Celebrating Halloween and All Saints Day

The last week of October was both FUN and EXHAUSTING!  This year, we made some additions where we celebrated not only Halloween but we also focused on the remembrance of All Saints and All Souls Day.  Migrating to the US, I somehow lost that tradition of celebrating All Saints and All Souls Day so I was really happy  to be able to share even a little bit of that tradition this year to my children which I hope will continue from now on.  Coming from the Philippines, the latter is a huge holiday for us and we celebrate it differently than maybe the rest of the world.  When I was growing up, the arrival of November doesn't only mean  lots of rain or typhoons, but it also means that we have to go to cemetery and clean our family's graveyard.  Few days before November 1st (All Saints Day) and November 2nd (All Souls Day), people would start their preparation for "undas"... cleaning and painting tombstone, making "kalamay" or sticky rice, traveling far to be with their living and 'dead' family members.  On the day of Nov. 1 and 2, people will flock cemeteries bringing candles and flowers for their deceased loved ones, and stay there until night fall, reunite with relatives and make a celebration out of it.

Sticky rice or kalamay

Children talking, playing and collecting candle wax

Cemeteries look like  campgrounds with tents during All Saints/Souls celebration

 Halloween on the other hand was not much a celebrated holiday in the Philippines when I was growing up.  It is only recently that kids dress up and enjoy 'Trick or Treat'.  When I first arrived here in the US, I was so excited to dress up on Halloween (by the way, I was in grad school at that time so you can do the math) and it became my second favorite holiday ever since.  Fast forward to present times... having children of my own, Halloween makes this time of the year more fun!  I enjoy dressing up with them, forcing my husband to dress up too,  there are some years that I made our own costumes, throwing Halloween parties and making "frightening" food, and just the feeling of being a 'kid'  again is exciting.  This year, however, I decided not to focus solely on Halloween.  I was fortunate that the homeschool group that we are part of has a yearly celebration of All Saints Day, so besides going around our neighborhood to go trick or treat-ing and indulging my kids with sweets for that one day, we were able to prepare for the All Saints day celebration which my kids never really had a chance of doing. We talked about why do we celebrate this special day in our church. It also gave us an opportunity to get to know some saints by reading their life stories.  We even spent a day making their saint costumes for the celebration.
The boys both decided to be saints that wear armor.  My first instinct was to go on-line and get ideas of the saints we can choose from.  This website really have some very good resources, not only for boys and girl saints costumes, but it also has links to saints inspired games or activities (http://catholicicing.com/all-saints-day-costume-ideas-for-boys/).  Anthony decided to be Saint George (one of the popular picks for boys) but I had a hard time for Aidan's saint.  I suggested that Aidan can wear a dragon costume which we have already, and be Anthony's 'dragon'.  Of course that didn't fly since he has to wear an armor, right!  The next choice was St. Michael the Archangel but Aidan didn't like the idea of wearing wings.  After several hours of probing the Internet, Aidan finally ended up agreeing to be St. Martin of Tours, thanks to the Catholic OnLine website (http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=81). 

St. Martin of Tours

St. George

Our next challenge was how to make their armors and helmet.  I decided that we can make the armor ourselves so I watched several YouTube videos to get ideas how to make armors out of cardboard and I was surprised to the complexity of some armors that you can make out of card boards.  To make it a mommy and kid-friendly project (meaning easy), this is what we end up doing:

1. You need a cardboard box that can cover the upper front and back of your child.  Some websites used  wine box,  or the cover of storage boxes.  I found this box in our basement that contains stick hockey table top game.

  

2. I cut one end (flap) of the cardboard that covered the front and  back sides of the armor.  These strips served as the straps of the armor.  You can ask your child to bend the straps so it can fit well over the shoulder area. 

3.  Duct tape to the rescue.  We attached the straps using strong tapes and cut the armor to a shape of an armor plate. I ask Anthony to try his armor several times to make necessary adjustments to the shape, length or fit of the armor.

4.  Time to make it metallic.  Once we were satisfied on how it looks like on Anthony, we covered it with aluminum foil.  We opt for covering our armor with aluminum foils since I don't want to spend money to buy spray paint.  With the help of some glue we were able to cover the entire armor with foil.  Anthony spread the glue while I cut the foil.  What a difference it made.  Now our armor is starting to look like it is ready for battle.

5.  Anthony made a mask helmet and shield from his kindergarten class last year that we used to complete his costume.  As a finishing touch, I printed a dragon design and put it over the front side of his armor. I also cut two oval shapes red construction paper to serve as his shoulder pads, and attached a piece of red cloth as his cape.  Now he is ready to slay that dragon!

6.  I really cannot explain how my husband did Aidan's armor but once he was finished with it, I added similar finishing touches to Aidan's St. Martin costume.  I printed a cross for his armor plate and attached a blue cape which has been cut short (to symbolize St. Martin's generosity to a beggar by cutting his cloak into half and giving it to the poor man).  We used Anthony's mask helmet as a template for Aidan's.

You can be the judge which armor costumes is better!

Overall, the kids had fun not only during the All Saints Celebration, but while making their costumes and learning the life of their saints too.  To end our day, we celebrated mass to ask the Saints to intercede for us and to remember our beloved family members that had passed away, that hopefully one day we can be with them in Heaven.