Sounds like a pagan ritual to me.
My kids got a grand total of one tract last night. I read it out loud, and at the end it said something along the lines of, "You too can be a child of Jesus. Just say that you believe in him with all your heart."
Which encouraged smartass # 2 to say - in his best cowardly lion imitation, "I DO believe in Jesus! I DO I DO I DO!"
And his younger sister said it reminded her more of saving Tinkerbell.
Yeah, we’re all headed straight to hell over at casa Dinsdale, as soon as we track down our handbasket.
I thought it sounded kinda wierd - a direct cartoon-level approach to kids. Even if your parents and the rest of your family are damned, go into your room, close your door, and find the truth.
It was stapled to some wierd little velcro strap device with a light that you can put on your wrist or ankle when jogging or biking at night. Which was apparently supplied by a local chiropractor. Kids couldn’t remember which house they got it at.
Actually, it provided us with a good opportunity to share and reaffirm our Humanist values, that it takes all kinds, and we have to look for the good in all people - even goofy gits who proselytize on Halloween.
I took my kids to “The Harvest Festival” at the local Assembly Of God church last night. For those of you not familiar with Assembly Of God, they are VERY fundamentalist!! They have “trunk or treating” in which members of the church park with the trunks of their cars open, and the kids go from car to car getting candy. They also have hay-rides, free cotton candy and popcorn, and a costume contest (positive-themed costumes only, please). They do include a little sermon (before the winners of the contest are announced, of course), and talk a little about how Halloween is a satanic holiday, etc.
Funny thing is, IMHO, trick-or-treating+costumes=Halloween. . .even if you call it something else!!
First, Dinsdale, I’ll loan you my handbasket, as soon as my family gets done going to hell in it. That was really funny.
Second, two complete throwaways:
Taxpayers Party - Is that the party that’s tag line is “Protecting the Rights of the Unborn from Paying Taxes?”
And
Assemby of God - Do they assemble a different peice of him at each location, or is each factory working on a different God?
The ironic thing is that pretty much the only similarity between Halloween and paganism is that pagans used to hold “harvest festivals”.
Judging from the falling leaves, the chill in the air, and the appearance of threads on the SDMB having to do with trick-or-treating, Halloween is approaching and we all know what that means: soon the fundies will have their collective knickers in a bunch over the holiday’s celebration. So, in the spirit of the season, I’ve brought this thread back from the dead.
Has Halloween been more demonized by the religious right over the last 25 years than it was in the past? Discuss amongst yourselves and perhaps tell of your own encounters with people of a fundamentalist stripe around this time of year.
I fail to see what the problem is with Truth or Treat. Some of the responses amaze me. Is it just ignorance that makes you believe that because it’s at a church then it’s not going to be fun? It can’t be fun if kids don’t hear about witches and goblins? Wow. My old church put on a great celebration. We had games everywhere, candies, skits, candies, toys, candies, and it was really a fun, safe time. Every kid left with tons of stuff, and they all had a great time.
His4ever, although I understand what you are saying, a lot of our holidays are joint pagan holidays. As a matter of fact, the reason we go to church on Sunday, although some believe it’s the day Jesus rose from the dead (which it was), has more to do with pagan beliefs than anything God ordained. It doesn’t make it wrong or right, as again the Bible is clear that it’s an issue of priorities, and making time for God. But for Halloween, I personally believe live your conviction. I do have to laugh when I hear it’s pride that makes you not want to walk with the world, as that’s talked about pretty clear in the Bible.
Be that as it may (about the great time), calling it “Truth or Treat” calls into question whether the organizers/namers of the event have any respect for the language. Y’see, lynn73 (nee His4Ever) told us that the kiddies get Bible Truths and candy. They’re not being asked to choose between the two (and it’s a good thing, too); they’re being given both. Now, if one assumes that the candy is a Treat, which the child clearly is getting, it’s only a short logical path to conclude that the child is not getting Truth. Therefore the Bible Truths, which the child is also clearly getting,are not really Truths at all, QED. I can see only two ways around this disastrous conclusion: either the Bible Truths represent the Treat, and the candy is somehow supposed to represent unTruth, or the organizers/namers of the event want to teach the children the lesson that “or” really means “and”. Perhaps the home schooling will help these kids deal with the cognative dissonance.
Excuse me.
Cognitive dissonance.
Yes, well, if anyone is near lakewood Ohio right before halloween, you may check out the bus shelter in front of lakewood Library on Detroit Road, where Myron, my former churches deacon (and former gay) tapes Boo! Chick tracts all over it.
Really, he does.
Myself, we are still celbrating it.
So what if it is evil?
Getitng candy is not evil and why should Chrsitian kids get shafted because of it?
yes, inside church thigns are fine, but Nothign beats walking around in the dark, house to house.
So there.:eek:
One of the main reasons we don’t do Halloween (aside from the avoiding pagan stuff) in the Snoopy household is because we don’t trust perfect strangers. There are too many nutsos out there doing weird stuff to candy. I live in the 'hood anyway and very few people bother giving out candy to begin with. The good stuff is given out in the ritzy neighborhoods about 15 miles away.
