<p>oh my goodness
I guess I"m going straight to hell, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars
Not only am i trick or treating and eating cursed candy, I also carved a pumpkin!</p>
<p>Then, I plan to see the Rocky Horror Show with some cross-dressed friends
I’d be surprised if god doesn’t smite me at some point</p>
<p>Marian is right; we should be tolerant and respectful - if not personally accepting - of everyone’s religious beliefs. But this stuff is such ignorant, anti-intellectual drivel that it GIVES ME THE CREEPS! And that has nothing to do with Halloween.</p>
<p>But with a name like cadbury you are probably one of those cursed devil chocolate bars so can we trust your opinion? :D</p>
<p>Halloween was a very violent and scary prospect where I grew up in New York.</p>
<p>I wonder what she thinks about Christmas and Easter. Plenty of pagan traditions tied up with those holidays also. Are Christmas gifts and Easter eggs evil also?</p>
<p>Yikes! Swimcatsmom is right! I’m gonna call an exorcist right now!</p>
<p>The lady is pretty wacked-out.</p>
<p>Does she know Halloween is “all Hallows’ eve” or the night before All Saints’ Day in the traditional church calendar? Hallowed refers to sacred things.</p>
<p>Yes, the current holiday as practiced has its roots in folk superstition, but if she still believes in witches, ghosts, and demons I cannot help her.</p>
<p>Well, I am all for respecting the beliefs of others. Still just today, my 13 y.o. asked me if people got upset about Halloween when I was growing up. I can’t remember anyone who did and I grew up in a small town where almost everyone was a member of one of the 3 churches in town.
For me it was all about getting to wear a costume and getting the candy.</p>
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<p>Hunt, the demon invaded your post and made you talk about kernels, the representation of the most cursed Halloween candy - CANDY CORN. I agree with the rest of your post - I hate the slutty and gory costumes. But, I love Halloween. I grew up attending a Southern Baptist church - very conservative - and none of them had any problem with Halloween. They didn’t over think it and try to make it about religion. It was about kids doing 2 of the things that kids love to do - eat candy and play dress up. Of course, most of the treats we got were homemade and most likely blessed. Heck, the pastor said Grace before the Halloween party.</p>
<p>so all that candy I ate? the witches made me do it? good to have an excuse ;)</p>
<p>Those same witches that made me break open the candy last night have forbidden me to go to the gym today. They even suggested that I go out and get a nice bottle of red wine to sip whilst I give the cursed candy to the neighborhood ghouls. What’s that you say? I am to raise a glass to Pat Robertson?</p>
<p>BTW, a Delaware professor has researched claims of candy tampering going back to the 1950’s and found they’re hoaxes or false reports. He notes the claims went up in the early 70’s, which I well remember because then it was supposedly candy laced with LSD and the like. He notes a few cases were in-home poisoning, one by a father who wanted insurance money more than his kid and the other a kid who got into his relative’s drug stash. </p>
<p>Also btw, from a Jewish perspective - my wife teaches at a religious school - the Orthodox generally don’t celebrate Halloween at all and Jewish organizations tend to ignore it, not because it’s pagan demon worship but because of Christian origins. Silly.</p>
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I’ll bet his “scientific” techniques wouldn’t detect curses, though.
I remember a church youth group Halloween party when everyone was supposed to come as a character from the Bible. One guy came as a “noisome pestilence.”</p>
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<p>Darn those witches! DARN THEM TO HECK! <em>eats another Snickers, oh the agony</em></p>
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<p>Poor Pat Roberson was born that character.</p>
<p>Back in the day my kids attended a Jewish nursery school that offered “Orange Day” for the kids to dress up in lieu of Halloween. Silly, no? I think the contemporary holiday is so divorced from its origins (most kids don’t have a clue) that it’s unnecessarily rigid to prohibit its observance. And it’s certainly out of line to expect schools and youth groups to avoid the celebration of this very innocent and enjoyable holiday to satisfy the objections of a tiny minority who can easily adhere to their beliefs by abstaining.</p>
<p>I bought a lot of non-chocolate candy–do you think the demons might have overlooked it?</p>
<p>Halloween the way we celebrate it in America is a great tradition. If you don’t like it for religious reasons, then don’t participate, but boo on you for being a party pooper! Lighten up, dress up, and join the fun! Hardly anyone thinks of it as a religious holiday anymore. It’s just a chance to be crazy. American culture needs more of that. Pretend craziness, that is; we have plenty of actual craziness, but that’s not very much fun.</p>
<p>I’m wondering if anyone had the experience of Halloween after 9/11/2001, walking into a party store and seeing all the pretend gory body parts and thinking, this is really wrong.</p>
<p>I don’t know. I wonder why people go so far with Halloween. I was in the movie store the other day and they had tons of (what I would consider) the worst kind of horror movies, a huge display. Are there people who have some sort of need to watch that stuff?</p>
<p>It’s not that I’m opposed on religious grounds. Pumpkins and candy and kids in creative costumes, great. But I don’t understand why some people go so extreme on Halloween. Anyway, that’s just my opinion, you don’t have to agree.</p>
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<p>The difference is, though, that it is not, whatever the past, now in any way celebrated as a religious holiday. I find it really patronizing and, well, ignorant, to object to others’ celebrating and assigning meanings that just aren’t there. I wouldn’t expect a child from another faith to celebrate Christmas, but if they had an objection to Labor Day or Arbor Day or July Fourth, or any other secular holiday, well, that’s a personal choice and not something I’d feel an organization needs to honor.</p>
<p>I’s almost 8 o’clock. The little kids (I mean demons) are home counting their candy (I mean souls). The older, more experienced demons are now showing up. H just went to the door. Those sly demons were polite and said thank-you. They will do anything to catch a soul. They might even show up w/o a 5 yr old dressed as a princess as a way in!</p>