I might be a bit late to all the Halloween talk but I don’t care, I’m going to talk anyway. This was my first Halloween in the US and I must say I loved it. Seeing houses in our neighborhood dressed up for this day was just fascinating. I loved seeing the creative ways of carving pumpkins and the various "scary items" displayed on front porches. I really didn’t know that Halloween was such a big deal.
We celebrated it the traditional way: Picking out a wonderful pumpkin from a local patch then carving it and putting it out on the porch. The picture speaks for itself [click to enlarge].
But I guess the part I enjoyed most about Halloween was the "trick or treat" bit. We prepared Halloween candy the night before and the next evening we were ready to welcome kids that came knocking on our door asking for treats. It was loads of fun.
I loved seeing all of those cute kids dressed up in various customs. We were visited by a spider, a Cinderella, an angel and some sort of vampire, among other creatures. Some were accompanied by their parents and others came on their own. The intriguing part for me was actually experiencing Halloween in real life after seeing it on TV — mostly in American movies — many, many times. Indeed, it was fun and a major distraction from the daily banalities of life.
That’s really not fair Linda. In my old home town there was one ‘entire’ church, men and women, who, from the preacher down to the newest member, where using religion to hide from their own failures. They all proclaimed themselve’s saved, but all of them still held the same prejudices, commited the same acts of indifference to their fellow human beings, etc. The church simply gave them an excuse to keep acting the same way, (which originally resulting in about 90% of them getting divorces after their wife/husband left them), and placing themselves on a pedistal, like claiing they found God somehow erased all past indifferences and made any new acts God’s will. Women are no different than men with regard to the need to hide from their own flaws or deny they have any. The person who I personally knew, and thus could readilly describe, just happened to be male. Not to say that statistically men are not more prone to doing stupid things, but then nearly every society in the world considers behaviour from boys that would get girls grounded for a week as not only acceptable, but in the worst cases ‘expected’.
men are sick!
Ok, I am sorry about going a tad overboard on that.
Even if I knew where to find web pages documenting how modern Satanism is less than 200 years old and proven the history, using church documents, how pagan ritual was slandered by the same types that persecuted Galileo for having the audacity to confirm that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe, its unlikely anyone that believes in such things would pay any attention.
I will say how ever that I personally know someone else that was ‘saved’ from supposed devil worship. They happilly admitted to being brainwashed, taking drugs, drinking and basically doing everything one would expect to end up *thinking* that they had poltergeist like experiences. It didn’t take me long listening to him talk about it to realize something. He chose Christianity not because of any ‘real’ belief in evil. He chose it because he refused to confront his own weaknesses. By allowing Satan to be responsible for his actions and God his salvation, he could justify pretending that **he** never made the choice to do any of it. It wasn’t his fault he took drugs, wasn’t his fault he drank, his fault for ‘anything’. Its the easy way out. I am sure Kinzi will tell me I am wrong, and its even possible I am, but experience tells me I am not, but he/she had a choice, admit he/she made mistakes and learn from them, as well as learning ‘real’ wicca from the person that pointed out what was really going on, but chose instead to abandon the need to make choices, in favor of having someone else ‘tell’ him/her what is right and wrong, something that organizations dedicated to ‘born again’ Christianity are experts on. Nothing is ever their fault, nor is the solution ever to learn from their mistakes and find a true moral center. Instead, they give up free will and choice. The first step is to give into the purely Christian belief that Satan exists as a nemesis to God and ‘made’ them do something. Christianity is the only OT religion that makes such a claim. In all others Satan, if mentioned at all, is merely there to test, not force anyone into evil. So the only reason to ‘pick’ Christianity out of all other possibilities, is in order to deny personally responsibility for choosing to sin.
But I could always be wrong this time. Just don’t insist I have to believe your different, because it offends you that I don’t believe you.
Jeff, may I add “the kinky nurse” and the “young school teacher” too.
I think we should sit down, man to man, and discuss these things.
I hope you’ll consider the ‘cheerleader’ idea that Linda has mentioned as well 😉