Our church has a thing every year and the kids that come (over 1,000 showed up last year) get more candy there than they ever would trick-or-treating. Plus we have all sorts of other neato stuff like a petting zoo (this year we’re getting a camel). Simply put, our thing is more fun than ToTing, so why bother tromping around the neighborhood where you can go to one place and score more candy than you would in a week’s worth of trick or treating, and be with all of your friends while you’re doing it (instead of just one or two)?
[size=1]I’m crazy eggbeater head, gimme candy
I was not aware that Passover was a pagan holiday, or are you buying into that pack of fundie lies about some “goddess” named “Eostre” or that the whole thing was an “Ishtar” festival? Of course, both of them are utter rubbish to anyone who is not utterly ignorant of worldwide Christianity and its history. The oldest name for “Easter” is some form of “Pascha” or “Pesach”, which means “Passover”. The bunny was added later, but it’s also not universal to all Christian celebrations. Eggs do seem to be, though, but again no mention of an “Eostre” or an “Ishtar” except among the Germanics.
Also, the Irish/British Isles All Saint’s Day was not November 1. They used the Eastern practice of having it fairly soon after Pentecost for quite some time. November 1 was the favored day of Germans.
I don’t care about the name, I’m talking about the trappings. Easter eggs and bunnies and all that stuff. They’re Pagan fertility symbols. An Easter egg hunt is just as Pagan a ritual as trick or treating. The day itself is a celebration of the spring equinox.
You’re completely wrong about the origin of the name, by the way. It absolutely comes from Eoster. Look in any dictionary.
Hear, hear.
This could devolve into a chicken-or-the-egg question, but it’s maybe worthy of discussion anyway: Isn’t a lot of the “ruining” of the holiday for the kids due to the last couple of generations of adults not being willing to relinquish the fun to the next bunch of little ones?
I spent my trick-or-treating years in the suburbs of Southern California from the mid-sixties to the early seventies, and I don’t recall hearing about adult-oriented Halloween bashes competing for attention with the plastic-mask and licensed-character nylon jumpsuit Main Event. On the contrary, as we got older, our parents (and some homeowners) began making pointed remarks about the appropriateness of trick-or-treating for post-pubescent participants. Now, the displays of fun-sized Snicker Bars in the supermarket are rivaled in size and comprehensiveness with those of Elvira hawking Coors Light, and nameless-but-shapely babes in pointy hats enticing us to buy deKuypers pumpkin-flavored schnapps (or whatever).
The local mall just opened a 20,000 square-foot Halloween Club store (don’t ask me for a cite on the size, please, I’m just estimating based on how big it was when it was a Long’s Drugs), and I doubt that as much as twenty percent of the floor space is geared to youngsters.
One thing is certain: there are gobs of moola to be made in converting Halloween from a kid’s night out to a debauch for the grown-ups (not that I’m against grown-up debauchery; “Please, sir, I want some more” is my motto, as far as that’s concerned), and I don’t expect the trend to reverse any time soon. But while the fundie-fueled fear-mongering of the eighties may have played a catalyzing role in getting the ball rolling on this phenomenon, I would argue that my generation’s self-absorption made the outcome inevitable, even had there been no Mike Warnke, or any of his ilk.
Actually, somebody (Satan? Fundies? The Illuminati? I suspect the Prospect for a New American Century) is trying to ruin all holidays. Every goddamn holiday seems to come with some sort of prissy warning these days:
Christmas: “Let’s remember the reason for the season.” (The reason for the season is because of the inclination of the earth’s axis, nitwit! Now get off my ass, because believe it or not, not everyone in America is a Christian!)
Thanksgiving: Cook your turkey thoroughly, or you’ll get salmonella.
Fourth of July: “Coming up next, footage of things being blown up through careless use of fireworks! This is Kent Brockman, with the newscast you can’t afford to miss… for the sake of your child!”
Halloween: Razor blades in apples, fundie “Satanic influence” fantasies, Hell Houses, people who give health food to trick-or-treaters, etc.
Labor Day: endless reports of highway deaths. Why don’t we hear about highway deaths at any other time of year?
Oddly enough, I can’t seem to come up with anything for Easter or New Year’s. Help me out here, folks. (Of course, a lot of these holidays get a general “We have a credible threat of a possible terrorist strike, so don’t go to any big parties” warning nowadays.)
Come to think of it, an entire chapter of The Culture of Fear could have been devoted to holiday warnings over total crap. Anyone with half a brain knows that fireworks will hurt you, you shouldn’t eat raw turkey, and driving is dangerous.
And while I’m in rant mode, let me add to kaylasdad99’s excellent post by grousing about Holiday Creep. Does it feel like the encroachment of Christmas onto Thanksgiving, and of Thanksgiving onto Halloween, and of Halloween onto Labor Day take a sharp turn for the worse within the last five years? I’m sorry, but October is the Halloween month, and thou shalt not put up Halloween decorations in September.