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Did you use to believe that Halloween was satanic?


finleeport

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For years, we considered Halloween evil, and took the kids to church "Harvest Festivals" where they dressed up and got candy.

Then, as we began to wake up, and get out of our fundy fog, we took the kids trick or treating, where,(wait for it), the kids got dressed up and got candy.

The primary difference? The trick or treating was in our neighborhood and community, with people we lived by and knew, and gave us a chance to meet our neighbors. It was very inclusive and friendly. The "Harvest Festivals" were at churches outside of our neighborhoods, with either incoming strangers (potential converts), or people who we didn't live by. No sense of ongoing community, all a sense of obligation and pride that we were "holier" than the others out there doing Halloween.

There is a single dad who has brought his little girl by for three years in a row. We got to know him, because she insisted on coming into our house, and we said only with Daddy, we're strangers. This year we were sad, she didn't come, until we got a knock on the door at 9.15, and she yelled "oh hi, I'm back." The dad said they moved uptown, and she insisted on coming, but the bus broke down on the way and they had to wait. He knew it was getting late, but figured we would be cool with it. We were.

This is community. Nothing evil or satanic, also nothing self righteous and preachy. Wouldn't change it for the world.

I love Halloween now. I work the night shift, but took a vacation day for tonight. Our kids are 13 to 24, pretty much out of the little kid part of it, but I wouldn't miss this for the world.

Oh, and our 17 year old and his friends went "reverse trick or treating" tonight for awhile...rang the doorbell and gave away candy. Then they did conventional trick or treating, with a twist: "none of us were wearing any costumes, so we just laid on peoples porches and played dead." I yes when your a little old for trick or treat, but too young to go clubbing, you have to be creative. :lol:

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2xx, your kids' lives sound awesome :) I am finding out loads about Judaism reading this forum, thanks guys!

If anyone doesn't want to celebrate a holiday why should they have to? That annoys me. I am liable to forget my own birthday and don't even like Christmas much so I am atypical. It sort of seems like a waste of time to me, not on theological grounds, but generally.

But not celebrating a holiday, if all are OK with that, totally agree. It's not depriving a child or anything else.

I remember being a kid and asking a Muslim friend "doesn't it suck not to have Christmas?" She said "Duh, we have Eid." ;)

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I guess I'm sort of a heathen because that time of year has always been a sensitive topic. I had friends that did not celebrate for that reason. Also there were church events that would just change the name.There were even some years where it was harped on nonstop but I didn't care I wanted my candy dammit.

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Did anyone else's family totally buy the rumors that Liz Claiborne and the CEO of Proctor & Gamble are Satanists?

Had a big house-clean at my grandmother's over that shit, we actually burned the few LC items she had.

Oh yes - my mom loved her Liz C clothes and had such a hard time giving them up after we got the reliable intel about how all the proceeds went straight to satanism.

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I had no idea the satanism hysteria was so widespread. I'm guessing my parents thought it was all hogwash.

Apparently most of the Satanism scare and anti-Halloween stuff started with Mike Warnke in the late 70s, and really kicked into high gear after he was on a 20/20 episode about "Devil Worshippers" in 1985. Warnke has since been exposed as a liar and total fraud, but it didn't take much for people like Bob Larson & Jack Chick to latch onto him and his crap to spread through evangelical circles.

Going by anecdata here, but it seems like, prior to this, even most of the fundamentalist churches were OK with Halloween and allowed trick or treating, costumes, and real Halloween parties with monster movies and stuff, rather than the "fall festivals" some have now.

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Wait...what? Does Halloween anything other than candy? Candy rules, man. :D

My older son is so weird about candy. He'd come home with the pillowcase full of candy, and there it stayed, in the pillowcase in his closet. The next Halloween I'd make him throw it away before he got new candy. Same with his Easter basket, the candy was still in the basket the next year. None of us are big candy eaters so no one ever stole any of it.

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Halloween =candy+ dress up

For dessert I raided my kids pillowcases and ate an Almond Joy,Hershey,Reeses Cup (all mini size) I am going back down now for a Kit Kat.

Halloween for Moms is even better, we still get the treats. :)

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  • 1 year later...

I sure as h*ll did...and took my kids out of our little, diverse, neighborhood, which was full of needy and lonely people, and drove 15 miles away to the big rich church in the suburbs to feel "safe." And we hid out there, and pretended to be in that so-called "community." Snug and smug.

Now I realize how cool it is to meet people on your block at Halloween. How many nights is it normal and expected for neighbors to come and knock on your door and say hi and show off their kids? And how many of my neighbors would I have met and been closer to, years ago, if I had just joined in the fun, instead of turning the porch light off and fleeing with my little tribe to the church on the hill (where incidentally, I felt lonely and disrespected, and never quite fit in).

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No, but I've had friends and neighbors who did. The first time I heard was from a co-worker and I was very huh?

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Now I realize how cool it is to meet people on your block at Halloween. How many nights is it normal and expected for neighbors to come and knock on your door and say hi and show off their kids? And how many of my neighbors would I have met and been closer to, years ago, if I had just joined in the fun, instead of turning the porch light off and fleeing with my little tribe to the church on the hill (where incidentally, I felt lonely and disrespected, and never quite fit in).

I love seeing the neighborhood kids in their costumes, from the little ones who are trick-or-treating for the first to the teenagers who still trick-or-treat.

