What are we Going to do about Halloween?

Autumn has settled over Odyssey, and October 31st is coming. At a meeting of the church elders, Mr. Ed Renfield says it is time for the church to take a stand. Every year, he argues, Halloween comes and goes and everyone treats it as harmless, when it makes light of witchcraft and evil. He wants the elders to tell the congregation to have nothing to do with the day - no costumes, no going door to door for candy, nothing that might glorify it. Tom Riley tries to keep the discussion from turning into a debate, and Pastor Williams says that while he agrees in principle, he does not want to overreact. The men decide to pray about it, and soon afterward the pastor preaches a sermon asking families to skip Halloween altogether.

John Avery Whittaker has missed the meeting, but he hears about it quickly enough, because two boys come looking for him at Whit's End. Brad, speaking for a whole crowd of church kids, and his friend Leonard, who cannot stop interrupting, want to know one thing: is Halloween really satanic? Whit answers carefully. Whatever their parents have decided is their parents' business, he tells them, and the boys are to obey. Then, instead of explaining the holiday himself, he points them upstairs to the research books he collected while working on an encyclopedia and invites them to find the answer on their own.

What they dig up surprises them. Halloween comes from hallow, meaning holy or sacred, joined to eve, the night before - Hallow's Eve, the night before All Saints Day, when the medieval church honored people who had done great things for God. Because the coming day was holy, people believed demons would run wild the night before, playing pranks that had to be bought off with treats, and they wore costumes hoping the demons would not recognize them. Brad concludes gloomily that Halloween must be bad and that he and his friends will simply miss out. Then a better thought strikes him. It is only a day, and what matters is what you do with it. Why not throw their own party, a celebration of good things, with everyone dressed as characters from the Bible? Whit offers Whit's End as the place, provided the parents agree.

Most of them do, though not everyone is pleased. Connie Kendall thinks the whole business is a great deal of fuss over nothing, and Mr. Renfield comes to Whit's End personally to ask that the party be canceled, saying it has upset his own children. Whit refuses, kindly but firmly. The party is not a celebration of Halloween, he explains, but of goodness and holiness, and he wants the children to learn that it is not enough to complain about evil - people should actively work for good. He invites Mr. Renfield to come and see for himself and promises that if the doubters still dislike it, there will be no party next year.

The evening turns out to be a happy one. Whit's End fills with miniature Bible characters, including a Moses without his staff, because Leonard broke it trying to pole vault over a chair, and Leonard himself wrapped in bandages as Lazarus, standing silently in a corner because the others have told him he has not been raised from the dead yet. There are stories, games, and Bible drills, and at nine o'clock Whit gathers everyone to sing, pray, and say why they love God. Tom and the pastor call it a fine success and suspect a new tradition has begun. Only the Renfields are missing, and Whit is genuinely sorry about it.

Afterward Connie turns up with a sore tooth and a story of her own. Her Halloween party was full of friends acting gross and stupid in ghoulish costumes, her mother spent the night answering the door for rude trick-or-treaters, and Connie ate so much candy that she gave herself a stomachache and, she suspects, a cavity. Whit suggests she come to the Bible party next year. Connie's answer, delivered without a trace of irony, is that she would not want to miss all the fun.