Alternatives To Celebrating Halloween
If you genuinely don’t believe in celebrating the aspects of Halloween with its ghosts and ghouls and witches and scary brews, and you are a parent, or you are at work and everyone around you is delighted to share with you their creations, you can get through the situation creatively and with respect to others around you who make the choice to celebrate this particular event. Don’t however go with something you are completely against, but look for creative ways of negotiating with your children or friends, family and coworkers.
When others are decking their houses out in ghouls and ghosts, it is inevitable also that you may be invited to participate in events you’re not 100 percent comfortable with. You can instead schedule your own celebration, for example a dress up party with a particular theme that you enjoy, such a an under the sea or beach party or a snow party or seasonal theme. You can invite people who would enjoy a party with a ghoul-free theme, and who would usually avoid any kind of celebration around that particular time.
There can be a tendency to judge others for their choices. Others do have the right to choose their behaviors, we are given free will and choice as a responsibility, and we also have the choice to respect other’s right to make their own choices. Instead of switching off all the lights in the house when little children come knocking around with their parents, you can still offer candies, and add little heart-warming messages into their little hands as they receive from your house.
Your children will probably still want to be creative and decorate your house, especially if they are seeing other families decorating their houses in the street, and they are decorating and being creative at school with different artistic endeavors. If you really would like your child not to participate in making scary things at school, approach the teacher discretely, and offer creative solutions, like painting pretty things on pumpkins, and having a harvest gratitude decorating celebration, and offer it to the teacher as an exercise in cultural inclusiveness, because it respects your beliefs in celebrating happy and uplifting things, and it also respects your choices in celebrating things that are not scaring your children at night.