There was one teenager who would come around the neighborhood around 8:30-9:00 after the smaller kids had already gone home. We always gave him our leftover candy but I didn't see him this year. I wonder if his parents made him stop.

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B5SnowDog wrote:

There was one teenager who would come around the neighborhood around 8:30-9:00 after the smaller kids had already gone home. We always gave him our leftover candy but I didn't see him this year. I wonder if his parents made him stop.

My 18 year old went out last year with some friends, "reverse trick or treating." They rang the bell and gave whoever answered candy. He has been mostly over it for years, just took his little brother out as an excuse...being six foot six or seven, he has looked "too old" since he was 11 or so.

Edited for typos

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I was also one of those who thought Halloween meant you got candy. I can say that I've never met anyone who was raised with the idea that Halloween was Satanic and should be ignored, even if they were taught that Catholics focused too much on Mary and prayed to her instead of to God the Father.

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I was one who thought it was satanic. We never participated in any way, never let the kids go, never gave out candy. My son went for the first time when he turned 18. I took my two youngest out for the first time 3 years ago and I loved it. We went at night and it was so fun, couldn't believe how stupid I was for buying into how evil it was. my adult offspring, for lack of a better term, now are big Halloween party goers. We contine to go trick or treating with the youngest two. My husband still thinks its evil so I didn't tell him we were going for the first 2 years but he knows now. We don't see things the same anymore on many issues so we don't talk about them.

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My husband's family still does. My family doesn't. I dressed up every year and was usually something "scary." My church now has a "Trunk or Treat" every Halloween.

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As a young child (1960s) it was all about costumes and candy in our family. Sometime in the late 70s, my mother got religion and discovered that Halloween is a - gasp - Pagan Holiday!!! Oh no, what to do? For a few years, she gave out tracts with the candy to the poor neighborhood kids and after a few years of that, she just gave up and gave out candy again. By the time she got religion all my siblings were grown or mostly grown, so luckily, none of them missed out on the fun of Halloween. My mom wasn't too thrilled about the grandchildren "celebrating" Halloween though. She always made sure to point out the pagan origins of the holiday whenever I would mention what my kids were dressing as, etc.

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My family totally did/does. I bought into everything, even the super-scary pamphlet our church put out (ooooh it's BRIGHT ORANGE AND BLACK AND HAS DEATH ON THE FRONT!!!!ELEVENTY!!), until I was around sixteen. Finally, I was 'allowed' to go trick or treating with friends for the first and last time at 18. I still feel cheated out of all that, and it's now my absolute favorite holiday.

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Yeah, we had to turn all the lights out and hide from the trick or treaters. One year, my mom let us go to a church-sponsored "harvest party" which was essentially a Halloween party, but with kids dressed as angels and bible characters. Needless to say, this was WAY too much fun for my dad to tolerate, so the next year, it was back to hiding with the lights out. :roll:

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I loved going trick-or-treating as a kid. I love candy and I totally eat what my kids don't like. That is all it has ever meant to me. As a kid, if there was a house on the block without candy and the people pretending not to be home, they would find it covered in TP, egged and with smashed pumpkins all over it. some of the neighborhood kids (usually teens) would do that if you ran out of candy before they got there. My parents learned to buy more candy if it looked like they were going to run out again this year (its not fun cleaning pumpkins from the carpet on the porch).

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My husband's family still does. My family doesn't. I dressed up every year and was usually something "scary." My church now has a "Trunk or Treat" every Halloween.

I was invited to one of those this year by my sons preschool teacher. We live in a microscopic town and don't have a church we regularly attend. I thought we would have kids coming to get candy in our new neighborhood, so I decorated and bought candy. Not a damn one showed up. Turns out that this is the frackin buckle of the Bible Belt and nobody trick or treats :doh: That just made me so sad. I swear I drowned every Snicker bar in my tears before I scarffed it (someone had to eat all of that chocolate 8-) ). Not good for toddlers ya know ;)

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I went to a Catholic grade school, and we had Halloween parades every year! We weren't allowed to dress up as anything majorly gory, but I was a devil a couple of times and people were Dracula and Frankenstein and the like. Of course there were always quite a few angels and Marys, too. We go all out for Halloween. It's my oldest daughter's birthday. :0)

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Since its Halloween tomorrow, I like to know if any ex-fundie and fundie-lites once believed that Halloween was the stereotypical 'Witch's Sabbath' or the Devil's Holiday.

In my parents native country in Greece, Halloween has no roots there and so unfamiliar with the holiday over there. Even my mom and some (very little) of my churchgoers think Halloween and Wicca are demonic religions, and that our Christian faith is the only true faith. In a rage of stupidity, I would try to argue with them how wrong they are.

I used to think that Halloween was devilish, but growing up and doing my own research, Halloween was originally a day to venerate the dead, bid farewell to summer and welcome autumn, make masks to scare away vengeful spirits or pacify them with offered treats and sweets.

Did you ever had the same belief?

Yes, many people here in the south definitely do still believe that Halloween should not be celebrated. Fundies and fundie-lites (fundie-lites are really prominent throughout the south) and many do not participate in traditional Halloween activities. But they do celebrate fall and the fall/harvest activities - hayrides, corn maze, trips to the pumpkin patch and so the children do have lots of fun. I was raised fundie and we did not dress up and go trick-or-treating or anything like that but then we lived in the country and didn't really seem to be that big of a deal to us as I recall.

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