Being God’s child is like being a pumpkin. God lifts you up, takes you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. He opens you up, touches you deep inside and scoops out all the yucky stuff – including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside you to shine for all the world to see.
That is really inspirational. Thanks it’s nice to be able to know that you can give all your troubles to Him and trust him to lead you through everything. Thanks for that.
You’re welcome! I love it too. I just received it in an email from a good friend.
Sandy, that’s beautiful, and oh, so true!
Thanks for sharing!
You’re welcome, Becka! 
I’ve always wanted to ask and I hope that you arent offended… but as Christians do you have a problem with celebrating Hallowe’en? Do any Christians?
Some Christians (the fundamentalists) REFUSE to celebrate Halloween, because they believe that Halloween encourages worshipping the devil.
I don’t feel that way, though. I think it’s an innocent festival. I think it all depends on your attitude.
By the way, I don’t consider it to be a holiday (“holy day”), but I think it’s a fun day for family events.
The day after Halloween, “All Saints Day” is a holy day in the Christian faith. It is a day to remember those who have passed away.
I would still like to hear from anyone about this.
Halloween (IPA pronunciation: [hælə’win], [hælo’win]) is an observance celebrated on the night of October 31, most notably by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting sweets. It is celebrated in much of the Western world, though most common in Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and with increasing popularity in Australia and New Zealand. Halloween originated in Ireland as the pagan Celtic harvest festival, Samhain. Irish, Scots and other immigrants brought older versions of the tradition to North America in the 19th century. Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part of American pop culture in the late 20th century.
The term Halloween, and its older spelling Hallowe’en, is shortened from All-hallow-even, as it is the evening before “All Hallows’ Day”[1] (also known as “All Saints’ Day”). In Ireland, the name was All Hallows’ Eve (often shortened to Hallow Eve), and though seldomly used today, it is still a well accepted label. Halloween was also sometimes called All Saints’ Eve. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European pagan traditions, until it was appropriated by Christian missionaries and given a Christian interpretation. Halloween is also called Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland, presumably named after the púca, a mischievous spirit.
Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult. Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when the spiritual world can make contact with the physical world and when magic is most potent (e.g. Catalan mythology about witches).
ok, cool.
Lots of people do consider it to be a holy day… or the day preceeding a holy day.
Yeah, I would think that some people would have a hard time with it. Letting out the spirits and all…
I used to do an organ concert for Halloween/All Saints Day. I would perform organ and piano pieces, and the pastor would read stories about the martyrs who died for the Christian faith.
I’m not doing it this year, because last year’s attendance was not what I anticipated. I guess I’ll get to relax and have fun this year! 
Pooky Night! 
I think I’ll call it that from now on. I DO have an Irish heritage after all! :mrgreen:
Pooky night :roflhard: :roflhard: :roflhard:
I’m a Christian and we do celebrate Halloween…I don’t make a humongous deal out of it, positive or negative. Many Halloween traditions came from Christian tradition, many came from pagan tradition…we just stick with the fun stuff. 
Do I like that in every store that we visit, there are huge displays of nasty gory scary gooky monsters that scare the crap out of my tiny kids? Absolutely not…but that has nothing to do with my faith. It is what it is…we take the fun, innocent parts and leave the rest.
They’re soooo excited, it’s freakin’ adorable
The kids ARE precious, aren’t they?
Here’s a photo of my kids when they were little. They went as shepherds, because we couldn’t afford to buy a costume that year. Noah is on the left…he was singing! Josh is on the right.
They are 19 and 21 now. :noway:
Those pics are great to embarass your kids by!! :roflhard:
I am down south and down here it can be called
Happy Harvest or a Fall Festival depending on the church. Naturally as you get more rural it gets more stringent as what they will allow in church
I personally am not offended by it becasue children love to make believe and dress up and it’s a great time for them to use their imaginations.
Although, I am noticing fewer and fewer parents are taking their kids trickor treating… or even dressing them up.
some go to community/church fall festivals and some famiies don’t celebrate it all!!! :?? :??
shandeh
why did you change from carolina red?? :??
When I first joined the KH forum, I wanted to be “Sandy”, but that name was already being used by someone else. So, I chose “Carolina Red” because I live in North Carolina, and I am a redhead.
But, lots of people thought I was an NC State fan, or a University of South Carolina fan. But I’m not a fan of either.
Lots of people in the forum were calling me “Shandeh” because I told them that I’ve always been crazy about Sean Connery. I said that if he ever met me, he would call me “Shandeh” because of his Scottish accent. :teehee:
I like being called “Shandeh”, so I decided to change my name to that. 
I’m a Christian and we let the kids dress up and get candy too… only thing I have against Halloween is that it scares me lol I’m a scardy cat… so I don’t like the scary movies that are played or the scary houses 
we use to go growing up and I wouldn’t go to the scary houses no matter how good the candy was or if my dad said he would go with me… no way lol… this will be our first year going up here we usually go back to WV for it…
we passed a house this morning to the bus stop that was all decorated with the monsters and skeletons… my son was like cool can we do that? I told him but we have pumpkins and scarecrows lol couldn’t tell him no cause mommy has fear issues even with the decorations… :oops:
ETA: I love the pumpkin story I had read that before
I am planning on having a Halloween recital for my students at a local nursing home. I try to do this every year. Some of my students go there, wearing their costume, and they play some pieces just for fun. The nursing home residents love it, because they don’t get to see children in costumes anymore.
One of my students will not be participating because of their beliefs. Their family does not celebrate Halloween. I’m not critical of them, because we are all entitled to our own beliefs and personal choices.
:waving: Christian Halloween celebrators here!!!
In my opinion, celebrating Halloween has just become a fun time for the kids. It doesn’t have anything to do w/ our faith. The kids love dressing up & running around the neighborhood w/ their friends. And, thankfully, we live in a neighborhood where it’s OK for them to do this!!! 
That said, I really don’t like the gory, scary costumes. So, I don’t enourage them, and quite frankly, my kids don’t usually want them anyway. Both kids have been either Harry or Hermione for more than one year, though. :rollingeyes: So original.
:?? I guess we need to get rolling on costumes, eh? :gah:
BTW … Since we homeschool, I was considering doing a short lesson on the origins of Halloween. We enjoy learning the history of things like this!