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Edit: Looked up some other stuff, yeah, pretty different. But you seen one wacky set of beliefs, you've seen them all.
Not any more than God pretty much being Zeus makes it Greek mythology.
Ahahaha what? Oh my goodness this is precious. I'm sorry but next to no one in new zealand gives a shit about religion at all.
I think you have some fucked up bias with the people you have met, conservative and religious are about two of the last words I would use to describe new zealand.
Halloween is only sort of a thing where I live, it's not really weird to go trick or treating or not to. Dad didn't let us though, I'm not sure if it was a safety thing or one of his silly 'rargh american culture invading' things.
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
I like this idea better.
But we might offend someone because they're practicing Wicca by dressing up like the wicked witch of the west! So, clearly, you can only dress up like cast of the Jersey Shore for halloween. It's the safest way not to offend anyone. Except hookers. Fuck.
My train of thought was something like this, but I decided to be a bit more mild and polite about it. You definitely have a wrong view of the country.
Is that a rule only in the states? When I was a kid we always waited till it got dark.
Welcome to the world on this side.
Someone will always be offended no matter what you do. As long as you're not rubbing their face in it (going 'nya nya nya, I'm dressed up like an ugly witch, you're Wiccan, hahahaha!'), then that's the most you can do. I understand why Wiccans are trying to speak against that stereotype but stopping little kids seems like a silly way to go about it. Even if the kids understand (and some will), they'll be more upset that you took away their cool Halloween costume than anything else.
No but really, that was well said.
Rigorous Scholarship
They're taking it back. :lol:
Hey. There were those guys that killed themselves so they could hitch a ride on that comet.
But those guys worshipping the 2,000 year old Jewish zombie who was voluntarily tortured to death in order to remove the blood curse he himself in another form placed over the whole of humanity, those guys are totally reasonable and have it all sorted out. I'm assuming we should take them seriously, right? Yeah, Wicca is totally made up. So what - so is every other religion. I don't take Christianity or Islam seriously because it makes a good point. I take them seriously because millions of believers do so themselves.
I think it's also important to point out that very few if any Wiccans actually literally believe the most 'ridiculous' things attributed to them en masse. Really the only thing I think you can confidently say is true of a Wiccan is that they call themselves that, which is probably the REAL reason not to take them seriously as a demographic group. I suppose it's a non-trancendental religion so it might imply some common moral beliefs re: ecological actions or environmentalism, but that'd be about it and that's probably still hardly a unifier.
Modern druidism is mostly made up. We know almost nothing about ancient druidism other than what the Romans tell us.
By the way, all of this info courtesy of NPR! Well, not directly. But one of the NPR correspondants wrote the book I get my limited knowledge of Wicca/paganism from.
If you don't want your religion associated with monsters, don't name yourselves after them. I doubt anybody thinks of Wiccans when they see a witch costume except the Wiccans themselves. They lost priority over that term a long time ago, and it's a bit too late now for them to take it back.
From what I observe it stems from pressure by parents groups or the general fear the administration has over possibly offending anyone over celebrating what could be considered by any stretch "pagan" holiday. Extremist Christian groups somehow twist what is a fun day for kids into a dark and sinister plot to convert young souls to Satanism. Funny you don't see them up in arms over Christmas, which also has roots in a pagan holiday.
Basically those with the loudest voices and smallest minds ruin the fun for everyone else again.
Not to mention the drinking human blood and eating human flesh every weekend.
All religions are made up. The only difference is some were made up a long ass time ago.
What non made up religion am I supposed to take seriously?
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
ElJeffism.
It works like this: you worship me and give me 10% of your income, and I won't ban you. And if you stay good, I'll give you 72 virgins.
I mean, I figure there's gotta be tons of virgins around here, may as well get some mileage out of them.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
Then a month or two later she told her she would do anything for jesus, including killing her own children.
Needless to say she didn't show up after Christmas break.
Anyway. Does someone want to enlighten me on the pagan origins of Christmas? I knew there were pagan roots but I'm unlearned as to their nature.
It's actually borough specific here, but most boroughs tend to have it at the same time anyways. Ours is 6-8pm. Light enough at the beginning for some people and dark enough towards the end for others. Win win I suppose
That's the time schedule around here as well. I think it works great. Tend to see all the younger kids early and then the slightly older kids later. Then you get the kids who are obviously too old to be out begging for candy coming by after you've put out the fire and shut out all the lights.
Our daughter went as a witch this year. It was her first Halloween ever. I think we started her on the proper path to annoying people with nothing better to do than complain about a Halloween costume. I don't understand this at all. If you don't want to celebrate something that's quite alright, but when you start restricting other people from people able to celebrate that same thing/holiday/religion/etc., we have a problem.
PSN : Bolthorn
Quite a mouth for a 2nd grader.
Golden tablets, and an angel named Moroni.
Note he didn't specify that they would be female virgins.
He didn't even poke holes in it. Now they're dead.
When I was a kid my parents dragged me around for like 4 hours Trick or Treating, and we would go home exhausted with sore feet and a overflowing pillow case of candy. Now, most places around where I live give the kids one hour to Trick or Treat, during daylight hours.
We have become less tolerant over time, under the guise of protecting everyone's freedoms. We're turning our world vanilla because Group A hates chocolate or Group B is allergic to strawberry.
And I speak most specifically about America, whose greatest asset is slowly being diminished, and that's our Melting Pot society. The idea that we were supposed to have a place where not only were our differing beliefs legal, they were accepted and embraced as part of what made us a great society.
We've all become so worried about offending eachother, we've stopped being individuals who openly express themselves and we're blending into the scenery around us.
High School used to be the place we experimented and discovered who we were to become, and now oppressive rules and dress codes demand conformity.
One thing has remained true of humanity from the beginning of time. We're still afraid of the things we don't understand. And if we can't dominate or neutralize it, we destroy it.
/semi-on-topic-rant off
So, in your mind, the problem wasn't that the 2nd grade teacher was such a fucking idiot that she had to make a seven-year-old stand up in front of all her classmates and say "No, I have a weird-ass religion unlike all the rest of you," the problem was that the seven-year-old failed to STFU and keep her head down meekly like a good Jewish kid?
Christmas and Easter are religious holidays with secular outpots. Halloween is a secular holiday. I don't even know any Wiccans who call their religious version of it Halloween (it's Samhain to them), and they don't celebrate by trick-or-treating.
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replaced by JPEGs.
The pledge is no longer used because it was perverted by McCarthyism into a religious oath and it was easier to just stop forcing people to pledge blindly to such an oath than to alter the oath back to its previous state.