I pit all those who say Harry Potter is evil..(Warning: Whininess.)

The BBQ Pit
1

My title says it all. It all started a month ago. I go to a Christian school and every year, my teacher gives us a stupid lecture on how “Hallowe’en is evil.” Of course, we talk about how the day used to be a Christian holiday thing and how the pagans took it over and stuff. And then, my teacher started talking about Harry Potter. Everyone in the class was staring at me because everyone knows what a big fan of Harry Potter I am.

My ignorant “friend”, who’s only watched the first movie, which is only a very small part of the entire Harry Potter story, began to tell me how JKR got the spells in Harry Potter from an actual witchcraft book! :smack: Jesus, can you get any more ignorant?! I told her that she doesn’t know the entire story and that she can’t make an opinion about it unless she knows the whole story and I also told her the many parallels I found between Harry Potter and Jesus. And then she told me, “Well, I don’t have to read the books and watch all teh movies because I’ve read about the media hype about it and how it’s evil, so aren’t I entitled to an opinion?” Say it with me: OY.

There’s another friend of mine, who’s a strong Christian. She also told me that JKR got the spells from an actual witchcraft book and how Harry Potter is a withcraft manual and that more and more people are becoming wiccans because of Harry Potter. Um. Hello?! Nowhere in Harry Potter does it suggest directly or even indirectly that people should become witches and wizards. There’s no denying that witchcraft is deemed “evil” in the Bible. But, the magical element is there because it’s fits the goddamn story!! Harry Potter absolutely cannot be the story it is if the magic stuff was present. And I don’t read it to learn magic. I read it because the story is interesting, not because I want to be a witch and try to make things fly.

Gee, I’m saying, “Wingardium Leviosa!” and nothing’s happening. Did I miss something here?

Geez. And an old friend of mine is a Wiccan and a Harry Potter fan, so I asked her about both. And she told me that Harry Potter is not at all similar to Wicca. She didn’t become a Wiccan because of Harry Potter, BTW. I have yet to research Wicca and see for myself.

And my Christian friend was all, “Oh, save yourself!! Harry Potter will send you to hell!” Boy, Harry must be a busy man. While he’s sending little innocent children into hell, he’s also an evangelistic tool! Ha. Ha. I never would’ve guessed!! The reality is, many Christian leaders actually use the underlying themes in Harry Potter to spread the gospel. Good vs. evil. Prophecies. Sacrifice. Family and friends. But, of course, my Christian friend failed to see the relevance of this and continued on trying to exorcise me. Not literally, of course.

Hopefully, this wasn’t very whiny. I just needed everyone to know my feelings on this.

2

Not whiny at all, IMHO. Unfortunately there are far too many people in the world who choose to believe things they are told at face value and parrot those things to others without ever doing their own research on the subject. Whether it be “Harry Potter spells are real witchcraft”, “Iraq was directly involved in 9/11” or “Bill O’Reilly isn’t an old lech”, there are many things that are still widely believed despite being completely debunked. While the media still believes in sensationalism and entertainment over informing the populace, and while so many people refuse to read more than headlines or a single source on a subject, unfortunately this is the kind of idiocy we’ll all have to be subjected to.

Yes, the “swish and flick” :stuck_out_tongue:

3

Um…wasn’t it the other way around, just like with Christmas and Easter?

4

That seems to have been the case, but you know how religious fundamentalist wackos have to view things.

Give them long enough, I’m sure they’ll start saying that Rosh Hashana is of the devil and that Christian holidays came before Jewish ones until the Jews came in and screwed everything up.

5

Nope, not at all, although it’s a bit murky because so many people are trying to claim it. Halloween is actually a Catholic holiday with no direct historical connection to pagan Druid rituals and holidays, no matter how hard some people on both sides of the issue try to create them (Fundies to prove how “evil” Halloween is and Pagans to try and create a historical continuity that just doesn’t exist. Funny how these two diametrically opposed groups are both trying to create the exact same thing, innit.)

6

All things considered, maybe this kind of christian school is great for kids, preparing them to the level of idiocy they will have to cope with latter in life… :wink:

7

Wow, I am so glad I am not the only one who’s aware of the ignorance and stupidity of the world.

Legolamb, perhaps the reason nothing’s happening is because I’m not doing the swish and flick movement correctly. :smiley:

For the pagan-Christian holiday things, I’m pretty sure the Christians established their “holidays” first and then it was the pagans who influenced the original idea of the holidays and such. I think…

8

You’re saying it wrong. It’s “Levi-OH-sa”, not “Levio-SAH.”

