Halloween has never been my favorite holiday, and maybe this is one of the reasons. When I was in third grade, my class had a pumpkin decorating contest. My mom bought the pumpkin for my group, but she and I had a plan. My team would decorate the outside of the pumpkin at school, and then I would bring it home so we could cut it up to be our family’s jack-o-lantern. We used yarn, markers, and since it was the 60’s, probably some psychedelic glitter or something. I remember three things about our finished product. One is that we cut the yarn like hair and glued each piece down. I believe we were going for the hippy jack-o-lantern look. Second, we won the contest. Third, I did not get to take that pumpkin home as planned.
My teacher gave it to a girl from our class whose family could not afford to buy one. He did not ask me if that was okay with me, and honestly, if he had, I don’t know what I would have said. I was in a Catholic, Christian school, so I knew that the right answer would be, “Yes. She can have it.” I don’t know what I would have said, but I know how I felt. I was angry that he had given it away. I was disappointed that my mom would not be able to see how we had decorated it, and I was dismayed about what my family would do for a jack-o-lantern. Even now, I can’t think of a time when I went from such elation to such sorrow in a matter of minutes. I cried when I told my mom what had happened.
It was not as if our family had loads of money. My dad taught school during the day and worked at a grocery store at night, and my mom stayed home with us. My sister was only about six weeks old at the time, so it was not easy for us to pop out to a pumpkin patch. It was either Halloween day or shortly before, and there was a sad selection left when we made it out. We found a small, lop-sided pumpkin that would have to do. It was the saddest looking jack-o-lantern on the block, but at least we had one.
Looking back, I see the lessons I was supposed to learn from that experience. One is that there are always people worse off than us. I knew we didn’t have a lot, but that Halloween I learned there was a family who had less. Another lesson took me much longer to learn. It is that sometimes we have to make unwanted sacrifices, and the best way to deal with these sacrifices is to remind ourselves that we are doing the right thing and that by our sacrifice, we are making someone else’s life better. Our job as humans is to help humanity. Our job as Christians is to do it without reservation or resentment.
“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” Hebrews 13:16