Trick or Treat? Not quite sure.

Facts from the original

• The author, Vineet Chander, grew up experiencing Halloween as a clash between his Hindu immigrant parents' world and the surrounding American suburban world.
• Because Hindus use a lunar calendar, Hindu holiday dates shift, and Halloween often coincides with one of them.
• On one occasion Diwali fell on October 31, forcing a choice between trick-or-treating and a Nightmare on Elm Street marathon, or visiting temple and exchanging sweets with relatives.
• The author's mother called Halloween a depressing holiday while surveying neighbors' plastic skeletons and cardboard tombstones.
• His father called the holiday a waste of time even while begrudgingly buying cheap candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters.
• Some more orthodox Hindu friends objected more strongly, saying that meditating on death and gore and openly celebrating ghosts and goblins is inauspicious.
• The parents proudly displayed jack-o-lanterns the children carved at school, but the family never carved one together.
• They handed out candy without the enthusiasm of other parents who dressed in character to distribute treats.
• They let the children go trick-or-treating but never seemed very excited about it.
• For costumes, the children could usually convince their parents to buy whatever superhero or horror movie monster costume was popular that year, as long as it was not too expensive.
• Some years the parents, like other Desi parents, dressed the children as an "Indian prince" or "Indian princess" by putting them in their finest Indian party clothes with a makeshift turban or tiara.
• The neighbor reaction to the Indian prince/princess costumes was positive, and the parents felt a mix of cultural pride and money saved, while the children considered it lame.
• Years later, when trick-or-treating was mainly a way to get free candy, Indian-American kids co-opted the tactic by willingly wearing kurta pyjama or salwar kameez instead of buying a costume.
• The author came to appreciate the mingling of cultures the costume compromise engendered.
• Now a parent himself, the author wonders how to minimize the culture clash for his Indian-American daughter and how to integrate Halloween and Hinduism for her.
• A Christian colleague asked the author what he thought about having kids dress up as Hindu deities, a question that caught him off guard.
• There is precedent in Hinduism for dressing up as deities: many parents dress their children as Lord Krishna on Krishna Janmashtami.
• Ramleela, dramatic re-enactments of Lord Rama's epic pastimes, involve children and adults donning costumes to depict figures such as Lord Rama, the brave Hanuman, or the demon king Ravana.
• A Bengali tradition exists of dressing up as the goddess Kali, with blood-red tongue, carrying a machete, and wearing a garland of skulls, for the holiday of Kali Puja every October or November, which the author calls the closest direct link between Halloween and Hinduism he has found.
• Some Hindu temples have started using Halloween to connect Hindu kids with their culture; the author's local Krishna temple in New Jersey hosts a children's costume contest on Halloween where kids depict any character from Krishna's life story.
• The author questions whether a Hindu deity costume loses its meaning when taken out of a Hindu holiday or temple pageant and mapped onto the American Halloween mainstream.
• He asks whether it denigrates Hinduism to have a portrayal of Lord Krishna soliciting candy door-to-door alongside Spiderman or Harry Potter, and whether divinity is placed on the same level as fictional superheroes or as freaks and creatures that only appear once a year.
• He raises the question of how people would feel about children dressing as Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed for Halloween.
• He asks whether non-Hindus wearing a Hindu deity costume changes things, such as wearing a Kali costume because her look is considered gruesome and cool without believing in her.
• Hollywood actress Heidi Klum dressed as Kali in the previous year and was criticized for it.
• Blogger Sayantani Dasgupta wrote that her anger at Heidi Klum's costume was about racism rather than religion.
• Dasgupta argued that Kali is a living goddess, actively worshipped as a manifestation of the feminine force that can take life as well as give it.
• Dasgupta said Kali's symbolism, whether as a goddess of ferocious destruction or redemptive change, is integrated into the culture of an entire subcontinent.
• Dasgupta wrote that Kali is neither a plastic skeleton nor a dime store pirate, nor a saucy serving wench nor a vixenish she-devil.
• Dasgupta called turning a religious and cultural symbol into a dramatic Halloween spectacle the most base sort of cultural appropriation.
• The author says he shares Dasgupta's concerns about turning a religious and cultural symbol into a freakish spectacle, even though he would love to see more integration on October 31.
• The author remains undecided about "Hindu-izing" Halloween.
• The author reports his daughter will dress as a chubby little pumpkin for her first Halloween, or maybe as an Indian Princess.
• In the comment thread, some readers argued that Halloween costumes are usually chosen out of admiration rather than mockery, so a child dressed as Hanuman, Shiva, or Saraswathi could open a conversation about the deities.
• Some commenters argued it is fine to depict deities in religious rituals but disrespectful to have them trick-or-treating, comparing it to begging, while others compared trick-or-treating to sharing sweets at Holi.
• Other commenters noted non-Christian parallels, such as Christian friends dressing as saints and martyrs, and a Buddhist friend using a child's Buddha costume to share teachings.
• Some commenters traced Halloween's roots to Samhain and to European witchcraft and Satanism, while others described it as a secular, lighthearted holiday of costumes and candy.
• A commenter noted that Halloween/Samhain is the old New Year and a time when the veil between worlds thins, comparable to the Korean Chu-sok and the Mexican Dia de los Muertos.