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It's really a completely different category than the alteration of holidays.
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Cous: Agreed.
And your entire post was about bad changes. Besides, at my high school and middle schools, we said the pledge daily. Didn't mean anything, but we did it.
What a load of horseshit. If anything, we have become much more individualized. The fact that we can even choose a social group to be in is an amazing advancement compared to most of the past.
I recounted a humorous anecdote from my youth.
The rest is all in your mind.
Indeed. I also grew up in NZ and what's more, deep country/small town/Dunedin - where I either had close family or friends who were Anglican, Pres, Roman Catholic, Jehovah's Witnesses or the like and only the latter ever made a fuss about this kind of thing and they were very marginal in terms of influence. No one else was in the slightest bit "moral majority" style Christian conservative or if they were, they kept very low key about it.
We didn't celebrate Halloween because it wasn't a cultural tradition of the area I grew up in, not because of fears of satanism or weird Anglican rules.
Also, are we talking about the same Anglican Church of NZ that had female vicars in the mid 1980s and appointed the world's second female bishop back in 1990?
Also, getting mega drunk and gorging on roasted fatty animal tissue in the darkest pit of winter is hard coded into my DNA. Take it away and the suicide/cannibalism rate starts climbing again.
I'm all for that. Familiarizing children with all the crazy things people do goes a long way toward ensuring that they won't be as attracted to it in their rebellious years.
i asked my teacher about it when i was like, in 1st or 2nd grade? something like that
i was all "what's with the bunnies and eggs?" and she's like "well you know Easter is about the death and resurrection of our lord, Jesus Christ" (catholic elementary school, before y'all get outraged)
and i was like "no, yeah, i follow that. i get that, that's where good friday and all that comes in. but where in the Bible is the bunnies and eggs? if those are symbols" (having just learned a great deal about religious symbolism not long before this!) "what are they symbols of?"
she brushed the question off with some half-assed answer about how some traditions have unknown origins but are part of the holiday anyway, which was basically her trying to cover the fact that she doesn't know the answer to an 7 year old's question
i was troubled by this answer and went to my father about it. my father, being a history nerd with a keen knowledge of ancient mythology, explained that they were pagan symbols of fertility goddesses and the like, and were associated with the coming of springtime, and that Christianity simply co-opted these symbols as a way of converting pagans in northern Europe.
and that they have pretty much nothing to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
this led to me questioning a whole bunch of other holidays and their various trappings and mythos, which my father tried his best to explain in ways i'd understand
this led to me having a bit of a crisis as i suddenly realized a great many traditions people practiced were based on baloney made up by some guy and they don't even know
So neither of you sees fault in trying to protect our kids from other peoples beliefs?
There is no fucking sense of "Otherness". If that were the case, why celebrate Christmas? New Years? Valentine's Day? St. Patricks Day? ANY fucking celebration from ANY culture for ANY reason?
It's a bullshit reason. The only thing they're protecting kids from is a perceived slight to their beliefs. No one sees it as a ritual of spirits departing. We might as well call it "Night of Dressing up like Batman or Spider-man for Free Candy", and it has the same spiritual meaning nowadays.
At least not the ones I've met. They generally believe in the 'do whatever you want, as long as it harms no one' creed, which is fine by me.
Welcome to the world on this side.
i've met plenty of wiccans who are total shit-heels
most of em women's studies majors with a hair up their ass about the patriarchy, so their wicca becomes an extension of their general angry radical feminism
and they can get pushy about their beliefs, in particular if you are of a different religion than them, one that somehow endorses the patriarchy in some way (ie everything else ever)
At this point I'd be calling them to ask why they're engaged in religious persecution. This is utterly ridiculous, even though I'm not pagan/wiccan or whatever. Those people are free to "cast spells" or whatever they do just as much as you guys are allowed to believe Jesus cloned fish and bread a zillion times. There is nothing inherently offensive or evil in either thing. Especially dressing up as a witch. What about zombies? Mummies? Other "scary" things?
Someone needs to slap these people. It's halloween! Stop trying to take away the holidays.
You do have your occasional high school "Wiccans" who, like high school anything, are can obnoxious and unpleasant about their flavor-of-the-month, but I know a bunch of Wiccans and Pagans who are some of the sweetest, most loving, pleasant, tolerant, and fun people around. And man they love to play God of War. :o
Up here, it's Halloween. You dress up, go out after dark and get candy. Everyone wins.
Except the people who try to trick-or-treat before sundown. If you come to the door when the sun is still up and you ain't 5 years old and adorable, fuck you, candy gets handed out later.
Holly, mistletoe, evergreen trees, lights, etc. are all taken from various pagan celebrations around the winter solstice (Dec 21). Late December was chosen by the early Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus both due to the time being symbolic of rebirth and because the Romans were too drunk from the feast of Saturnalia to do any persecuting. This I learned from the priest who taught my Catholic high school theology class.
Obviously, as Judaism is a horrible affliction and no one should be promted to publicly admit to having it.
Seriously, what the hell?o_O
Seriously, are you really pretending that you don't get why the teacher's behavior was shitty, or that Regina finding it humorous is more than a little clueless?
Hint: it's not because being Jewish is bad.
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Because you never laugh at anyones expense, ever?
Or is it only wrong when religion is involved?
Personally, I only laugh at hyper sensitive little Jewish girls. I make up for that by getting offended on behalf of every other special interest group so it balances the karma.
Pagan image? Hell, if I had kids and that kind of wording were used regarding Halloween costumes, I'd get them to dress up like pre-christian figures with a sholastic edge to them:
"For my costume this year, my dad made me dress up as Socrates. He started his own school about how if you just thought about what you were doing then things would be ok. Then the prince of his city got mad at him and made him drink poison even though he was probably right."
It's the purest form of love, man. The purest form.
He stopped doing it, because it was distracting, but boys wanted to be fucked by him, because he was awesome.
But apparently freaking Oklahoma City decided to move Halloween a night early (the 30th) for some stupid reason. I think officially the word is because Sunday was a school night, but freaking 5 of the 7 nights are school nights! You can't just arbitrarily change trick or treating days!
I'm especially pissed as I (and several of my friends) had no idea. Basically meaning the $20 worth of candy I bought was for naught.
What makes this worse is that only 4 of the 5 cities surrounding OKC did this. So stupid.
Rigorous Scholarship
Who says I want converts? This way there are more virgins for everyone.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
My son (age 5) got in a whole weekend dressed as Mario and had a great time. Popular costume, too - lots of kids walking by yelling "Hey, it's Mario! Hi Mario!"
Steam, Planetside 2
So now you get to eat the candy. Why are you complaining?
Anyone who deprives children of such a joyous event is bad, should feel bad, and is infact worse than hitler.
Yes, I said niece. She refused to be anything else other than her favorite video game character. As to be expected the only people in her neighborhood that recognized the costume were 14-30 year old males.