When you get married, holidays can get tricky.
My husband and I live in Florida, his parents live about four hours away, and mine are in Ohio. When our first holiday season as a married couple rolled around, everyone wanted us to travel to them and continue the traditions we’d been doing since we were kids. We did our best to accommodate everyone, but were left with expensive plane tickets, unmet expectations, and no time to create our own family traditions.
That’s why when we have kids, we decided to do a few things differently. First, we put a pause on holiday travel. Second, we made Halloween our family’s biggest celebration and embraced it in all its spooky, scary glory.
We go big on decorations with a 12-foot skeleton, multiple inflatables, and countless pumpkins by our front door. We host our friends and their kids for a quick pizza dinner before trick or treating. And my husband grills hot dogs for the entire neighborhood. Yes, really!
Here’s why picking a less popular holiday as our family’s biggest celebration lessened the holiday stress and helped us create our own family traditions.
Halloween comes with lower expectations
Since our kids don’t usually get Halloween off school, the expectation for travel is practically non-existent. Dinner is a low key affair, (think, four or five delivery pizzas to share) since our kids are chomping at the bit to start trick-or-treating, anyway.
While I love to decorate for Halloween, many of our decorations are reused year after year. Plus, my kids love to decorate and make things spooky, too — so the onus of making the house festive doesn’t fall squarely on me.
The financial burden is lessened
Apart from buying costumes and candy, Halloween really doesn’t come with a big financial burden. For example, while our kids have various Halloween events, including trunk-or-treats, parties, and Halloween night, we stick to a one-costume only rule.
Our Halloween decor is a mix of Dollar Store finds, Target pieces, and of course, our giant skeleton. While the latter was a bit pricier, it’s our one splurge and brings us (and the neighborhood) so much joy.
It leaves room for new traditions
Christmas and Thanksgiving often come with their own set of built-in traditions. The elaborate meals, multiple gift exchanges, and putting up lights and other outdoor decor all come to mind. We’re a pretty busy family, so after we’ve done all the traditional activities, we don’t have a lot of bandwidth for new ones.
Celebrating Halloween in a big way gives us the time and space to create our own traditions. For example, my husband grills hot dogs for the entire neighborhood. Last year, he made 150 total dogs. This year, we’re expecting 200. Kids love it, since many are too excited to eat before they set out trick-or-treating. And parents approve, too, since it gives their kids to eat something other than sugar.
Grilling hot dogs is a tradition that my husband brought from his childhood. When he was growing up, there was a dad in his neighborhood who did the same thing. He loved it so much he decided to do it in our neighborhood and has earned the moniker of “hot dog man.”
Halloween isn’t for everyone. Many parents (and kids) aren’t crazy about the spooky decor, the costumes, or all the sugary treats. But for our family, picking a less popular holiday as our family’s unofficial favorite has lessened the holiday pressure and allowed for our own sweet and spooky traditions.
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