Trick or Treating is the best part of Halloween for the young and young at heart. All October long we plan our costumes, stock up on candy, and get ready for a great time.

The days of children safely navigating house by house looking cute and gathering trick-or-treat goodies have gone by in most American neighborhoods. But fear not, there are plenty of safe alternatives for your little (and sometimes big) trick-o-treating fans.

Here are a couple of safe trick-or-treat ideas for schools, churches, and communities that are great alternatives to ensure a fun and safe time for all the kids.

Source: All Hallows Eve

If you are still up for traditional Trick-or-Treating or if you know trick-or-treating will take place in your neighborhood follow these safety tips provided by the National Safety Council.

Motorists

The National Safety Council urges motorists to be especially alert on Halloween.

• Watch for children darting out from between parked cars.
• At twilight or later in the evening, watch for children in dark clothing.

Before They Go Out

Before children start out on their “trick or treat” rounds, parents should make sure that:

• Children travel only in familiar areas and along an established route and youngsters understand not to eat any treat until you have inspected it.
• Plan and discuss the route trick-or-treaters intend to follow. Know the names of older children’s companions and a return time has been established

Costume Design

• Remember: fire-retardant materials for costumes and loose but warm clothing underneath.
• Outfits should be made with light-colored materials. Strips of reflective tape should be used to make children even more visible.

Face Design

• When buying special Halloween makeup, check for packages containing ingredients that are labeled “Made with U.S. Approved Color Additives,” “Laboratory Tested,” “Meets Federal Standards for Cosmetics,” or “Non-Toxic.” Follow manufacturer’s instruction for application.
• If masks are worn, they should have nose and mouth openings and large eye holes.
• ACCESSORIES
• Knives, swords and other accessories should be made from cardboard or flexible materials. Do not allow children to carry sharp objects.
• Bags or sacks carried by youngsters should be light-colored or trimmed with retro-reflective tape if trick-or-treaters are allowed out after dark and carrying flashlights will help children see better and be seen more clearly.

On The Way

Children should understand and follow these rules:

• Do not enter homes or apartments without adult supervision.
• Walk on the left side of the road, facing traffic, if there are no sidewalks.

Treats

To ensure a safe and enjoyable trick-or-treat outing for children, parents are urged to:

• Give children an early meal before going out.
• Insist that treats be brought home for inspection before anything is eaten and when in doubt, throw it out. Don’t allow children to eat anything that is “suspect.”

Safety tips courtesy of the National Safety Council.

Visit us at Operation Letters to Santa for almost 1000 pages of Holiday Activities, Christmas Carols, Christmas Sheet Music, Holiday recipes, Free gifts and downloads and so much more!

Source: Life123.com

Check out these great, fun and cheap autumn activities for you and your family to enjoy:

