The generalization was more about the attempt to remove pagan references. Have you heard of one who didn’t let their kids dress up on Halloween? Tell their kids about the Easter Bunny? Santa Claus?
If not, you haven’t known many FCs!
If anyone could actually convince me that toasting is as obviously pagan in origin as Halloween, I might agree that you have a point. Even so, fundies like the ones you mention are still relatively rare. I don’t know if I’ve run into one over the past 10 or 20 years, and I live in Georgia.
If you scroll up, you’ll see that **Myglaren **posted an example of Jehovah’s Witnesses using a clearly wrong justification for not toasting. Faith and logic don’t often do not go hand-in-hand.
I’ll be having breakfast Sunday with a former JW. I will try to remember this question.
That was my first thought when I saw this thread title. I’ll ask my two JW coworkers.
I agree. From my perspective, most people in this world (fundies included) don’t have any clue that toasting might be even remotely associated with paganism. Hence, they probably don’t give it a second thought.
LD, Most people in the world wouldn’t think of Santa Claus as being pagan, either, especially given the big Saint Nicholas foundation of his mythology, but there are plenty of fundamentalist Christians who exclude him from Christmas.
I don’t know about you, but for me, things just taste better out of a skull.
Look, try to cop on, please. I am simply saying that* if *a Fundamentalist Christian *did *get the idea that toasting was connected to paganism (as I was taught) then they would be likely to stop doing it.
Stop trying to twist my words, I’m getting pretty sick of that around here lately.
**What groups don’t toast? **
The Cold Bread Lovers Society and the Friends of Plain Bread don’t toast. A radical sect of the Friends calls itself Raw Grains, and they don’t even bake the bread - they eat the dough raw.
Oh please. Nobody twisted your words. You said:
“I can see how many a fundamentalist Christian would have a problem with it.”
That was not clearly an if/then statement. It read as though you were projecting that attitude onto fundies.
Besides that, my entire point was that “many” sure as heck wouldn’t. “Many” don’t forbid Santa. A tiny minority might, but that’s about it.
Primarily b/c it distracts from the “true meaning of Christmas”, not because of paganism. I can’t see what aspect of Christianity toasting would distract from.
That’s apparently because you’re not a Jehovah’s Witness. You can’t approach this logically and expect to get it.
Wait, wait. You’re right. JWs are a whole other ballgame. I’m just talking about your rn of the mill fundies here. There’s a big difference.
It’s not a matter of distracting from anything. JW have a very strict understanding of what is Christian behavior and what is not. They will not do anything that they attribute to paganism. That includes celebrating birthdays, Christmas, and Easter, and often going to weddings or funerals.
They believe that if it is not found in the Bible, it’s better not to do it because the origins of non-Biblically based traditions are likely to have been pagan. They prefer to err on the side of not participating rather than on the side of participating in an unchristian ritual. They do also ask whether there is a practical reason for the action, such that it is not mere “custom.” But if there isn’t – if there’s no good reason to do it, and the Bible doesn’t say you should do it – they likely are not going to do it.
Definitely. I assumed we were talking more or less specifically about Jehovah’s Witnesses, since they were the group that people kept coming back to as the one that doesn’t participate in toasting.
Again, my initial & continued responses to this thread were specifically about fundamentalist christians, not JWs.
Well, in my defense, I was typing as you were posting. 
I should have made myself more clear anyway. Sorry.
(youtube link with sound)