People are fine with being disrespectful to Christians

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At a church playgroup. The people who run it are very devout Christians. I am taken aback, by the number of parents, who thought it was appropriate to bring their kids to the church dressed for Halloween. Kids are dressed as witches, goblins, skeletons, creepy pumpkins etc..
The church holds a light party every year on Halloween and is very clear that they do not endorse Halloween.

The Christians and the Pagans in this context were the same people, no one stole anything. Things just evolved

My church has a fall festival called light up the night around Halloween. It is an outreach so of course some kids come dressed very scary. As a mom of young kids I don't appreciate it but this is a way to reach out to those who are not a part of the church and therefore do not think the same way we do, so it is to be expected that some would come dressed in various different costumes.

People not believing the same things as you is not disrespect.

Being told don't dress up for the church party and then doing it anyway is disrespectful

I assume this is to the playgroup and not to a church service. In that case YABU. The playgroup is totally separate from the worship.

Is this an evangelical church?

Old traditional British halloween was celebrated alongside Christian beliefs. If you read anything to do with British cultural history you’d see the intermingling of pagan and christian beliefs tied up with each other.

I live in the southwest and all around you can see the melding of pagan and Christian green man on churches, Holly to decorate at Christmas etc etc.

the modern Halloween is an evolved version of that.

I’ve been a Christian my whole life, but only introduced to the concept of a light party a few years back! It is basically like a ‘normal’ party. Food, games, fun dancing etc. But also have some activities set up and end the party with candles lit and a prayer.

Were they told though?

We had a fab Halloween party on our village green on Sat. Our vicar came dressed up as a witch and judged the pumpkin competition.

I used to work in a CofE village primary school which was very "high church". The then-head teacher was a very devout Christian (also a sociopath - but that's another post entirely), and she banned Halloween from even being mentioned. No decorating, no spooky stories, no costumes. Couldn't even say the word, didn't even acknowledge its existence.

Think we would only have an issue with it, if someone was dressed as someone from the bible. 🤣 we only get witches and pumpkins and spiders - and we all think they’re cute!!

If you throw a party on Christmas day, irregardless of the beliefs you hold about Christmas as a religious festival, people will wear Christmas jumpers.

If you throw a party on Easter Sunday, people will bring the bunny ears.

If you throw a party on Halloween, you could call it a light party, a dark party, a pink party or a blue party, people will come dressed for a Halloween party.

This is not to do with disrespect, it's to do with cultural norms and common sense.

Or you could turn it round and say if you choose to go to a playgroup on church premises you respect the ground rules at that venue. So if they don't want halloween costumes people should respect that but the playgroup should make sure people know.

but I agree people sneer at Christian beliefs/customs in a way they wouldn't dare to dream of behaving towards any other religion.

Every religion thinks that. I see posts from Muslims on here saying the same. I've seen it from followers of other faiths too. It's hardly surprising though if there is more focus on Christianity as it is/was the dominant religion in the U.K for so long.

Personally I think they're all equally ridiculous.

I was in Poundland once and there were 2 lads aged about 12 looking at the Halloween stuff. One said to the other "Do you celebrate Halloween?" The other looked confused and said something like "What do you mean celebrate? Isn't it just a thing?"
The first boy starting telling him about his church in Spain and what they do there for Halloween and second boy looked even more confused..."Wait.... Halloween is a church thing? I didn't know that".
Every church is different I suppose.

I am not clear.

Did they bring the dressed-up children to a) a church service, b) the light party, or c) the playgroup session closest to Hallowe’en? A and B would be worse than C, which seems to have become a Thing recently. My DC’s CofE school had mufti on the last day before half-term and the school specified that Hallowe’en costumes were not to be worn. I think a lot of children would otherwise have dressed up.

OP- are you even a Christian yourself?? If not, then this thread is actually more disrespectful than some 3’year olds in witches hats…

Personally, and I cant speak for any other Christian, I do think that a light party rather fudges the Halloween issue. Better to not hold a light party or any other party on Halloween in my opinion. Have always thought this so never supported a light party.

An interesting side note then, a friend of mine once did a Christmas fancy dress event dressed as a heavily pregnant Virgin Mary. I thought that was disrespectful (in a gosh you're dreadful, not an I'm truly offended kind of way) but she felt she was respecting the Christmas story. Which was it?

Their house their rules. Plenty of places to enjoy halloween without upsetting people.

The OP hasn't said what people were told regarding the Light party. If they ignored specific requests re dress then that is disrespectful. If it was just assumed by the organisers that people should know what to do, then it's not disrespectful.

”Light Parties are a fantastic alternative to the Halloween activities that kick off on 31st October. Instead of children being surrounded by things that glorify the darkness, Light Parties focus on all things light, bright, and most importantly, Jesus Christ who overcame the darkness.”

well, OP. The point of dressing up and making laterns and noise is to chase away the evil. But whatever. If the play group wants to bring parents' attention to not dressing up or celebrating Halloween, the time to mention this is well before the party.

I don't think the parents dressing their toddlers as pumpkins this morning to go to the playgroup party did it with any intention whatsoever of sneering at religion.

If the members of the church feel so strongly about halloween not being celebrated on their premises on 31st October, they really need to close the doors on that day and choose another day for the Light Party, so they don't get people turning up dresses as spiders.

I think to choose to be offended about this is barking up the wrong tree altogether.

Had the Op used Capital L for Light Party, then I would have understood and been able to Google.

As it happens, I like other people, didn't know what a Light Party is.

So I googled, once the Op explained it. Turns out its a very new thing (2013). Its not based on tradition, or a day of "Light" or an officially recognised day in Christianity.
It's purely a party, some churches, have introduced because they dont like Halloween.

I may be ignorant, but when, some, Christian churches just make up thier own celebrations, they'll have to understand some people won't recognise it.

I think if the organisers had not wanted Halloween costumes, they should have explicitly said so.

IME costumes for pre-schoolers are cute and unscary and not particularly offensive anyway.