One of the many ways that I’ve probably damaged my kids has to do with Halloween. When I was a kid growing up in Maryland, I liked it quite a lot, unless it was cold, and my mom made me wear a jacket over my costume. I would have rather frozen to death than wear a coat. What was she thinking?

In those days, Halloween involved going through our own neighborhood and knocking on the doors of people we knew. Mrs. Harrington was my favorite as she would give out home-made, hand-decorated cookies. You could not get away with that kind of love in today’s climate. One time as I went through my bounty, I discovered that, like Charlie Brown, I had received a rock – and not the kind of rock that I enjoy today. Unlike him, though, I had plenty of candy. Sometimes it even lasted until Christmas!

Fast forward to having children of my own. By this time, I had become a Christian and was increasingly sensitive to the darkness of Halloween. It seemed the days of mostly cute and fun costumes had shifted to an abundance of costumes and billboards that emphasized evil and scariness. I hated taking our kids out to restaurants and stores where the decorations were scary. I didn’t like subjecting them to that.

When our oldest two were little, we took them trick or treating (one time, as far as I can remember). They donned store-bought costumes and those horrible plastic masks that make your face sweat, and we hit a few houses. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but every year I grew more uncomfortable with it. I didn’t like frightening creatures coming to our front door either. How does one protect their children from all of this darkness? That was our dilemma, and let me tell you, we didn’t handle it particularly well.

Who are those masked children?

We couldn’t take the kids out of the house to avoid the unknown quantities arriving at our front door, because there were so many everywhere. In my head, it was like a zombie apocalypse married Freddy Krueger – a regular nightmare for me. Of course, I may have been a tad over dramatic. I knew that the Bible taught to abstain from all forms of evil, but parts of Halloween were cute – though those parts weren’t as prevalent anymore, plus I wasn’t sure that should matter. So, every year we wrestled in our minds with what to do. One year we even turned on the sprinklers thinking that would keep things quiet, but our neighbor called and told us they were on. She thought it was by accident instead of by design. Sigh.

My best-ever Halloween involved our small group from our church gathering at our house for an evangelistic outreach for our neighborhood. We shoved all our furniture to one side of the house and invited the neighborhood in for a magic show. My dad, who was a magician, came and performed for the kids (and their parents). He had a unique way of weaving the gospel story into his show. Also, that night it rained, so we were packed to the gills.

So, sorry kids. I hope this is the worst way we’ve messed you up. Some of you have pointed out that it was okay for us to take grandchildren around, but you were denied the pleasure. Yep, you are not wrong; that’s inconsistent, too. Though, that’s really on the parents, not the grandparents. We were simply serving while remaining wishy-washy on our Halloween stance.

This was the year that our daughter and her family were briefly living with us while getting ready to move out-of-state. Bob and I had purchased a Hashtag the Bear costume for a church program and Bob put it to use to hang out with the grandkids as they wandered our neighborhood on what may have been the hottest October 31st ever.

I know that most, if not all our kids and their families, like to participate in Halloween trick-or-treating. Even though I have no credibility in this area, I’ll still offer advice to try to keep the kids more focused on Jesus every day and less influenced by the things of this world, including Halloween. And do what your conscience allows. No guilt.

To sum things up: I don’t like Halloween. I was sometimes an inconsistent though well-meaning parent who in a lot of ways was growing right alongside our children. Grandparenting is easier. Now I can buy all the candy we want and get it 70 percent off the day after Halloween. The prices are much less scary.