We had such a ball on Sunday evening. The kids dressed up, we lit our pumpkin and put it in the Vicar’s study window, put sweeties in a bag and waited around for the doorbell to ring. Which it did, almost continuously between 5.30pm and 6.30pm. Civilised, I thought.
As I’ve mentioned before, we imposed the Vicarage rules of making the Trick or Treaters tell a joke or story or sing a song before treats were given. I have to say, I was generally rather disappointed with the quality of the jokes. After the first group, who had a selection of not too awful jokes, pretty much everyone told the knock knock Dr Who one. Bonus points, though, to the teenage girls at the end of the session who told a proper(ish) ghost story.
After handing out sweeties and a Good Book Company tract, we took our Trick or Treaters to look at our pumpkin and told them about about it. I got the kids to do it a few times and sometimes I talked to them. We took the visitors through sin (the yucky middle of the pumpkin that needs to be got rid of) and the light which we can have in our hearts because of the cross. One set of Trick or Treaters had been in Junior Church with me in the morning, and had heard my (rather longer) explanation of the pumpkin in the service. They joined me in singing the new song I’d taught them: ‘What a Mighty Mighty Saviour You Are’.
In the window on the stairs on Saturday evening
The Vicar's Wife 
Sounds like fun. We were persuaded to take the easy option. We booked a guest house for a short break in “a quiet part of Edinburgh”. All was well for the first three nights. Our final night was “enlivened” by a party that started at 20.00 and went on for 8 hours. We got back to Somerset late afternoon, disconnected the door bell and went upstairs to a back bedroom to sleep – which we did rather well!
Your pumpkin talk may find its way to a Church School assembly next year.
Our halloween was much better than expected.
We held a treat party (no tricks) at church, and having worried about the fact that two explorer aged (7-11) children were expected, found that we had 8. That really helped balance out the 20 or so 3-6 year-olds.
We had a quick talk about Invitations to parties, and Jesus’ invitation to his party, which seemed to go down well.
We didn’t really mention halloween, since we wanted to avoid having the smaller children know about things that they are pretty innocent about.
Totally exhausting, but great material for praising God! I suspect it’s going to become a regular fixture.