(Edited for clarity sake – Ed.) Allow be to present a different issue here.Depending on your family’s values, you may or may not feel free to participate in Halloween.

We have four kids, but our family does not participate in Halloween. My husband is a child fo a missionary who grew up in a tribe, in a jungle, in a very dark place where witches and witchcraft were both real and an accepted way of life at the time. Because of his history there, he has an understandable aversion to anything that embraces witches and their practices or what they represent. I’m fine with that because I’d rather spend my time and energy celebrating the deep and the good (Christmas, Easter, birthdays!). In the meantime, our children (we ourselves) have been practicing living out from what we consider grey areas in their Christian training.

Because of our not having the freedom to celebrate Halloween, we still practice and demonstrate GRACE towards other Christians who do send their kids out to trick or treat. This can be challenging, too; most areas in life that we consider “grey” ARE challenging, especially if you’ve been raised (like me) without any grey areas. We believe that all Christians can have a lot of freedom within the Spirit of God. We don’t have a special lingo about skipping Halloween, nor do I usually explain it in this much detail in my casual conversations with acquaintances. We do give our kids candy at this time of the year and hand out candy if we ever get any trick or treaters. (Living on a country road, with orthodox Mennonites on the farm beside us, you understand we usually don’t get many children knocking on our door.) Our kids may choose to take their own children on day “trick or treating” when they become parents. Because they will not have (please, we pray God) a history with anything to do with witches. They may very well have the freedom from the Spirit to participate in Halloween. That will be their judgement call. And if the Spirit gives them that freedom, fine. But we don’t.