Posted on 11/01/2003 12:12:30 PM PST by Willie Green
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:35:23 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The Puritans, and all other English colonists, didn't celebrate Christmas, as we do today either. The reason for that is very simple, our oresent day Christmas celebrations weren't in practice until after the Christmas of 1843 and Charles Dickens' publication of " THE C HRISTMAS CAROL "! Oliver Cromewell, had just about done away with every kind of Christmas celebration, when he took power and they were NEVER restored, in England, to their former " glory "; much of which was pretty wild, ribald, and pagan!
If you'de read more articles, books, etc., which offer more than just YOUR perspective, you just might not post such foolish posts here.
Oh, and FYI, the Druids NEVER believed that they were placating " tormented souls " of the dead. Samhain was one of their high holy days and commemorates the death of one of their gods ( as many of their Sabbats do, which,BTW, was an alligorical representation of the changing seasons ! )and also a time when there was a " crack " opened between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
What you don't know,about Halloween, would fill up untold reams of paper/space, and waste bandwidth. I suggest that you do further research, or just stop posting about things you know little about.
I'm Jewish and we did......and it was fun. As elementary school kids we'd dress up in various costumes and go trick-or-treating. As jr. high kids my friends and I were pranksters, although harmless. And in high school we'd go to Halloween parties, where the opposite sex was our primary concern.
It's unfortanate that this is all such an "issue" now. ......Too many folks way too uptight about too many things.
145-count Snickers large economy-style mixed bag of candy, minus FlyVet's 5-share that he slopped down before the doorbell started ringing = 140, ended up with 107. And now I'm slopping down more Starbursts. I had 40-some kids last year, and this is a young, mini-boom neighborhood.
Don't worry about spelling ... mine isn't all that good ( dyslexia ) and besides,I can tell what you mean. :-)
It's really only in the last 30 years or so, that Halloween has become such an overboard celebration in the USA. Halloween trees ? Sheeeeeeeeeeeeesh ! And a lot of peculiar stuff has been incorporated into it.
Were you Gardnerian, Fairyfey, Dianic, or just the local hodge-podge of California Wicca ?
Isn't "Witchcraft" titillating and fun, though? I see some cute people on here teasing each other with leading comments about it. Have fun, kiddies. You don't "choose" to be a "witch", and then get "trained" in it - it chooses you, and God help you if it does. I personally watched a professing, churchgoing Christian woman kill her own sister, my former lover, by witchcraft, without even knowing that that was what she was doing. (No, I will not discuss it). I'm sure you don't think that's possible, but trust me, you know nothing - *nothing* - and be thankful for that, and hope for your own sakes that you stay ignorant.
Those sentences sum up my childhood in a nutshell. I was growing up during the late 1960s and early 1970s and it was exactly like that. A typical summer vacation morning, I'd get up just after sunrise, grab a bowl of cold cereal and would be out the door before my mother could find me something to do around the house. Yes, if a kid hung around the house in those days, he was likely to have a broom shoved into his hands and put to work.
I'd hang out with my friends all day at the playground, the ballpark, the marshlands down the street or if it was particularly hot, we'd just sit in somebody's shaded backyard picnic table playing an all-day game of Risk or Monopoly with a portable transistor radio blaring out Top40 songs while mothers handed sandwiches and cold drinks out the window (so we wouldn't come inside and mess up the house with our dirty shoes). Finally the streetlights would come on and it would be time to go home where we would get a plate of cold chicken heated up for us and maybe get an hour or two in front of the TV to see the "Partridge Family" or "Brady Bunch" before heading off to bed, maybe even a Godzilla movie on one of those UHF stations - our only TV of the day.
I miss those carefree days. And kids of today never got to experience them. Instead, everyting, and I do mean everything, is heavily supervised. Parents not only drive their children to soccer or Little League practice (even if it is just down the street) but they insist on lugging their lawn chairs to every single minute of every single practice and/or game. Parents even go into the movie theatres to watch "kid" movies with their kids. My parents would never consider that - they'd give me a few dollars and I'd walk the 30 blocks with my friends (or maybe my little brother) to see "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" or whatever kid's movie was showing at the time. And if my mother did tag along, I'd feel...uncomfortable.
Is it any wonder that kids of today are still living with their parents into their 20s and 30s?
In this program, we showed up every day at the beach at 7:30 am for rounds of PT, swim races (in the surf), surf-mat and paddleboard races, distance runs, etc. - all inflicted by the real LA County lifeguards that ran the program. Fridays meant travel to another beach city for competitions in the above activities, as well as in "musical flags" (like musical chairs but with sprints through the sand to dive for segments of old garden hose). About once a year, the real lifeguards would pile us into their patrol boat (yes, it's called the "Bay Watch") get up to speed about a half mile off shore, and tell us to dive off the back and swim in. There were also trips to Catalina Island and elsewhere for snorkeling.
Never saw a parent anywhere near the program. Discipline was meted out with additional pushups and sit-ups, and for problem children - the real lifeguards would organize "sand crawls" (you got wet and then crawled through the sand while fellow JGs pelted you with more sand), "bulldozers" (you pushed sand with your head), or "spanking machines" (crawl through legs of 50 or so JGs each whack you as you go through).
It was a great program then - Don't know about its current state.
Why? Are you into Catholic-bashing as well?
It really is quite understandable why some go to extremes to misconstrue and misrepresent Catholic veneration of saints. Afterall, many were martyred for their faith rather than submit to the edicts and decrees of civil authority. Can't have role models who earned their reputations by defying the commands of kings and emporers, don't you know!
BTW, in keeping with longstanding tradition, the Church STILL severely frowns on beheading one's wife simply because she failed to produce a male heir. You can't do that, it's a sin.
But maybe your motivation for Catholic bashing arises from a different source. So go ahead, spit it out where we can all take a good look at it.
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