1. Apple cider is its best during autumn, and when heated it makes a wonderful hot beverage to warm little bellies up after they’ve been playing in crisp weather.
2. Bundle up, as the weather is getting colder. Just to be silly, have a contest to see how many layers of clothes your kids can put on at a time. Prizes can also be given for how quickly they get their extra clothes on and off.
3. Corn roasts can be particularly wonderful in early autumn when conducted with fresh sweet corn over a barbecue grill.
4. Drive to a place where trees are plentiful, just to observe the turning of the leaves.
5. Every autumn, some birds fly south for the winter. Notice what types of birds live near you and look up whether they migrate or stay put. See if you recognize any other kinds of birds in transit, like Canada geese.
6. Figure out how many days there are in autumn by counting the days on the calendar between the first day of autumn and the first day of winter.
7. Go on a nature hike at a state park, and bring along some popcorn and warm apple cider in a thermos.
8. Hay-rides are often sponsored by nearby farms or community groups. Look for one and join in the fun.
9. In the mornings during autumn, you can often see your breath when you walk outside. Help your kids look up why this happens and ask them to explain it to you.
10. Jump in piles of raked leaves, but make sure the rake is somewhere else first.
11. Kandy Korn is a favorite autumn candy. Fill a large jar with Kandy Korn and have your kids guess the number of pieces in the jar. You will have to count them beforehand and keep people from eating any.
12. Leaf rubbings can be made with a crayon and a piece of paper placed over a leaf. The leaves you make can then be decorated and hung up as an autumn decoration as well as a teaching tool for helping your children learn the difference between different types of leaves.
13. Make pumpkin loaves with your kids to give to grandparents, teachers or others as a wonderful autumn treat. Those of you who don’t bake well can fool everyone with boxed mix.
14. Nobody likes a spoilsport. Many sports are active during autumn, so take your children to a local school’s sporting event, like a basketball or football game. Cheer for a team and explain the object and rules of the game.
15. Oranges, reds and browns are prevalent during autumn. Call out one of the color names and have your kids make a list of everything they can think of which is that color. The child with the most things on their list wins.
16. Potatoes are incredibly versatile. Make a list with your kids of every way you can think of to cook a potato, and then have them help you prepare potatoes in each way down the list.
17. Quite appropriate also is to make lists together of sights, sounds and smells associated with autumn and help each child develop their list into a poem that can be read to their class at school or before Thanksgiving dinner.
18. Read your kids a spooky story like “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “The Telltale Heart” or a Goosebumps book. Then you can make puppets and act out the story for grandparents.
19. Scarecrows can be silly or scary. Build a scarecrow with your kids out of household items and put it in the yard.
20. Turn all your clocks back one hour on the appropriate day, and explain to your kids why we have daylight savings time. Ask them to figure out whether you get one hour more of sleep or one hour less of sleep during the autumn.
21. Use strips of colored construction paper to weave interesting placemats for Thanksgiving dinner.
22. Very soon it will be Halloween. Have your kids draw pictures of what costume they’d like to wear this year, or have them cut out pictures from magazines and make a collage of Halloween-themed things.
23. Weathervanes are often depicted on the tops of farmhouses or barns. Find a weathervane near where you live, point it out to the kids and explain why it’s there. Then with tape, scissors, tin foil, cut up pizza boxes and cardboard rolls that come from paper towels, try to make one together.
24. X-amine the animals around where you live and see how their behavior changes with the seasons. Make a list of the animals you see and how they prepare for and endure colder weather.
25. You could make garlands for your outside trees by stringing together popcorn, cranberries or paper designs. You could also make birdfeeder ornaments by putting peanut butter on pinecones and hanging them up. This way, you’ll help the birds and squirrels prepare for winter as well as have fun decorating trees.
26. Zzzzzzz. When the weather is cold outside, it is blissful and relaxing to hide under a big comforter and take an afternoon nap with your kids.

Visit us at Operation Letters to Santa for almost 1000 pages of Holiday Activities, Christmas Carols, Christmas Sheet Music, Holiday recipes, Free gifts and downloads and so much more!

Many people don’t celebrate Halloween because of their religious beliefs. While that should certainly be respected, how about using the holiday as a way of ministering instead of avoiding it all in all?

Here’s an example of how one Christian woman, we’ll call her Ann, combines her faith with trick or treating every year. 

Starting the day after Halloween every year, Ann begins preparing for the next year’s trick or treat guests. You see Ann believes that Halloween is a way of opening her door to the children who may, down the line, want to know more about Christianity. She starts preparing goodie bags well in advance and plans well.

Each child who comes to her door receives plenty of candy, but that’s not all. She also includes things in the bag of goodies such as:

• Faith based coloring books
• Stickers
• Games
• Pencils & Erasers
• Notepads
• Anything with a message from the Bible

Each child also gets something age appropriate explaining Jesus. Things like Cd’s with Bible stories, Veggie Tales videos, and other things are bought throughout the year at dollar stores, Bible book stores, etc. so as to spread the cost out throughout the year.

Why does Ann do this? Her prayer is that when any of those children is ready to learn more about Christ they will remember her as the one who knows Him and can help them do just that.

