Traditions for Halloween bring the ghosts and goblins to life as you decorate your home and yard. From the front porch to the quiet corners of your family room, the Halloween Spirit will grow as you add jack-o-lanterns and cobwebs to every nook and cranny. Of course, traditions for Halloween must include spooktacular costumes for the whole family and fantastic treats. Start simple when your kiddos are little focusing on cute and adorable costumes, add new Halloween traditions each year as your children get older, and, in theory, by the time they are tweens and teenagers, you will be hosting a Halloween Party for their friends.
Costume Traditions for Halloween
Trick or treat? Of course, every child’s favorite traditions for Halloween are the costumes. It doesn’t matter if it is a homemade costume or an elaborate store-bought costume. The fun is in being a superhero, a monster, or a princess. It’s a time for imaginations to run wild. It’s a time to dream. It’s a time to embrace the creepy and scary side.
Read More: DIY Halloween Costume For Kids: 7 Witchin’ Reasons
Coordinating family costumes, especially when the children are little, can be another fun Halloween tradition. The whole family can be pirates, superheroes, or characters from your favorite movie or TV show. Be sure to capture the epic cuteness in a family photo. The photos, of course, are perfect to share on social media, but also to print out and decorate your house with photos from past years each October.
Pumpkin Carving Traditions for Halloween
After costumes, the most popular Halloween tradition has to be pumpkin carving night. Right?! No matter if you pick your pumpkin off the vine from a true pumpkin patch, from a churchyard pumpkin patch, or from the grocery store, the fun starts immediately.
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Do you and your children choose one pumpkin for the family or does everyone get their own pumpkin? One tall, one round one, and one wonky one. Transforming pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns is often at top of everyone’s traditions for Halloween.
Halloween Christmas Tree Traditions?
Decorating for Halloween is key to celebrating the month of October. The trend in recent years is a Halloween Christmas tree. Have you embraced this tradition yet? You can order purple and black, and orange and white trees everywhere from Amazon to Walmart. The easy-to-set-up HMASYO 5-Foot Black Halloween Christmas Tree with 50 LED Purple Lights boasts purple spider sequins. Even department stores like Dillard’s now offer Halloween Christmas trees. The Mr. Halloween 12-inch ceramic tabletop tree features candy corn lights and a candy corn tree topper.
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Or, you can set up your traditional artificial Christmas tree a bit early and decorate it for Halloween. Ornaments can be everything from homemade children’s paper decorations to actual Halloween ornaments. Old World Christmas and Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland offer unique Halloween and fall-themed ornaments ranging from Pumpkin Lattes, jack-o-lanterns, and ghosts, to Oogie Boogie and Jack Skellington. Debbiedoo’s offers numerous ideas for do-it-yourself Halloween and fall Christmas trees to decorate for autumn.
You can make photo ornaments with your family’s past Halloween photos, too. You can even build a party around the Halloween tree trimming night. Of course, decorating traditions for Halloween also include cobwebs, skeletons, pumpkins dotting the front porch, as well as giant yard inflatables. Halloween yard inflatables keep getting creepier and taller (some of the Halloween inflatables tower ominously over one-story homes ready to scare all the trick-or-treaters in your neighborhood).
Trick or Treat Traditions for Halloween
Mom might have taught you not to play with your food, but Halloween is the perfect time to bend the rules for your kids. With just a little bit of prep work, you can make appetizers and desserts look like mummies, severed fingers, spiders, and skeletons. Insanely Good shares a variety of appetizer recipes like Mummy Brie, Veggie Skeleton Tray, and Jack-O-Lantern Hand Pies. Jamielyn Nye of I Heart Naptime cooks up Spider Cookies, and Pumpkin Cheesecake Dip.
Craft Traditions for Halloween
Some of the best Halloween traditions are making homemade decorations. Crafty traditions for Halloween are fun for family members of all ages. It’s a way to be present, slow down, and focus on family fun. When your children are little, keep the crafts simple. But as your children grow, find crafts or homemade haunted décor to make together as a team.
The Popsicle Spider Web Craft by Somewhat Simple is fun for all ages. You glue popsicle sticks together and weave yarn to create the web. The yarn can be white, black, orange, or whatever says, “Halloween,” to you.
And, who doesn’t love slime? (Well, other than this Mom. But, every now and then, it’s fun to get messy with the kiddos.) The Halloween Spider Slime by The Tiptoe Fairy is silly, spooky fun that combines slime, glitter, and spiders. What could be more Halloween than that?
Traditions for Halloween Include Festivals, Pumpkin Patches, and Corn Mazes
Visits to a pumpkin patch, a corn maze, or a local fall festival throughout October are the perfect traditions for Halloween. Embrace the silly. Wear your Halloween costumes to the pumpkin patch or the corn maze. It’s so fun to wear your costume on more than just October 31.
Attend your local fall festival, but take time to explore. Do a bit of research and attend a fall festival in the next town or county. You might even take a long-weekend round trip based around a fall festival.
The Halloween season (the month of October) will go quickly. However, don’t try to squeeze too many traditions for Halloween in between fall sports, other extracurricular activities, homework, and work. Pick and choose the traditions for Halloween that bring joy to you and your family, not stress. As always, the goal is to have fun, be present with family, and enjoy the moment, while making memories.
Sources: DebbieDoo’s, Insanely Good, I Heart Naptime, Somewhat Simple, and The Tiptoe Fairy.
Photo Credits: Pexels, Unsplash, and Pixabay.
WANT TO READ MORE?
Check out Daily Mom’s 31 Scary Good and Super Easy Halloween Treats for more advice, tips, and tricks.
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