9

There are so many more enjoyable ways to discuss Harry Potter than trying to defend the concept of escapist children’s literature with fundamentalists.

I had considered finding five or six Harry Potter threads and linking directly to them for you. But when I did a thread title search in Cafe Society, I found 116 links, so I decided to give them all to you (anyway, I don’t know if you’ve read them all, so you should be approaching them in your own fashion). They spread out over five pages, newest first. If you’d like to start with the oldest, go to page five of the list, and work your way forward. If you want to open a thread from the list but still have the list to return to, right-click it and select “Open this link in a new window.” Sorry if you already knew all that, I had no intention of being patronizing.

Anyway, here’s the list. Have a good time with them, don’t resurect zombie threads, and let the wackos work themselves into a lather while you snigger behind your palm.

10

There is not really any set “policy” on this.

Easter followed the Jewish Passover, so it had nothing to do with pagan celebrations, initially. Later, as Northern Europe was converted to Christianity, some of the Spring rites of fertility got mixed into the celebrations, but Easter was never of pagan origin.

Christmas was a later addition to the Christian calendar (with several early Christians rejecting the notion of celebrating birthdays), but when it did begin to be celebrated by Christians, the ultimate date (in the West) was settled by using the date of Sol Invictus. So the “pagan” origin of Christmas is a bit murkier.

Halloween is even more diffuse, with the early feast for all the saints beginning in the Spring in the Mediterranean and Northwest Europe, but later moving to November among Germanic peoples from which the practice jumped to Rome with a Germanic pope and then made its way to the rest of the Western Church. The “tricks” of that night might have some connection to pre-Christian practices–although clearly not to Samhain–but the whole Hallowe’en night as we know it is rather modern.

Other feasts in Europe have a mixture of pagan and Christian legend and mythology and it is not always clear how much each influenced the other, although Valentine’s Day had a clear pagan event that preceded the Christian legend and St. John’s Eve and Walpurgis Night would seem to have pagan predecessors. On the other hand, St. Michaelmas has no pagan predecessor that I know of and Mardi Gras/Carnival/Fasching would appear to be of Christian origin although people who attribute all European feasts to the pre-Christian era tend to find pagan rites that they would like to assert as prior.

11

kaylasdad99 you’ve just made my day. I’d forgotten the deluge of HP thread there were on this forum

12

You should have responded with something like - “How could you possibly know that unless you knew about actual witchcraft books? That means you’ve been studying witchcraft! You’re a witch! A witch! BURN HER!”

13

She turned me into a newt!

I got better…

14

Honestly, you’re such a NIGHTMARE!!!

15

:smiley: Hehe. This is just made my day. Thanks all of you. And I tried to access that list of HP threads, but for some reason, it said I’m not authorized to see them or something. Help. :confused:

16

Anyone else impressed by the newbie’s cogency, logical capacities and spelling? Welcome to the SDMB, dare_devil007_!

As for your rant, I agree with you. I once wrote a 30 page paper on the topic for an english class.

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It’s a link to search results, and I don’t think guests are allowed to do searches. That’s probably why it’s not working.

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I guess it won’t let you view the search results as a guest. Here’s a small selection. There’s much, much more and you can pretty much get a new discussion going any time you want. We have a lot of Potter fans around here. Welcome aboard. Hope you decide to stay awhile. :slight_smile:

Nice touches in harry Potter books
How will the Harry Potter series end?
Harry Potter Universe: Wizard defence
The Half-Blood Prince pool (Harry Potter and the thread full of SPOILERS)
For Harry Potter fans
Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix
Well, I just read the Harry Potter series (thoughts, questions, SPOILERS aplenty)

19

You might also want to point out that Gerald Gardner stole most of his theory/ritual directly from the G.’.D.’.
Hell, even the Wiccan Rede rips off Thelema which ripped off Rabalais who ripped off St. Augustine.
All in all the spiritual traditions become muddied, and it is quite possible that Yoshua Ben Yoseph himself was a Gnostic.

(not to mention the ridiculousness of talking about ‘witchcraft spells’)

20

Ooh, thanks. I’m reading some of the threads now. Yay, I’ve finally a family I belong in. :smiley: I wonder what Cecil would say to my friends if he was a Harry Potter fan. :stuck_out_tongue: