), a lion (from Daniel), and we dressed the baby in one of those t-shirts with glow-in-the-dark bones and called him a first class relic.
Meh, we got your secular Superman/Vampire/etc here. I say dress up is fine as long as we aren’t those people who make their homes a House O Horrors for the day. (Mostly because it’s too much work!) The next day we all send our candy to the troops and take a trip to mass for All Saints Day.
We’ve done the lion costume, and couldn’t a caveman costume double as John the Baptist? Last year, though, they were a rat, a trap, and cheese . . . I can’t come up with any twofers for those!
Ah… this brings back fond memories of when our parish used to sponsor an All Saint’s Day party for the kiddies. That is until one dreadful scold party-pooper moved into the parish and made such a stink all the way to the Bishop and we had to quit. Thibaud is that you? The students usually dressed up as various saints and they really got into the spirit of the thing with some really creative costumes as I recall. Joan of Arc and Thomas Moore were very popular as was St. Francis and his menagerie.
I absolutely LOVE the first-class relic baby costume idea! Wonderful!
Since when did All Saints Day parties become popular? I’ve never heard of this in real life, only on the internet. I live in Jersey, maybe that explains it. We’ve got the Housewives and the Jersey Shore to keep us entertained.
I love this. Slightly off-topic, but has anyone noticed that the little girl costumes are getting racier and racier? Also, I don’t remember Halloween being all about sex and vamp for women when I was a kid…maybe I missed it?
You know you’re in your forties when you stop competing, and tell your husband to go to the half off sale the night before. You give each one of them a $10 budget and tell them to “get creative”. You make a buddy system so the older ones have to help the little ones. They get to keep any money they save….When they get back with—Blood? Guts? Chainsaw? I pretend I’m scared and say “That’s super cool, sweetie”.
Oh yeah, and the night “of”, I always make sure I’m on my second glass of wine. @Thibaud, I just found my out for being a Halloween grouch—it must be my French blood! (That, and the 22 years I have been trick or treating with kids! I’m closer in age with my oldest than my youngest! :O)
@Momofthree—yup, Halloween is getting seriously trampy for the tween and teen (and adult) girl set… It’s gross. My daughter wants a flapper costume, but we have to sew it because the ones from the costume shops are cut waaaay too high on the thigh.
We’re boring people around here—no saints! We just do “normal” halloween costumes—even ostensibly “evil” stuff like witches, zombies, etc. are all allowed. Then up super-early the next morning for Mass before school.
@Uncreative - this is All Saints Day. Not only is Joseph Smith not a Saint, he wasn’t even Catholic! I’m open-minded, but not so much my brain fell out. That would be highly inappropriate. We are supposed to be celebrating exemplars of Catholic living. I agree with the suggestion of John the Baptist.
Ha, ha, if anyone even noticed, what I meant to say is that I’m closer in age to my oldest, than the age difference between my youngest and my oldest!! Blond moment. And I have to THINK about Halloween on top of everything?? All I know is that’s a freakin lot of trick or treating…
My oldest brother went to our All Saints Day party as Dismas (You know, the good thief) one year. His costume was black clothes, ski mask, a crowbar and red sharpie on his hands (for blood.) I still think it was brilliant.
Awesome job with the Styrofoam idol Simcha! That stuff is a pain to work with.
First class relic? Someone, help me clean the coffee off my laptop. Hilarious!! I love it.
Last year my son was a firefighter and then St. Florian (patron st. of fires/firefighters) at the All Saints Party. However, this year we don’t have an ALl Saints party to go to, so we just let him pick a non-evil costume. And my daughter is a fairy because
My first adult Halloween party as a newly wed we went as St. Stephen and St. Lucy. I carried around some eyeballs on a platter and we painted each other with fake blood on thrift store sheets. It was epic. I make a pretty good fake stoning-bruise on the skin with makeup!
A knight and dinosaur easily morph into St. George and the dragon. We’ve done that several times.
@Christine LOL I know
Halloween—tape bills, parking tickets, political flyers, stupid ads, circulars, etc all over yourself and go as a pile of junk mail. Then for All Saints switch over to holy cards, brochures, pamphlets, and novena sheets and go as the literature rack from church.
