It’s the time of year health-minded parents across the nation dread: Halloween. While I love and cherish celebrating holidays and the changing of the seasons, I loathe the trappings of Halloween – and Christmas, too, for that matter. What once we honored with care, storytelling and feasts from a local harvest we now celebrate with mass-market plastic trinkets and candies laced with neurotoxic food coloring and genetically engineered emulsifiers and processing agents. As with many traditions, we’ve lost our focus.
Change the Focus of Halloween
While trick-or-treating is, undoubtedly, the single activity most people associate with Halloween, that doesn’t have to be the case. Indeed, focusing on other aspects of celebrating Halloween and minimizing, but not avoiding, trick-or-treating and candy can help to flesh out the fall holiday. Place extra emphasis on carving the jack-o-lantern, preparing wholesome autumn-inspired treats, creating costumes, story-telling or visiting age-appropriated haunted houses. You might even take the kids on a day-time visit to a historic cemetery in effort to learn more about your community and its early settlers. By focusing on other aspects of the holiday, you can engage your children in a more holistic celebration rather than one that only feeds the pockets of candy manufacturers to the detriment of your children’s health.
Host a Halloween Feast
Consider how fondly we think of Thanksgiving with its turkeys, hams, sauces, sides and pies. Why not celebrate Halloween with a similar feast? Set aside time to create a supper filled with special, seasonal foods – foods that are just a touch above and beyond your everyday fare. Roast a leg of lamb and serve it alongside braised root vegetables, baked apples, pumpkin custard or molasses cookies. Prepare a cauldron of simmering mulled wine for the adults and older children and spiced cider for the young children. Whatever meal you prepare, make it special and unique so that you look forward to it all year and your children will want to continue your new-found tradition in their homes once they’re grown.
Offer Healthier Halloween Treats
While I believe trick-or-treating and candy should not be the primary focus of Halloween, neither do I believe we should avoid it completely. What child wants to feel left out? What mom wants her house TPed because she was the only scrooge on the block not to offer treats to assuage tricksters? Instead, prepare goodie bags filled with wholesome treats like sesame candies, spiced cookies or yogurt taffy for the children you know well and, for the children you don’t know well, consider handing out small organic chocolates (free from soy lecithin and GMO sugar), ginger chews, boxes of crayons, packages of nuts, dime store toys or other goodies in lieu of candy made from GM soy lecithin, high fructose corn syrup, beet sugar, artificial colors and other worrisome components from industrial food manufacturers.
Other Bloggers on Halloween
Consider Reverse Trick-or-Treating
If you believe in food activism, consider reverse trick-or-treating. The chocolate industry is plagued by some very serious social problems including persistent child slavery. Children – usually aged between 12 and 14 years old are forced to work at cocoa farms in West Africa for 80 – 100 hours per week. They’re denied education, adequate nutrition and suffer severe, routine beatings. All of this to feed the West’s addiction to chocolate. Teach your children about the importance of taking a stand by participating in reverse trick-or-treating. Simply by a few bags of fair trade chocolate, print a few flyers, and go door-to-door handing fair trade candies to residents in effort to raise awareness about the plight of children held as slaves to support the cheap chocolate industry.
Invite the Candy Fairy for a Visit
In our home, we invite the Candy Fairy – or Sam Hain as my husband prefers to call the fairy – for a visit on Halloween and other candy-filled holidays. After a short round of trick-or-treating, the children may bundle up their candies and set them aside for the sweet-toothed Candy Fairy who comes under the dark cloak of night, takes the candy and leaves a bundle of much-sought-after toys in the candy’s place. While not a perfect solution, the Candy Fairy keeps the candy from your babies’ bellies.
Load Up on Foods Rich in B Vitamins
Inevitably, your child will come across some sugary sweets this Halloween – a taste from the candy bag, from well-meaning strangers who don’t listen to the word “No†or even from your own homemade, treats. Sugar depletes b vitamins, so stay one step ahead by making sure to have foods rich in B vitamins on hand for Halloween and the days following the holiday. Liver (try chicken liver pâté), beef, nutritional yeast, kombucha and fermented foods present good sources of B vitamins.
In the end, do what you can, and have fun.
Shop Real Food
Learn to Cook Traditional Foods.
Learn the basics of maximizing nutrients through traditional, time-honored foods. Posts sent Monday through Friday.
Loading ...
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
We are collecting for UNICEF this year: http://runawaylawyer.blogspot.com/2009/10/trick-or-treat-to-make-difference.html
Also, my kids will not be getting a lot of their haul – it goes to Daddy’s office to “share with the poor grown-ups who don’t get to trick or treat.”
Except the Reese’s products….they all go to mommy.
While we love trick or treating as a neighborhood-building activity, I also love your ideas. I will plan to spend the money on fair trade and/or organic candies next year. Great ideas!
We haven’t done trick or treating in a while, but my imperfect solution to the candy issue is to pass out cheap glow in the dark bracelets from Oriental Trading Co or a similar company. That has a safety aspect to it too, and is one less piece of candy to give to kids.
i love this!! well done!!
Great ideas! Thank you!
