This year, instead of going to the houses in our area and the kids asking for treats, we participated in our church's Trunk or Treat event. These are found many places and done in different ways but at our church, families sign up to decorate their cars' trunk (or pick-up truck or van) to a theme and offer candy to passers-by. The vehicles are all parked in the parking lot so this is a safer way for the children to trick-or-treat and it lets families in our neighborhood get to visit our church in a less "threatening" atmosphere. In our case, we all dressed up as Nintendo game characters and decorated our car to the theme of Luigi's Mansion.
Luigi's Mansion is a game for the Nintendo gaming console that my son has enjoyed. In it, Luigi's brother Mario has been abducted and turned into a picture (?!?) by the king of the ghosts. Luigi must find clues and track down his brother while fighting off ghosts and other bad things as he finds his way through the mansion. It's an adventure type game and really makes you think. In the picture here, you can see Evan dressed as Luigi (notice he has a vacuum cleaner - that was used in the game to capture ghosts) and Emma is dressed as Toad - a toadstool from the Mushroom Kingdom who helps Luigi. My wife is dressed as Princess Peach, also of the Mushroom Kingdom. I was dressed as Luigi's brother Mario but I was taking the picture. In the second picture, on the left, you'll see a young fellow who also dressed as Mario. We had a good laugh over that and he was a good sport about it.
It was a great time for all of us and over one thousand people visited our Trunk or Treat that night.There was free popcorn, hot chocolate (it was pretty cool that evening) and other free food. There were other activities for the kids, too, like dancing games and inflatable bouncies. The fire department was there to display one of their new fire trucks for getting into wooded areas that aren't normally accessible to fire fighting equipment. The next picture, on the right with the Statue of Liberty, was another of the more than 25 decorated trunks there. You can see that people really got into it!
The last picture shows our scariest visitors. I remember looking up from something I was doing and seeing those two faces staring at me. I took a step back before I remembered what we were doing and laughed at my own surprise. Many Christians don't like Halloween because lately, it has been co-opted by people who consider themselves witches and pagans. But they forget that this holiday, while similar to celebrations of pagan people, gets its name from the All Hallows Evening prelude to All Hallows (or All Saints) Day on November 1. There are no pagan celebrations for the Saints. I have always looked at our celebration of Halloween as showing our lack of fear of the dark powers of the Earth. We look to Christ for our power and nothing can harm us if we put our trust in Jesus. Even these scary folks!
I'm marking this as being posted on November 1, when I started this post, even though I finally posted it on Sunday,
The last picture shows our scariest visitors. I remember looking up from something I was doing and seeing those two faces staring at me. I took a step back before I remembered what we were doing and laughed at my own surprise. Many Christians don't like Halloween because lately, it has been co-opted by people who consider themselves witches and pagans. But they forget that this holiday, while similar to celebrations of pagan people, gets its name from the All Hallows Evening prelude to All Hallows (or All Saints) Day on November 1. There are no pagan celebrations for the Saints. I have always looked at our celebration of Halloween as showing our lack of fear of the dark powers of the Earth. We look to Christ for our power and nothing can harm us if we put our trust in Jesus. Even these scary folks!
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