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I don't know if this is exactly a Lounge thread, but I'm too scared of GD. :scared:
Just now, I was out on the balcony of my apartment adding to my Hallowe'en decorations. I love Hallowe'en. It's my favorite holiday; I look forward to it the way that most people look forward to Christmas. I was stretching out some of that neat spider web stuff when I remembered something from being a fundie kid growing up in a fundie church and fundie school.
We were, of course, NEVER permitted to celebrate Hallowe'en. We couldn't even dress up as Bible characters and eat candy at church, the way that some churches handled it. It was the devil's holiday, and we were constantly warned in the weeks before it arrived that Satanists were out to find children to sacrifice. (This was during the Satanic Panic of the mid-to-late 80's.) Our black cat, Sam, was never allowed outside from about Labor Day through November 1. If this sounds like Jack Chick tract bullshit, it is. We were given those to hand out to the neighborhood kids who came by in their costumes having fun and expecting candy.
At one point, an orange tract that was, I think, put out by Willie George ministries, out of Tulsa, became very popular. It was a dire warning against making a pact with the demons of Hell by celebrating the devil's day.
Well, I was a good little fundie kid. I believed the bullshit as much as any child can be said to "believe" anything. I started questioning at 11 or 12 and rejected it all entirely by 14. So, when the neighbors started decorating their houses, and the preacher suggested we pass this tract out to neighbors, I did. I marched down the street and gave it to a girl who was 14 or 15 years old, who was decorating her house. She was the oldest in a family of six kids -- a family I was jealous of. They were a close, loving family who did things together constantly and really seemed to love each other. They were what my mother called "good heathens," meaning that they weren't Christians, but she wasn't terribly worried that they would corrupt me. It wasn't as if they were black, Jewish, or Catholic, after all. :eyes:
Anyway, I gave her the tract and went home all proud of myself for being a good little warrior for Jesus.
A few hours later, her parents called my mother freaking. Their daughter was hysterical when they got home, insisting she didn't want to go to hell and was never going to have anything to do with Hallowe'en again! She had destroyed the decorations on both the outside and inside of the house.
They were livid. They had spent $100 on Hallowe'en stuff for their kids, and the oldest had earned the right to decorate the outside of the house by having the best idea for how to do it. This was a major family project, now ruined.
At the time, I was proud of myself. (I was 8 or 9 and 100% brainwashed.)
Today, I feel really guilty about that. I'm not sure if that incident is part of why I love Hallowe'en so much as an adult -- the fact that, as a child, I wasn't allowed to enjoy it AND part of my childhood brainwashing was taking the fun away from other kids, too -- but now, a good 15 years past rejecting the bullshit of fundamentalism, I absolutely adore Hallowe'en. I give the best candy of anybody in my complex, and every child within five miles knows it. :D
I don't know why I felt like sharing that story. Thanks to anyone who listened for long enough to get this far. There are few people in Red State Hell who I can talk to about this stuff.
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