September News
Halloween will be here in no time this year! But how did the Halloween holiday get its roots?
Halloween started as an ancient festival where people would light bonfires and wear costumes to keep roaming ghosts away. Later, November 1 (the day after Halloween) was declared “All Saints Day,” where people would honor saints and martyrs. All Hallows Eve was the day before, and eventually it became known as Halloween. Today, the holiday is a community event for kids to trick-or-treat and enjoy activities in costume!
I personally stopped celebrating this holiday when I was an older kid and it wasn’t appropriate to trick or treat anymore. In college, my peers wanted to party and wear costumes but I was never interested in joining them. In fact, in college I didn’t spend much time with kids or doing kid-things at all. When I moved home after college, I still didn’t have many kids in my life. However when my sister got pregnant with her first child, I decided I wanted to be a part of their life. I didn’t know how to relate to kids anymore, I seemed to have lost touch with them. That’s when I started volunteering to get used to interacting with kids and start being a kid again. When Halloween came around, my nephew was too scared to go alone. I dressed up with him and held his hand so he would gain confidence (and not trip!) going house to house with his bucket. It’s now one of my favorite holidays, to go trick or treating with him and dress up to compliment the costume he picks out. Last year we were superheros, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with this year. The last I heard he was thinking of being pizza!
The girls at Casa are also kids. They are at that in-between stage where they are probably too old to go trick or treating, but we can still play games and celebrate and be kids with them! Won’t you join us to give the girls something to smile about this holiday? We will be doing face painting and enjoying some spooky Halloween food! The event is 10/14, please contact Andrea at magm1684@gmail.com by 10/7 to RSVP.