Well that is the sort of way we used to refer to Halloween during my Pentecostal Christian days. (Although growing up and gorging on candy, I felt like hurling demons.)In Memphis lots of the conservative family churches held "Harvest Parties" on Halloween for fear of giving the devil a foothold if the kids got too ghoulish. And I am sure some of you have heard of the Hell House craze blazing across the US scaring the snot out of kids in hopes of bringing them to Christ.
But my FAVORITE Halloween story comes from fellow ex-gay survivor, Christine Bakke as it appeared in Glamour Magazine.
She recalls the church group her parents joined in Oregon, where instead of Halloween celebrations they held an annual Hallelujah Party with kids dressing as their favorite Bible characters. (Even at 11 she had a nonconformist streak: “All the girls wanted to be Mary,” she says, laughing. “I went as a leper!”)I just e-mailed her to see if she had any of those torn and dirty rags to lend me this year.She replied,
we would be such an awesome halloween couple - you as lazarus me as a leper, both removing our rags....(photo from Kung Fu Mike)
perhaps we could do some kind of interpretive dance around this? ;)
Comments
With that experience, I don't feel like I missed out on the macabre parts of Halloween at all!
This year, I went as La Catrina - essentially, my grey plain dress, a "dancing skeletons" apron, my summer straw hat (huge brim, shallow crown) with a tourist lei wrapped around it, and enough grease paint to turn my face into a skull. After getting most of the greasepaint off, I used a mud mask to get the rest off... and my face still feels well moisturized today.
I'm occasionally tempted to ask some folks the question that Azrael (the angel of death) asks in a Turkish folk tale collected in The Book of Dede Korkut "Do you not know the Oneness of God? I do only His will."
Lovely!!
Love the pumpkin, too.
That's one reason my brother never joined the church, even when I tried so hard to get him into it. He didn't want to give up trick or treating!
This year I was Ursula from the Little Mermaid...I doubt she is acceptable at the church though.
It is so creepy and unfortunate how many churches respond to Halloween.
The pastor came out after the presentation and asked my husband "did you pray?" to which Jim responded that it was between him and god, and none of his business.
My youngest son, who was only six at the time, still talks about the people who think God is ok with lying--darn it, he just wanted some monsters and scary grape eyeballs in a bowl, and he got a church presentation. Seriously ticked him off. He also observed that maybe God wants people to have fun on motorcycles.
Sorry to ramble, but this kind of thing is so weird to me.
Oh, and I find "harvest parties" as an anti-pagan statement by churches the irony of irony-- what could be more pagan, really, than celebrating the harvest?