Ann also decorates her home for the holiday with pumpkins. You won’t find traditional witches and ghouls carved in the sides of her jack-o-lanterns. Instead, crosses, angels and the words of Jesus are the carvings of choice.

For those who might be thinking Ann probably doesn’t get a lot of visitors to her home each year think again. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Each year between 80 and 100 kids ring her doorbell. The past few years have seen a decrease in the number of visitors she gets due to her neighborhood parents doing Trunk or Treat activities.

Trunk or Treat is where parents gather at the school and give candy to the children from the trunks of their car versus going door to door on Halloween night. For folks like Ann, it can be a little sad, but she realizes the positive of having been able to do what she does for over 10 years in her community.

Do you have suggestions or tips for Halloween activities for families of any and all religions? Please share them!

Many parents, for varied reasons, are getting out of the traditional Halloween spirit of trick or treating. For some parents it is a fear of their children getting a hold of tampered with candy or being bullied by older and stronger gangs of teens who really shouldn’t be trick or treating in the first place.  For other parents it can be a decison based on religious beliefs.

Religion

Many of today’s parents who are Christians themselves when polled identified Christmas as their favorite holiday as a child. Many of those same parents chose Halloween as one of their favorite holidays as a child too. Alas, that was before we got so very, very politically correct and before just about everyone was offended by something or another.

Safety

In the 1970’s and 1980’s there were reports of razor blades and needles being put into apples being handed out to trick or treating children. Around the same time there were reports that candy and taffy were being laced with poison.

To my personal knowledge these incidents ended up being unfounded but Ann Landers and Dear Abby spoke of the dangers of trick or treating, and all over America concerned parents began to make changes to their Halloween traditions by either closely monitoring their children’s activities or changing their activities altogether when it came to Halloween and trick or treating.

Church sponsored parties for neighboring children first became popular in the 1980’s. During the hours of trick or treating it was common to find the church doors open offering children an alternative to traditional trick or treating. These alternatives still had every kid’s favorite part of the holiday – candy, but also included games and an overall safer way to spend the night. It was also common for churches to rather demonize Halloween by labeling it a pagan holiday. This was the start of Harvest parties replacing the trick or treating and scary Halloween parties.

To replace the door to door trick or treating or Halloween parties, some parents also considering Harvest or Fall parties. These are basically a watered down version of the traditional Halloween.

This leads us to wonder:

Where Exactly Did the Worry About Halloween in Christianity Come From?

Follow along as we see how it all came to be that many Christian parents’ now choose to celebrate Harvest without the “evil” and scary side of Halloween.

The Celtic’s celebrate the end of summer on Halloween by sacrificing to the gods of the Druidic tradition. Their belief was that the lord of death (Samhain) would send out evil spirits to attack the living. The only protection from the lord of death was for them to disguise themselves as evil beings or spirits, thus the costumes.

Wicca followers celebrate Halloween as one of two high and “holy” days. Following the Celtic belief as outlined above and worshipping Samhain, Halloween becomes a very evil day in the eyes of the Christian believer.

Fourth Century Christians, in an attempt to get away from this evil, began to focus and celebrate Christian saints. This is what we now know as All Saints Day on November 1st. It was during this time that parents, realizing that they could not completely get away from this day, began to allow their children to dress up in costumes that were non-evil such as brides, princesses, pumpkins and football players.

October 31st and Halloween will come each year. I hope this brief history on the emerging Harvest parties and Halloween will give you some insight when choosing how you will spend this day.

No matter which tradition you follow, be safe!

Protect Your Pet at Halloween

Halloween Safety Tips for Pets

Halloween can be a stressful and even dangerous time for your pets.  The doorbell is ringing constantly and children dressed up in scary costumes can be very unsettling for pets. And then there is the issue of some people harassing or actually harming black cats.  Black cats are best kept indoors during the Halloween season if at all possible.

