Why Halloween is Important for Kids

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know there are a few hills I will die on: children should have the best living books; the world needs more intergenerational in-person community; and Halloween is a misunderstood and undervalued holiday.

Halloween gives us an opportunity to up-end the social norms, experience a chaotic taste of social anarchy, and feel the consequences of gluttony and greed. What a fantastic holiday!

Halloween is a Rite of Reversal

A rite of reversal is a ritual in which the social order is reversed; the world devolves into chaos and then reverts back to order. These rites are important in human culture because they remind us why we have social conventions and rules in the first place. Sure, chaos is fun for an evening, but at the end of the day, when you crawl into bed, you’re happy that when you wake up in the morning, things will go back to the way they were. Trick-or-treating on Halloween night is an example of a rite of reversal.

On Halloween:

• Children, who are usually only in public spaces in the daytime, get to run through the streets after dark, often without their parents.
• Children get to go to stranger’s homes and rather rudely, threateningly demand candy (Trick or Treat!).
• Children get to dress in costume and be someone or something else.
• Spooky and scary replaces light-hearted and predictable.
• Children get to eat lots of junk food/candy.

Everyday I try to teach my children to be polite (say please and thank you and not be demanding or threatening), to dress appropriately (not go out in public in costume), to be themselves, to eat healthily (celery sticks not chocolate bars), and to not ever take candy from strangers. Yet, on Halloween, the opposite of these behaviours is allowed and encouraged. We literally send our kids out at night in a costume to threaten strangers to give them candy or they will play a trick on them.

Halloween is special. On Halloween you can break the rules. In doing so, it releases tension between child and parent and reinforces why we have rules at all. While Halloween is a fun night and some kids might wish it were Halloween every day, the fact that it isn’t every day is what makes it so fun and so special.

I care about Halloween for my kids for a bigger reason than their smiling faces covered in chocolate at 9 o’clock at night…I believe it is an important cultural rite that helps balance the adult-child or rule-maker/rule-follower relationship.

Halloween Reinforces Moderation

On Halloween night and the following day, I let my kids eat as much candy as they want. I don’t put in any restrictions. The only rule for their candy consumption is they have to brush their teeth before bed.

Now, the consequence of that is that they usually feel a bit sick afterwards. Good! They’ve experienced a consequence of extremism and gluttony.

Someday, when my kids are grown, they will probably go out to the bar with their friends. Now, I’m sober – and I hope my kids will choose the sober lifestyle for themselves too, but I harbor no illusions that they won’t ever get drunk. I hope that when they do, they will feel rotten. They will not want to get drunk every weekend. They will understand the importance of moderation.

Halloween is a great opportunity to practice what it feels like when we live in the extremes –  you feel tired, and grumpy, and stomach sick. While Halloween is fun, it’s a good example of what selfish indulgence feels like.

You wouldn’t want it to be Halloween every day.

We thrive in structure and predictability in our lives. There’s a social hierarchy where parents set rules that kids maybe don’t agree with, but that they have to follow. The flip of Halloween reminds us why we have rules. The stomach ache after over-indulging in too many boxes of Nerds is why Mommy doesn’t let you eat as much candy as you want every single day of the year. While it is exciting to run around after dark and demand candy from strangers – it’s not the way we’d want to live every day. Imagine! Everything would devolve into anarchy if we did that and it would be very stressful.

I think it’s good for kids to experience a little bit of anarchy, a little bit of extremism, of over-indulgence, a little bit of what it would be like if you went out partying and drinking every single night in your 20s and what the consequences of that might be. Halloween is a chance to experience that, but in a time-limited way so that it doesn’t take over our whole lives. Maybe as adults it’s okay to go out on a fun drunken party night with friends once a year, but it’s not something we want to do every weekend. It’s not good for us, it’s not healthy, it’s expensive. I believe in the virtue of moderation. Halloween is a good reminder for why we want to be moderate in all things.

Halloween Gives Light to Darkness

Another criticism I hear often in my circle of friends is not liking the dark and spooky, demonic parts of Halloween. The world is dark and dismal enough as it is – why would we want to celebrate that?

I don’t love the scary things of Halloween either. I am a happy ghost and pumpkin house, but again letting the creepy and disturbing things come out into the open – that’s part of the Rite of Reversal. 364 days a year, the scary creepy things of the world are not things we want to be confronted with – but one day of the year we bring out the goblins, the spiders, the skeletons, the demons. We confront death and the grotesque. We bring out the darkest parts of us and we celebrate them. We laugh at ourselves for getting scared. We take joy in the fear.

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, there is a magical being called a bogart that shape-shifts into whatever the character fears the most. The way to defeat the bogart is to think of it in a humorous context and then laugh at it. I think Halloween is also like that; you take something scary and you celebrate it and have fun with it. By doing so, those dark ideas and those scary things of the world are somewhat lightened and vanquished. On Halloween, we let the scary parts of culture come out and we have fun with it. We laugh about it, and these fears become less intense. In that way, Halloween is a kind of exposure therapy.

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Another year, another Halloween in the books. As I write this, I have a stomach ache. Because yes, I did raid my kids’ hauls and ate one too many fruity taffies.

Enjoyed this post? Check out some of my other recent posts!

• Making Homeschooling Work During Home Remodeling
• Why Halloween is Important for Kids
• Kids Books about Trustworthiness
• Having a Pet Hamster for Families
• Kids Books About Compassion

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-Heather

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