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Let's see if you can understand where I stand on Halloween:
I do not believe in Halloween. It glorifies/celebrates the devil (I don't believe in that, nor the invisible man in the sky). It's too commercialized. The scare element is glorified too high. It's not a federal holiday. I treat October 31st as just another day.
I think that claim is utterly wrong. Like most anything about European Christianity and traditions, Halloween, too, goes back to ancient pagan and Celtic/Indo-European traditions. Long before the idea of a devil came about. I don't even see how the devil plays any role in today's Halloween, frankly.
It's not even July. Do we really have to rehash this tired old annual topic already?
Yeah, OK, it will come up again in October, and the same sets of people will say the same things they say every year. But June?
Well, I rehashed that thread because of the Persian connection I had read about recently. Didn't know there are any rules against using the search feature and posting on-topic...
Well, I rehashed that thread because of the Persian connection I had read about recently. Didn't know there are any rules against using the search feature and posting on-topic...
No, there aren't.
But we have to listen to the "it's all about the DEVIL" for a week every October, and I just hate seeing it take up another week on a beautiful summer day.
Halloween is around the year now, get used to it
Will look into interesting Christmas trivia tomorrow
Sad but true
My son and I went to Home Despot yesterday to buy a lighted Halloween ghost for our haunted house. When we walked in, there were aisles and aisles of Christmas trees, lights, decorations, inflatables.....and a smaller much smaller section of Halloween things. SO yes, Christmas is upon us and it is still 2 weeks to Halloween
Now here is another sad but true story. Long ago, when we were lacking money, and sometimes scraping by,I got some extra work that gave us some $$ in October. After paying bills, I had some left, and it was about October 15....My son who was 8, asked if we could go to Michael's and get the lighted Pirate Ship Decoration that we had been eyeing for a month and was out of our price range.
I agreed, so we drove to the store, only to find it gone and the entire aisle replaced by Christmas items ! So we walked over to the other row of Halloween items, and found an employee boxing up Halloween things and another filling the empty spaces immediately with Christmas goods. We were told that it was a |Corporate order" to restock
We never got the Pirate Ship, so no problem......but I would wish they waited until after Thanksgiving to encroach on Christmas
Now to the Best FUNNY true GOOD Halloween story......
When I was a teenager, growing up in a small town, the Jaycees would rent an old empty house and turn it into a haunted house as a fundraiser. And it was different every year, and I have to say, it was well done. Worth every penny to walk through and get scared.
To this day, I have borrowed some of the stunts for my own when I do my Haunted House for the trick or treaters Halloween night
So this one year, my mom tells me that she did not want me to go to the haunted house. What I did not know was that her church had issued a "ban" against it, which small town Baptist churches are want to do. Now I say "her church" because although I was forced to go, I loathed it to the point of eventually developing a psychosomatic illness every Sunday so that I could not go. But in this case, I did what most teens do, I went and told my dad I was going and his exact words, I remember to this day...."No, it might offend the church"
Of course I could not have cared less about offending some church that I had no interest in.
And of course, I went anyway. Which eventually got back to someone at the church, some busy body Sunday school teacher old witch type, which are common in small town Baptist churches. I do not know if my name came up with others who were there, or if the church had people watching to make sure no one from their church went, or how they found out I went. But the conversation was that she was withing about my having gone to the haunted house blah blah blah and that I am just slapping the them in the face by not obeying.....When she said that I got this vision of the three stooges...how someone would slap the three stooges in a line one after another without pause And I burst out laughing
Which made her fly off on her broom and tell my mom what a bad rebellious teen I was. (Like I cared what she thought)
What happened though, is probably something the church feared. I showed the church to be nothing more than a paper tiger, an entity which proclaimed authority but had none in reality. An Organization that while claiming to be so pious and perfect really was driven only by fear and threats, which could keep members only through censorship and unsuccessful attempts to control every detail of member's lives.
I should that freedom of choice, not submission to some self proclaimed religious group or some silly old book was a viable choice, and that there was nothing they could do about it.
SO in a way Halloween symbolizes Freedom the Freedom we have in our great American nation to celebrate a holiday any way we want....so long as we are not breaking the local laws. (No vandalism, theft, etc) So to all of you HAPPY HALLOWEEN from the Big Cat's House (not the Cathouse).
i sorta didn't do Hallowe'en as i didn't 'Do' other festivals, and all the old traditions seems to have died out as much as Lent. Therefore i was rather ruffled to hear that kids were picking up 'trick or treat' from American media and going around doing it. I can still recall sitting at my desk when i had a change of heart and decided to lay in stocks of chocs for the kiddies (with a proper box for any who REALLY did a good job of the costume) and I am obliged to say that what changed my mind was hearing how much it annoyed the Christians.
LargeKingCat...I hate reading stories like yours about 'your' Baptist church.
When I was 'one" it was with a small town (population 3000) Baptist Church and simply never experienced anything like that including condemnation of Gays...this back in the 60's and knowing at least several members who were or weren't....and not even me, once I had left, due to atheism (Would occasionally go to something with my mom, just for her sake)
Maybe due or partly due to the fact that it was upstate NY and not 'down south'?
The members and the pastor were never anything but welcoming and gracious.
LargeKingCat...I hate reading stories like yours about 'your' Baptist church.
When I was 'one" it was with a small town (population 3000) Baptist Church and simply never experienced anything like that including condemnation of Gays...this back in the 60's and knowing at least several members who were or weren't....and not even me, once I had left, due to atheism (Would occasionally go to something with my mom, just for her sake)
Maybe due or partly due to the fact that it was upstate NY and not 'down south'?
The members and the pastor were never anything but welcoming and gracious.
Yeah, our church, well, sucked for lack of a better explanation. The pastor was a sociopath and in religion, that is the only place where preaching hatred and using fear to bully the congregation would be tolerated. Outside of the military boot camps, of course. Strange how many people like my mom especially got snookered into it. Many of the members were just hateful people.
As I pointed out though, I am the one who stays away now. I am certain that some of the teens I grew up with have stayed with it and have miserable unhappy lives as a result.
I had a realization years ago that in a way certain members of this church did me a favor by driving me away. had I stayed and been influenced by them, I may have ended up becoming like them. And that would be really sad.
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I can still recall sitting at my desk when i had a change of heart and decided to lay in stocks of chocs for the kiddies (with a proper box for any who REALLY did a good job of the costume) and I am obliged to say that what changed my mind was hearing how much it annoyed the Christians.
