Love & Skeletons

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

—1 John 4:11

My husband and I aren’t Halloween people—we’re not into tombstone decorations. We don’t put cobwebs in our trees or fake spiders on our porch or skeletons holding machetes in our bushes. At least, we didn’t until this year.

Our son Henry is six, and this year he asked if we could have decorations. We told him we’re not decoration people, hoping he’d forget about it. And then the day before Halloween, he started carrying things out on to the front porch—rubber snakes, pirate hats, fake swords.

“What are you doing, buddy?” I asked.

“I’m making it spooky,” he said, face lit up with delight.

At a certain point I called my husband. “I give up. I think we need to go to the store and get this kid some spooky decorations.”

Aaron agreed, and we spent Halloween morning setting up lights shaped like skulls, cobwebs with huge fake spiders, poison signs, and pumpkins. Henry was beside himself.

At the end of the day, after the chaos and candy eating was over, Aaron and I decided that we’re Halloween people. We’re Halloween people because Henry’s a Halloween person, and more than anything, we’re Henry people.