When Halloween Dress Up Is Too Scary, Too Sexy

Thankfully, my little ghouls (sorry) are young enough that H'ween dress up means something pretty, fluffy and shiny. But I'm sure the day will come when they will want to set aside the fairy princess costumes and outfit themselves as the wicked witch or a sexy devil instead.

We are members of a Russian Orthodox Church; my kids attend preschool at a Jewish temple. Neither of these groups is thrilled with Halloween and its apparent celebration of gore and the netherworld. And while I do find it a little odd that parents well into their thirties and forties spend hours and hundreds transforming their yards into mini graveyards, I also appreciate the masquerade ball aspects of the tradition.

As I told my husband, for little children, it's about creative play and pretending, not to mention the promise of mountains of candy. Yes, people really do celebrate this stuff seriously (I lived in Brazil. Can you say Santeria?). But we have to be able to differentiate between the two.