I have never celebrated Halloween, but I hope to this year. Here's why.

I don't even like candy...

When I was growing up, it was popular in my intensely religious Catholic community to believe that Halloween was a demonic festival that originated with druidic human sacrifices, and that going trick-or-treating was flirting with the devil. I exaggerate slightly for dramatic effect, but suffice it to say that Halloween was not popular in the milieu where I grew up.

To be fair, we kids were not deprived of candy because we didn’t go trick-or-treating. Or deprived of dressing up. About the only fun we lost out on was knocking on doors in the dark and being scared by other people’s creepy decorations.

Instead of dressing up as ghosts or witches or superheroes—or whatever normal kids dressed up as in the nineties—and wandering around in the dark, we waited for the following afternoon and dressed up as our favorite saint, or, in my case, whichever girl saint let me wear the most metal, ideally weapons. (Saint Joan of Arc was always a good choice because of the armor. But some of those Roman martyrs were fun too. As Saint Philomena, I got arrows, an anchor, and a sword.) Then we attended a giant party at which we had a costume contest, played party games, got fed lots of cookies and were given a bag of candy to bring home.

So like I said, we didn’t miss out on much—and we got a chance to learn about the saints, who are, it turns out, an awfully interesting bunch of people.

Fast forward twenty years or so, I was a parent myself, living in a community full of enthusiastic Halloween decorators, and every September my neighborhood walks would start to fill up with opportunities to tell my frightened toddlers things like: “No… that toothy monster with the blood all over his face isn’t going to hurt you. It’s just your neighbor being silly.” “Isn’t that creepy motion activated phantom that groans as you pass an interesting piece of electronic engineering?” “No, they don’t actually have people buried in their yard, honey.” “The severed limbs on the lawn? No, they aren’t real. And, no, I’m not really sure why they thought that was a good idea.”

So on the one hand, I began to truly detest Halloween as the ever-lengthening season during which my neighborhood lost whatever good taste it had once possessed, and on the other hand, in a world where I knew none of my neighbors, I found value in the idea of a holiday upon which it is socially acceptable to dress up in a costume and knock on stranger’s doors in hopes of getting candy.

I also discovered that the story of Halloween’s demonic origins was completely fictitious. Ironically, it turns out that the origin of trick-or-treating was, of all things…Catholic, and started out with kids going door to door asking if people wanted them to pray for the souls of their departed family members and friends. People would give the kids treats to thank them—and probably to incentivize return visits. The most well known of the traditional offerings was “soul cakes.” But at some point the human connection and the praying for the departed brethren got lost and all that remained was a rather soulless ritual of saying “trick or treat” and holding out a sack for the customary offering of whatever was cheapest in the Walmart Halloween candy aisle that morning, before dashing off to the next house to collect loot there as well.

My husband and I had been struggling to get to know our neighbors and had hoped that handing out candy to neighborhood children in the customary manner would help us meet people, but we found that there was no time for such pleasantries: candy collection is serious business with no time for idle chitchat. And so we pretty much quit celebrating Halloween…again, because it just wasn’t very much fun, and who actually needs more candy? I feel like every time I leave the house with my kids someone gives them candy: the library ladies, the Walmart greeters, the liquor store, the bank tellers, their teachers…)

Then, last year, one of my friends at Catholic Teen Books pitched the idea of a Halloween Anthology: a collection of stories about Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day, the three back-to-back feasts in the Catholic calendar. It wasn’t my favorite idea at first, but then I read the stories my friends wrote, and I enjoyed all of them. And I enjoyed writing one of my own.

I also got inspired. This year, I want to have a Halloween party where we have all the fun. We’ll dress up as saints—and learn about those fascinating people—play games, judge costumes, eat cookies, and then go knocking door-to-door in the dark, collecting candy, yes, but more importantly, asking our friends and neighbors if they want us to pray for their deceased friends and relations—which we will do, at the cemetery, before the end of the night.

I am happy to announce that the Catholic Teen Books Anthology that inspired this idea is available today on Kindle, soon in paperback as well. Affiliate link here: Shadows Visible and Invisible.