Rationalizing this holiday?

Well, today is Halloween. I dread it every year, mostly because the kids want to participate in dressing up. We've made it "okay" by allowing them to only dress up in non-scary costumes. This year, Tyler is a basketball player, Katia a pretty angel, and Tayton is going to be a large eared elephant. We carved our pumpkins last night and toasted the seeds. And after school we'll stop at a few neighbors and then relatives in town.
There's still an inner tug that I know is telling me that there really isn't anything good about Halloween. What I do like is that our schools here in town are finally realizing that not everyone celebrates Halloween and they are now having fall festivals in November. Albeit, the kids still dress up for it like a Halloween carnival, but it's nice that it's not. We haven't gone as a family since our little school out here closed. We thought that since it does support the PTO and the kids' playgrounds that there was something good out of it so we'd make the effort. We took Katia and Tyler two years ago to their new school's "carnival" and were so disappointed. It just wasn't a safe, family, fun thing to do and we've pretty much decided not to go again. They've since adopted this new fall festival theme with another school at the Fairgrounds, but I doubt we'll go. A thousand kids in one given area is just a bit much. I miss our little school.