Growing up, I was always told that Halloween was the devil’s holiday, and I fully believed that. Being sheltered up until I started going to public school in Kindergarten, it seemed so bizarre to me that people would want to participate in something so evil. As the years went on, though, I realized that this was a holiday for having fun with friends by dressing up and getting candy. It is honestly not any different than Easter. You get candy for both, you dress up for both (well, you dress fancy for an Easter gathering), and you just hang out with friends.
I was not introduced to what Halloween actually was until kindergarten. Up until then, I was told what it was about (in the Christian conservative sense) and told to avoid it. I was very much the odd one out when my kindergarten class was doing Halloween activities and I was not doing any of them as intended. The first activity was to draw our Halloween costumes on a gingerbread man-looking outline on paper. Everyone drew fun costumes such as Spiderman or a fire fighter, and I drew what I was wearing that day. For the next activity we got orange t-shirts and were told to decorate them as a jack-o-lantern. But because this was Halloween themed, I went the abstract route and stamped my shirt with the random shapes instead of forming a jack-o-lantern’s face. This, of course, made my teacher a bit mad because I was not following instructions, but I was doing what I thought was right.
As the years went on with school, I did start participating in the in-class activities for Halloween because they were actually quite fun. I never dressed up, however, but I actually followed the activity directions and ate whatever candy I was handed. I saw how much fun everyone was having with it and decided for myself that Halloween was not a devil-worshipping holiday, it was just a fun, spooky holiday. I never did tell my family that I was passively participating, however. I knew my parents would not care, but my grandmother at the time was pretty strict, so I did not want to get her mad.
The only instance I fully participated in Halloween was for a Halloween party under the guise of just a dress-up worship night at a friend’s church while I was in high school. Even though it explicitly was not a Halloween event, it truly was. It probably just was not labeled as one to keep parents happy. But for that I dressed up in the only costume that I had at the time, aka a homemade King Arthur that I used for a skit in theater class. It was technically youth group night, so they did their typical stuff with worship and a Bible lesson, but afterwards everyone got the chance to go on stage and show off their costumes so that was a lot of fun.
Now that I am an adult, I am sad that I never got to experience trick-or-treating. I did not live in a neighborhood anyways, and with my parents always busy with work, I probably could not have done it even if I was allowed to participate. Honesty I do not know if trick-or-treating is actually fun or overly hyped, but it is still something I wish to partake in one day. Maybe if I move to a neighborhood in the future I can give out candy as a way to participate, or be the carpool parent taking the kids to fancy neighborhoods to get the best candy.