ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

WARNING: Extremely self-centered post with perhaps TMI, but I apologize for neither.

I’ll freely admit I’ve passed through a range of views and attitudes towards Halloween over the years, some of them influenced by my faith as an evangelical Christian. Growing up in a not-very-religious household meant that dressing up for Halloween and trick-or-treating was an annual event. Growing up in Anchorage, Alaska meant that I had to choose very warm Halloween costumes and trick-or-treating usually just meant wearing my snowsuit and the mask that went with my costume. Kind of lame.

By the time I graduated from high school I had fallen into that niche of evangelical Christianity that believes Halloween is a rather Satanic holiday and best not celebrated by Christians (seethis article for more info). My youth group did special sessions on how incidents of Satanic Ritual Abuse peak on Halloween and taught us all of the perceived negative things about this holiday: its alleged Druidic and pagan origins, malicious pranks, and the sinister content and nature of most Halloween-themed films. I do have to hand it to my youth leaders, they were right about most Halloween releases being horrible both in terms of quality and the profanity/nudity/violence-laden content therein, but in retrospect I know that most of their other complaints were rather naive and irrational. At the time I believed it though, so for Halloween 2000 I wound up organizing and hosting a “harvest festival” alternative night at my local church.

While attending Brigham Young University the next year, I was surprised to discover that Latter-day Saints have absolutely no problem with celebrating Halloween. I don’t think I ran into a single Mormon who expressed any reservations about Halloween—more fuel for the “Mormonism is a satanic cult!” evangelicals I guess. True story: BYU students get more up in arms about people watching the damn Superbowl than they do about people dressing up as Beelzebub. These days I don’t think either one is worth griping about, but it’s kind of weird.

I continued my policy of not celebrating Halloween throughout college. When I married my sexy LDS husband Paul, we discussed our Halloween differences as part of our interfaith marriage package. His major argument was that Halloween is the ONLY day of the year when it’s socially acceptable for you to dress as someone you’re not, and it’s sad to pass up on that kind of fun. Unless you’re Jewish and you celebrate Purim, which is a lot of fun but a much less-practiced holiday for sure. I agreed that our family could celebrate Halloween, with the stipulation that our costumes can’t be demons, devils or really scary monsters. Don’t ask me why, it just makes me uncomfortable.

While I agreed that we could celebrate Halloween, in practice we haven’t really done it yet because our budget has always been too tight to fork over an extra $100+ for Halloween costumes and decorations. We’ve been a rather anti-social couple, and Halloween has simply come and gone with barely a nod from us. With our daughter Harley being 2 now and probably old enough to remember Halloween, I decided that needs to change this year. So, we’re going to celebrate Halloween, and I actually want to put a little thought and effort into the holiday.

Which brings me to the point of this post (see the picture above). One of the great things about Halloween for women is that you can break out of your shell and dress a little sexier and skankier than you normally would. You can just wear animal ears and a sexy nightgown like the characters in Mean Girls and it will be considered perfectly normal! I haven’t worn anything in public that shows off my midriff or thighs since I was a teenager, so I figure, this might as well be the year. My husband approves.

I’ve decided I’m either going to go as Wonder Woman, Batgirl or Supergirl, and since I don’t have the time to make a more authentic costume for myself, I’m just going to buy one of the costumes shown above. Here’s the pros and cons of each costume:

Wonder Woman

Batgirl

Supergirl

So, take the poll (or view results) and let me know what you think.

Note: Sadly, WordPress does not seem to have a simple way of embedding a poll in blog posts right now, so you have to go off site. Do it for me!