Ca you point me in he direction of a reipe for yogurt Taffy!? That sounds amazinG!
Love the “candy fairy” and the tips for becoming more socially aware.
I just posted a quote today that I heard Udo Erasmus (Udo’s oils) say on the radio about how uninspired people make bad stuff just to make money. He called for “inspired” people to make (and educate others about) the stuff that really makes a difference.
Fabulous ideas!! We are a little behind on Halloween prep this year, but I am totally reconsidering what I want to do in the future. I had a Halloween party one year with family which was very memorable (I lived in England then and Trick or Treating isn’t done very much). It was great fun and was much more “traditional” to me than asking strangers for chemical-laden candy.
This year we decorated the porch with mini-pumpkins that we grew and the leftover cornstalks from our garden. We don’t go all crazy like some people do with their giant inflatable yard-grossness, but I love to use lights, candles, and retro window decor. More than that is just garish, not ghoulish.
We are giving out some (storebought) fruit leather strips that are all natural. If kids don’t like them, oh well! I’m sure parents will see the benefit of them and they will probably end up in lunchbags next week.
I am absolutely going to make something festive to eat like pumpkin custard tonight now, so thanks for that idea. And as my son’s school does NOT do much in the way of seasonal art, I am thinking of a craft we can do after school today. You have truly put me in the mood to create new traditions!
Very good ideas. It is difficult to find a balance between too much and too little and you offer some good compromises! I especially like the “Sam Hain” idea!
“What mom wants her house TPed because she was the only scrooge on the block not to offer treats to assuage tricksters?” My mom was a diabetic and was very passionate about sugar “being poison in your body”, her personal mantra. She used to give out crayons, raisins or pencils with fun-shaped erasers to trick-or-treaters when I was a kid. At the time I was mortified to be from “that house”. Now that I’m older I think it was pretty forward thinking of her to not pass out candy and at least try to give out an alternative to all the sugar and chemicals. Plus, it deterred the kids that were way too old to be out. They didn’t want any crayons.
Great post! It is hard to find a way to celebrate Halloween without going overboard with candy and other “junk”. We’re taking it easy this year. Thanks for linking to my Jack O Lantern fruit cups! They are a cute (and healthier) festive snack!
There is a solution to unhealthy, not-sustainable produced chocolate all parents can feel good about – Xocai! I am an independent distributor of this amazing chocolate and everyone in our house eats this chocolate every day. This is the world’s only cold-pressed chocolate, is NOT candy, and is a superfood. It contains some of the highest levels of flavonoids and antioxidants of any food available. It’s the best tasting chocolate I have ever eaten. It is sustainable produced on small family farms with fair wages off the Ivory Coast, so you your social conscience can be satisfied. And, it is with a patented process that no other chocolate company can offer which preserves all the health benefits of chocolate. If anyone is interested, please contact me. This is a wonderful alternative to commercially-produced chocolate and is actually healthy to eat. It has been endorsed by various professionals in medical and health communities – both mainstream and alternative. Just a few pieces a day can satisfy even the most voracious chocolate tooth!
I love your ideas! And while I enjoy the idea of a Halloween fairy I do have to mention that the holiday of Samhain is a religious one and is pronounced SOW-en. Using the holiday to name a fairy isn’t a terrible thing, but please at least mention that the actual holiday has a much different pronunciation.
Hi Elspeth -
I am aware of the proper pronunciation of the holiday Samhain – which is to say “SAH – vwin” not “SOW-en” nor “SAM-HANE.” Moreover, Samhain is doesn’t truly refer to Halloween as a religious holiday except among modern, neo-Pagans. Samhain refers to the month of November in Gaelic, not the cross-quarter that is October 31st which is called Oidhche Shamhna in Gaelic.
Thanks for reading!
- Jenny
Hi Jenny,
Thanks so much for your response! Indeed there are several pronunciations of Samhain depending on if you are saying it with an Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Old Irish or one of several other dialects. And yes, Samhain is a modern neo-Celtic holiday and is also the Scottish name for November. It was and is also a holiday celebrating the harvest, the dark half of the year, and the deceased. Your wonderful blog celebrates harvests too. Perfect. :]
In medieval Ireland Samhain was also a new year celebration. So no, not a link to Halloween necessarily, and celebrated in modern times still as a holiday of the coming dark half of the year, harvest festival, and honoring those who have passed similar to The Day of the Dead commonly celebrated on November first.
Samhain is a fantastic day, for religious, historical, and just for plain fun. I’m so glad you mentioned it.
Wikipedia of course has some great information on it if anyone wishes to do their own research.
Love your blog and so glad to see healthy options presented in such a well written way.
Keep up the great work!
Thank you, what a great post for parents! I love all the ideas. My only question is: where do you find soy lecithin-free chocolate? Even in the organic and fair trade varieties it is in there…not sure what other emulsifier can be used. Do you have any resources for soy-free chocolate and treats?
Thanks again!
Hi Jessica -
I recommend Rapunzel and Askinosie chocolate – both of which are fair trade and lecithin-free. Excellent, high quality chocolate. And something I should indulge in less often.
Take Care -
Jenny