Alternatives

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• String white Christmas lights on your house or on trees in your front yard.
• Make a banner with Scripture and hang it in your living room.  Use different mediums such as magazine clippings, watercolors, scented markers, Craypas, colored pencils, etc.
• Use white lunch bags to make luminaries to place along your walkway or sidewalk.  Are the creative juices flowing?  Cut letters into the bags to spell "Jesus loves you."
• Get more bang for your buck and decorate for fall.  Use corn stalks, bails of hay, colorful mums, lots of pumpkins and gourds, and even a strand of yellow, red, and orange lights on a bush in the front or a porch railing.  (Our family actually waits to put the lights up until after October 31 so that our autumn decorations are not misconstured with Halloween ones.)

Things to do instead

• Find a local church that is having an alternative celebration and attend it. 
• Start a fun, creative, and new tradition.  How about a board game marathon or baking cookies?
• Help support or start a “Trip to Hell” or "Judgement House" type of drama at your local church.  Not a haunted house, but a dramatic presentation of how our choices today impact our eternity forever.
• Have a Noah's Ark party.  All the attendees dress as the animals.  Center all games around that theme.  (Don't forget to take time to pray for the meal.)
• Speaking of prayer, take a little extra time to pray for your neighbors by name.  Perhaps you could take a walk the morning of the set trick-or-treating day in your town and as you pass by each neighbor's home pray for the marriages, children, jobs, financial security, values, and salvation of the family that lives there.  If you speak to them, be sure to tell them that they were on your mind and in your prayers.  What a super way to open up communication and possibly find out the needs of those around you!

Costumes

• When it comes to costumes that can be tricky but not impossible.  If your child's class comes in costume on Halloween, go shopping with your youngster for a new outfit and let them wear their new duds to school instead.
• Allow them to wear a funny hat to school. 
• How about a baseball jersey with a matching team hat?
• Before I retired, would wear a button to school that said, "No, this isn't a costume.  It is my real face!"
• Make costumes a part of playtime.  Dressing up is great fun for kids and fosters imagination.  Stock a dress-up trunk with oversized clothing and garb that gives your child the chance to pretend to act out various professions.  Or how about characters from history?  What a great way to incorporate a little history lesson without your kids even knowing it!

Pumpkin Carving

• If your family loves to scoop pumpkin goop and roast the tasty seeds, why not carve something other than a face into the pumpkin.  How about a flower or your family name?  Why not turn the occasion into a tactile bible lesson?  Follow the outline given here. 
• Visit "The Pumpkin Lady's" website and learn how to make your very own and original pattern.  Can't come up with your own idea? 
• Visit Squidoo and find all kinds of patriotic patterns at your disposal. 
• Or better yet, how about symbols that show your faith in Jesus?  Here are some activity parables and a great poem that would go along with your carving!

If your family has an alternative to Halloween, we want to know about it.  Send it to us by filling out the form below and we will post your response on this site.  Any information that you send is solely for the purpose of posting on this site and will never be misused or given away to anyone.