Posted on 10/30/2007 12:23:43 PM PDT by Huntress
Gabby Cirenza wanted to be a referee for Halloween. The outfit she liked had a micro-mini black skirt and a form-fitting black and white-striped spandex top held together with black laces running up the flesh-exposing sides. She looked admiringly at the thigh-high black go-go boots that could be bought as an accessory. And she thought the little bunny on the chest was cute.
"Absolutely not," said her mother, Cheryl. "That is so not happening."
Gabby is 11.
And the Playboy Racy Referee costume was only the latest that her mother had vetoed one pre-Halloween-crazed afternoon at Party City in Baileys Crossroads as too skimpy, too revealing, too suggestive .
Bawdy Halloween costumes, however, have become the season's hottest sellers in recent years. Not just for women, but for girls, too. And parents such as Cirenza don't like it.
Gabby eyed the Sexy Super Girl but decided against it. A friend at her Catholic school had worn that costume for a Halloween parade and pulled the already short miniskirt way up to cover her tummy. "That didn't look very good." But Gabby did like the Aqua Fairy, a vampy get-up with a black ripped-up skirt, black fishnet tights and blue bustier that comes in medium, large and preteen. A medium fits a child of 8.
No.
How about the Funky Punk Pirate Pre-Teen, with an off-the-shoulder blouse and bare midriff?
No.
Gabby pointed to the Fairy-Licious Purrrfect Kitty Pre-Teen, which, according to the package, includes a "pink and black dress with lace front bodice and sassy jagged skirt with tail. . . . Wings require some assembly."
Cheryl Cirenza shook her head in exasperated disbelief. "This is all so inappropriate. It's really disturbing."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Gee, when I was in school, our church held an annual Halloween party for the Sunday Schoolers. It was one more party for us, near a holiday that ranked second only to Christmas in kid fun. No body told *me* it was about death and paganism and worshipping the ‘wrong thing’.
It was about being able to come up with a costume and make it somehow with Mom’s help and whatever we had around the house, walking the streets at night (not *that* kind of streetwalking, lol) which was always a treat with Mom and Dad and getting some candy, only a small part of which we even ate. It was *having* it that was the fun part, and spending a night doing something unusual en famille.
Don’t embarass a child.
The blame is on parents who buy the costumes for the ‘tween set. If there were no parents forking the money over, there wouldn’t be much supply. Parents need to be like the one in the article - just refuse to buy anything that is inappropriate.
One of our neighbors hands out Chick tracts for Halloween. His house is not popular.
Yeah! I don’t remember ever having a store bought costume! We had so much fun planning what we were going as.
Hubby and I went to a Halloween/costume party last weekend. I dressed as a belly dancer (I am one) but it wasn’t a cheap, trampy outfit. I had 3 layers of skirts on alone, the first one ankle length, midriff top but with fringes and coins hanging from it, tons of jingly bangles and coins. And I won first prize, lol!! I made him a sheik-type robe to wear so we matched. I had so much fun putting it all together.
My stepgrandson wanted to go as ‘a $20 bill’ this year. His mom was stumped so she called me. I painted all the details on it by hand, came out pretty good. It was fun figuring out how I was going to do it and then executing my ideas.
I dont see how a Christian can celebrate halloween knowing its pagan origins.
There's a whole new twist on Sleeping Beauty!
All great feasts had vigils the night before. Sure there were pagan practices associated with this date/time of year. That's exactly why a Christian holiday was substituted. This was a tried and true method of evangelization, pioneered by Gregory the Wonderworker in what is now Turkey (Asia Minor) in the 200s, producing the first majority Christian culture precisely because he deliberately plopped Christian festivals on pagan holidays.
Christmas was just the opposite. It appears that the Emperor Aurelia invented the Festival of the Unconquered Sun" and plopped it on the winter solstice to compete with the growing Christian "menace"--more and more Christians of more and more upstanding status in society were threatening the hold of the old Roman gods on the culture.