And has everyone overlooked the obvious dual-duty costume? LEPER!! My nephew could teach anyone a few things about using glue and paint to make realistic hanging flesh… For AS, you could go just *half* made up as a leper and be a miracle in progress…
@Thibaud:
What are you talking about? I lived in France and you certainly CAN trick or treat there - logistically speaking. And, yes, there certainly ARE suburbs fairly well similar to ones in the US! I know - I lived near one. Granted if you did knock on someone’s door and say, “Trick or treat!” to them, in English of course, you certainly would not get any candy. So, yes, that would be a problem. I also do concede that the suburbs there now are a lot less safe than they used to be. But keep in mind that the kids go to the door with groups of parents standing behind them.
But the real issue is that the French are very prideful about their culture. They believe that it is superiour to all others and are offended particularly by anything that smacks of American culture. All except for <<les Francais Vachement Cool>> - who are not afraid to both be French and also say “computer” instead of ordinateur, or “Bon weekend!” without fear that their Frenchness will slide off them into a blue poubelle bag. C’est redicule.
Aw, I wish we Anglicans (in my diocese at least) had an All Saints party. At my son’s school (conservative Episcopal-Anglican) they have “Book Character Day”. Mine is going to be an elephant (his favorite animal), the first book I could think of was Eric Carle’s “Polar Bear, Polar Bear”. I’m Alice, the baby is my White Rabbit. What does one Twofer with that?
Growing up in a conservative Evangelical family, I never celebrated Halloween. As a 21-year-old new convert I’m getting ready to celebrate it for the first time. Now the only thing I want to go as is an Incorruptible. What better twofer than that, right? ;)
Years ago we had a Saints and Sinners party on Halloween that was wonderful. St. Lawrence came with his grill. Adam and Eve showed up in flesh colored leotards, big leaves in strategic places, and a snakehead on a feather boa. God showed up straight from the Sistine chapel to touch the finger of Adam. (That was my brother, a priest, who was wearing a white alb and a Santa beard and hair.) My roommate and I came as Felicity and Perpetua. We wore Roman togas and had little stuffed animals pinned all over us (think lions and tigers and bears) and Felicity was pregnant. Nice time to rock the Romanesque hairdos and lovely gold dangly earings.
Some pagans like Medusa and Clytemnestra and Circe showed up just to challenge the Christians with their sinfulness. Calvin of Protestant Reformation fame showed up and sparked a spirited conversation about which category he fell into. St. Lucy brought her eyes on a plate. (Just glad no one came as St. Agatha with what she would have been carrying on a plate!)
I see Halloween as a wonderful community-building time of year. One of us sits by the door while surely a hundred kids come and many wonderful little visits happen as we pass out the candy. My kids have even put together a graveyard in our yard with stones to “Haywood U. Buzzoff and Seymour Butz and Pushin Updayzeez and Tso Long” They had so much fun making up the names and decorating the gravestones.
Cheers! I see this as our little way of bringing joy even into this corner of the year. All things for Christ!
My baby sister (the only one in our family still young enough to trick-or-treat) had a velvety purple dress and lavender cape this year. She has not yet perfected her double life, though. As I was taking her around the block, she yelled across the street to our neighbor, “I’M SAIN WISBEF OF HUNGRY!” As they were headed out the door to the homeschool All Saint’s Party (I stayed home), Mom was quizzing her on her costume and she insisted that she was just “A PRINCESS.”
I’ve been saying for years that my daughter Cecilia should go to the Saints parade we have at church as Ste. Cecilia, complete with head on platter. I doubt anyone but myself and my offspring would find this entertaining, however. But that would be a great “twofer” costume too, I think. I’ve never been able to come up with a good visual for the “squashed nearly flat by big rocks” part of it though, alas…
Years ago when I taught kindergarten we had an All Saint’s party. One little boy had a “Jafar” costume from the Disney Aladdin movie. I suggested that he use it to be one of the Wise Men from the Bible. The little boy said “That’s it! I’ll be a wise guy!”
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