Hallowtide is right around the corner! Our family loves to celebrate the triduum of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Last year, I wrote about when our first child was still very young, we learned that Halloween is actually a Catholic holiday. Therefore, we celebrate it as such! Instead of dressing up as goblins, witches or vampires, our children enjoy dressing up as their favorite saints. We also don’t reserve dressing up for just Halloween, our children also dress up on All Saints Day, a Holy Day of Obligation, which gives us even more reason to celebrate and party like the saints!
We also get creative! There is no need to spend a great deal of time and/or money to create a saint costume. We mostly use items that we already have or items that are very inexpensive and can be reused year after year. While you can certainly purchase a ready-made costume, most saint costumes are very easy to put together and you may even have most of the clothes and accessories already.
We love seeing our children dressed up and having fun pretending to be their saintly hero. While it can seem cumbersome to make your own costume, it doesn’t have to be stressful. As with all things, it is important to have fun together and to use every opportunity to draw our little ones closer to God.
Below is a list of saint costume ideas and what you will need for each saint. These are the top three saints of both girls and boys that our children have dressed up as over the years.
St. Philomena
What you’ll need:
-Long white or a light-color dress with long sleeves or long sleeve sweater. (Can also use an oversized t-shirt.)
-Red and/or white sash/belt to symbolize white and red to indicate virginity and martyrdom.
-Arrow and/or anchor. Can be made from cardboard and duct tape.
-Crown of flowers. Can be made from faux flowers or even construction paper.
St. Gianna Beretta Molla
- Dress of your choice. Borrow a men’s white button-down shirt to wear open over the dress.
- Baby doll.
- Doctor kit.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
-Black, long dress or black, oversized T-shirt.
-Solid piece of white cloth to go over head under black veil.
-Solid black veil (A cut-up black shirt can work as well.)
-Large crucifix.
-Faux bouquet of flowers and a basket of flowers or flower petals.
Padre Pio
-Oversized brown T-shirt.
-Rope belt. (I braided two strings of thin, long rope together.)
-Rosary
-Black gloves with fingers cut out to represent the bandages that Padre Pio had on his hands to cover the wounds.
-Instead of black gloves with fingers cut out, you could also use white bandages with a red circle colored in marker or paint to represent his stigmata.
St. Michael
-White child’s size t-shirt with black or brown pants.
-Headband, armband. (Can use children’s headbands from the dollar store or craft store.)
-Sword & shield. (We did buy ours, but you could also get crafty with some carboard and duct tape!)
-Angel wings (Purchase or can be made out of cardboard, string and coffee filters.)
St. Francis of Assisi
-Oversized brown T-shirt.
-Brown cloth for the top portion of St. Francis’s habit.
-Rope belt (See Padre Pio costume above.)
-Small stuffed animals to hold.
Bonus: Brown crochet headband to mimic St. Francis’s Friar haircut.
Notes:
When cutting up t-shirts and other cloths for parts of the costume, you can sew the parts that you’ve cut, or you can use iron on hem tape as a shortcut.
There are so many other wonderful saints to dress up as and there is just not enough time or space to write about them all. The more we read about the lives of the saints, the more our children are naturally drawn to particular saints. There are some that our children ask to dress up as year after year. Which is completely understandable! Who doesn’t want to be St. Michael and fight demons?
Regardless of what saint our children decide to dress up as, we also read saint stories to learn about their lives. While the saints are now in Heaven interceding for us, they were once “regular” people. We use this as an opportunity to highlight the virtues that the saints were “good at” and the virtues that they struggled with. This helps our children realize that even the saints had struggles and were able to overcome them with the help of Jesus, through the Catholic Church.
Another activity to consider is for children to make a presentation based on their favorite saint that they chose to dress up as. This is a great activity for homeschoolers to incorporate in their religious studies, but equally important for all children who are educated outside of the home. It can also be done independently, or you could work with your child to learn about their favorite saint together.
From our family to yours, we wish you a holy and happy Hallowtide!