As long as the culture was majority Christian, harmless pranks, soaping windows, trick-or-treating etc. practiced by Christians who clearly knew the difference between occult practices and the Truth, could be tolerated. Real pagan survivals did exist and if you read the letters of Christian bishops and missionaries and the canon laws in the conversion stages of western and northern Europe you see them trying to stamp out these pagan survivals, which largely succeeded by ca. 1100 or 1200 in most (not all) places.
Now that our culture is paganized and people openly and genuinely pursue the occult and black magic and gory and macabre (even CSI tv programs dwell on the macabre, which is a mark of a repaganizing culture--sex alone is not enough to sell the product, one has to go for more and more gore, more and more Death, a byproduct of abortion for 35 years), some of the practices surrounding Halloween do need to be reassessed. But instead of falsely claiming it is a pagan festival, Christians should reclaim it as the Eve of All Saints, celebrate saints lives etc. in programs for kids, avoid the slutty, macabre aspects. But trick-or-treating can be done without any of that objectionable stuff and if done that way, has nothing whatsoever to do with paganism. It's a social custom, one of many such customs of going door to door to one's neighbors either bringing gifts or receiving gifts. Our much bigger problem is the destruction of neighborhoods and neighborliness.
The foolish Christians who simply write Halloween off as totally pagan are uninformed and have a cure worse than the disease. They should put their energy instead into finding ways to restore neighborliness, learn to celebrate their Christian brothers and sisters in heaven, especially the great heroes of the faith, and make the night and the next day memorable for kids. Holidays are crucial to culture. You have to work at keeping them Christian but if you do, it creates a Christian world for the next generation.
It may have to be done largely with parties for Christian kids within the Church community since our culture is rapidly becoming pagan. But one could do that and still take the kids trick-or-treating to whatever degree it can be done safely and memorably wherever one lives.
Anyone who simply says it's a pagan holiday doesn't know what he's talking about. It can be celebrated devilishly in worship of Death and the netherworld or it can be celebrated Christianly, just like just about everything else.
Take back the night, we who know the True Daystar.
Wow, I never knew that!
So, would the parents object to folks giving their little darlings condoms as treats, since they are already dressed to the part?
Most girls like those fishnet stockings in the beginning because they do look sexy; that is until they discover they can really make your legs look fatter.
English girls read the same teen magazines girls here read. Fashion is a global business. I mean the Brits gave us the miniskirt (bless em) and Go-Go boots back in the sixties. Look behind the touristy sites in London, and you'll probably see teens hanging out, looking pretty much like they do here.
And Madonna did plenty of slutty strutting over there as here.
But if you're talking about getting your kid, any kid, away from the Hollywierd influence, yea I can see that.
Like they'll listen to you?
How sad you think it's your business how others raise their kids.
Yes you do, Mom.... Yes you do.
ROTFLMAO! I knew it!
>>Because of the Samhain roots of Halloween, I am not a bit surprised at the revealing nature of costumes for Halloween. It is not a good ‘helliday’ to keep.<<
You don’t suppose it has anything to do with girls wanting to attract boys and dress up like they see older girls dressing?
“50 years ago everyone made their own costumes. Mothers, Fathers and children would be creative and use their imagination to create some pretty fantastic costumes. Now you just pick something up at the store.”
My 14 y/o daughter does this. A couple of years ago, she was a baked potato. This year, she is Duct Tape Girl. She has taken some old clothes and covered them with duct tape. She made a duct tape mask, belt, and cape. Now she’s working on a duct tape purse. Crazy, but completely modest. She’s had a great time and can’t wait to wear it.
Aren't those the big red Christmas flowers that come out for the holidays?
That was my daughter’s choice for last year I did not buy it for her—she went as a girl pirate instead. She attended private school last year....at least two of her classmates did wear that costume in your post...Bad Cheerleader, or something like that.
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