I can’t help but wonder if some of the anti-Halloween spirit is because it is (sorta) a Roman Catholic holiday. And if not, don’t those bozos know anything about it or that the celebration of Holy Days (in this case All Saints Day) traditionally begins at sundown the evening (thus All Hallows (Saints) Eve) before?
Rubes. Chawbacons. Learn something before spouting off, for once. :mad:
Christmas is not the only holiday in that time of year, in case you didn’t know.
Saying “Happy Holidays” is simply being more inclusive of holidays during that time of the year in addition to “Christmas.”
How about Happy Winter?
Missionaries. Some are extremely entertaining. They’ll stand in the middle of Khao San Road, our backpackers’ ghetto, and SCREAM the word of the Lord. They’ll stand at the entrance to Nana Plaza, a three-story bar center, SCREAMING what sinners the rest of us are. That last one may actually be somewhere on YouTube. I’ll try to look it up this week.
In the excellent The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred McCoy mentions in a footnote that one missionary who worked for a Christian medical NGO got caught sterilizing local girls up in the Northeast without their knowledge, to prevent more pagans from being born. It’s a good book, but I’ve never been able to find corroboration for that particular claim.
And fundie-Christian Thais! I knew a girl here who was one. Nice girl in all other regards, but man, don’t bring up religion around her. Seems she spent a year in Oklahoma as a high-school exchange student and became converted. Actually spoke in tongues at some meeting there. Her parents seemed amazingly tolerant. A traditional Chinese-Thai merchant family, she still lived with them at age 30. When Chinese holidays like Ching Ming came around, she would not participate in traditional activities like cleaning the ancestors’ graves, saying that would be evil. Her family was remarkably tolerant, I’d say.
I’m pleased to report that in less than 24 hours I have successfully eliminated the PiperHousehold Reese’s Cup surplus, making the world just a little bit safer. Those little suckers will never tempt anyone else again. [burp]
Well, she never prayed over his candy, but she did kneel under his nuts. So they are probably still dating.
Dammit, I’m hanging around all the wrong universities. I was stuck near BC. The only students I talked to were a Playboy bunny, a stripper, a 19 year old cougar, and… I don’t know what the 4th one was, so I’m guessing a very cute witch who was demonizing some candy.
I thought telling other posters to fake orff was banned under the newly wimpified Pit rules.
We had a family in our town who did this! But we think the kids had turned on the lights without the parents knowing (we saw them peaking at us from the curtains). My friend Jenna and I knocked, did the whole ‘trick or treat!’ thing and were yelled at for several minutes by their mother. It ended with her dramatically pointing at the lit porch light, pausing in mid rant and slamming the door in our faces. Then, the porch light mysteriously went out, leaving my friend and I to wallow in the darkness of our evil ways.
Well…we *were *dressed as cheerleaders that year…
I did the whole candy thing alone this year, though the dog tried to help (by attempting to lick the trick-or-treaters when they reached for candy.)
OOooooohhhh yeah… ridin’ the ham train… all the way to Baconville.
Ridin’ that train,
High on… ham.
Sam I Am you’d better
Watch your speed.
What makes her think babies are innocent? Every baby I’ve every seen comes into this world covered in blood and innards. It ain’t their blood either.
What could go wrong? On a side note, if the trunk is filled with ‘treats’ where do they keep the dead hookers?
If you manage to ground one of the deer entirely unharmed, I offer to take the animal off your hands, by way of the nearest kosher butcher.
Arctic venison, yum!
Valid point. BUT, just to be a bit picky, Halloween does still emphasize those pagan rituals, or at least pay some homage to them. Christmas and Easter can both be celebrated as Christian holidays without even paying attention to the basis of the decorations. So all that has been pretty sanitized, or has had the negative pulled out of it, if you will. Halloween hasn’t. It’s a different kettle of fish. I mean, it’s not like we, as a culture, celebrate All Saints Day, but just use the older things as window dressing. The pagan symbols, the references to evil, are part and parcel of the whole thing. I’m not saying that people take them seriously, but it is a different situation.
Agreed
Highway 50 is a fairly busy four lane road in Orlando(ish). Who knows, if the kid had been trick or treating in a neighborhood where the residents would be aware and drive slowly, it might not have happened.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=fantasy+fest&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=oxXvSsigBYGyNo6vjYQM&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCQQqwQwAw#
I have been to many Fantasy Fests in Key West. That is a little different spin than kid stuff. I love it.
This whokle thing bothers me.
One example given was when people “shut down” their festivities because ONE person (the Jehovah Witness) complained? Why didn’t they just retort with the old “too bad get over it”? Really. If this is where we are heading, all it would take is ONE malcontented busy body to ruin anything and everything. That’s just spineless bullshit. JWs don’t celebrate ANYTHING. So what? They can “not celebrate” all they want, and they can also mind their own damn business.
In my old neighborhood, we Catholics had no problem with Halloween at all. We’d all be out trick or treating, throwing eggs at each other, having a good time. None of the parents, priests, nuns, or anyone else, had any issues with it.
Exactly. If you don’t want to participate, fine. But don’t fuck it up for everyone else.
Agree with the OP; and also those offended by the word Christmas are also idiots.
I’m not getting why you’d think I’d try to bring Rudolph or his repulsive brethren down even ALIVE, much less unharmed.
It’s been my impression, here in the States at least, that the holiday verbiage some find offensive is of the “Happy Holidays” variety –some Christians are offended that people aren’t specifying Christmas, not the other way 'round. They’re the ones who are offended most loudly, anyway. I don’t mind Christians wishing me Merry Christmas as long as they don’t mind me wishing them Happy Holidays.
My fiance and I live in a small apartment building, so we sat on the front steps to hand out Halloween candy. We like seeing the kids’ costumes. There are always a few dubious candy collectors, though, like the high school kids accompanying their younger siblings and also collecting for themselves, or the kids who don’t even bother to dress up, or the mom who took a piece for her one-year-old, who was asleep in his stroller. :dubious:
The Catholic church of my youth was notable for its several dozen statues (I kid you not, about fifty). One of my favorites was a lovely young woman with her hand on a giant spiked metal wheel–apparently what she had been martyred with.
Welcome to some 90% of hentai.
Born in '83 and I, too, experienced the joyous candy sacks.
I think you may have misunderstood the point. As I read it, it was not “Catholics have a problem with Halloween,” but rather, “Other Christians have a problem with Halloween because it’s partially based on a Catholic Holy Day.”