One thing that you may be overlooking is the danger of Halloween candy to your dog or cat.  Chocolate is toxic to some animals. It can cause vomiting when ingested in small amounts and seizures and death in larger doses. Candy wrapped in plastic, cardboard and paper covers, as well as candy with inserted sticks such as lollipops can wreak havoc with a dog’s digestive system. It can cause choking and may even require a trip to the veterinarian’s emergency clinic. You don’t want to have a sick pet or one that requires surgery on your hands when taking a few simple precautions will keep them safe from harm.

The general rule of thumb at Halloween is what tastes good for kids probably should not be given to pets.  Here are some tips that will help you keep your much loved pet companion safe and happy during Halloween.

• Be sure to keep Halloween candy out of reach of your pet.  Place it in a sealed container and put it away in a high cupboard.
• Don’t feed your pet potato chips or pretzels. Overly salty processed foods can upset a dog’s digestive system and can potentially lead to serious health problems.
• Purchase some special pet treats for your dog or cat so they don’t feel left out when everybody is digging in the Trick-or-Treat bag. They’re family too!

Halloween Fun

Be sure to visit Operation Letters to Santa’s Halloween section where you will find all kinds of wonderful things to keep you busy and entertained during the month of October. Be sure to visit our Halloween desktop wallpaper section where you can download vintage FREE Halloween desktop wallpapers for your computer every day!

Halloween and Any Time Costume Resources

Ingredients

• 5 cups popped popcorn (plain or lightly buttered popcorn. Don’t use movie theatre popcorn)
• 1 cup candy corn
• 1 cup chopped salted peanuts
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 3 cups miniature marshmallows
• 4 drops red food coloring
• 3 drops yellow food coloring  – or for a more vibrant orange color use 5 drops of yellow food coloring
• 4 sticks red or black licorice, cut into thirds
• 2 caramels (optional)
• Muffin pan or muffin cups

Directions

1. Grease a muffin pan and set aside.  We suggest a spray such as Pam. Place cooled popcorn, candy corn and peanuts into a large bowl and set aside. You can also add a few minature marshmellows to the mix if desired. 
2. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in marshmallows,  optional caramel pieces, red food coloring and yellow food coloring, adjusting color if needed to get a nice shade of orange.
3. When the marshmallows are completely melted, pour over the popcorn.  To evenly distribute the candy corn and peanuts, pour them on top of the popcorn and then pour the sauce. Use a lightly greased or buttered spoon to mix.
4. Use the same lightly greased or buttered spoon to fill the muffin cups.
5.  Insert a piece of licorice to act as the stem, and mold the popcorn around it. Let stand until firm, 10 to 15 minutes, and then pull the pumpkins out by their stems and admire your beautiful and delicious pumpkin patch!

Halloween Fun

Be sure to visit Operation Letters to Santa’s Halloween section where you will find all kinds of wonderful things to keep you busy and entertained during the month of October. Be sure to visit our Halloween desktop wallpaper section where you can download vintage FREE Halloween desktop wallpapers for your computer every day!

Halloween and Any Time Costume Resources

Ingredients

1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/3 cup water
2 large eggs
1 (18.25-ounce) package chocolate cake mix
M&M’s plain candies or Candy Corn
Red hot candies
Black licorice whips (cut into 3/4 inch strips)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375*F (190*C).
2. In a large bowl, beat together peanut butter, eggs, and water. Gradually add cake mix. Mix well.
3. Form dough into 1 1/2-inch balls. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Flatten balls with bottom of glass dipped in sugar. Pinch out 2 ears at top of cookie.
4. Add M&M’s or Candy Corn for the eyes, black licorice strips for the nose.  and red hots for the mouth. Press fork into dough to form the whiskers.
5. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

Makes 4 dozen cookies.

Enjoy!

Halloween Fun

Be sure to visit Operation Letters to Santa’s Halloween section where you will find all kinds of wonderful things to keep you busy and entertained during the month of October. Be sure to visit our Halloween desktop wallpaper section where you can download vintage FREE Halloween desktop wallpapers for your computer every day!

Halloween and Any Time Costume Resources