Sugar Rush

Last night was our trick or treat. Most of the families on the road don't celebrate Halloween at all, so we went into town for our candy. The boys did not go, due to massive attitude problems most of the day. They are currently begging Mary for some of her candy.

"What?" you ask, "A Christian home-schooler that does Halloween? Impossible." Yep. We are, as I often say, freaks. Even among the freaks, we are freaks. Let me share my All Hallows' journey:

When I was little my parents were average secular Joes, and we, of course, did Halloween. I became a Christian well before my mother, and never had a problem with it, although I had a few friends who did not partake. Then, when I was a teenager, my mom got saved. She had been into everything from crystals (largely harmless) to divination (potentially harmful), so she hit Halloween hard. No decorations, and she did give out candy, but it was complete with Jack Chick tract.

It was a fundamentalist church, and they used to have an All Saint's party, where you could dress up as your favorite Bible character, but too many parents were sending their kids as Satan (likely because it's a commercially available costume, but still in extremely poor taste) and they stopped doing it. So, my brother had to beg to be let to go out. Generally, he was, since Mom knew he didn't share her convictions, but it was still after a long lecture about it and days of asking.

Mom was leaving her pagan past in the dust. For her it was a good choice, because it was a temptation to go back to her old ways. So, I have no problem with those who turn off their porch lights and go out to dinner, or whatever. For some it is the choice between sin and sanctity.

However, that said, for the vast majority of Christians, Halloween is not a sin/sanctity choice. It is an opportunity to engage the culture. I remember one Halloween as a teen when I went to a friend's costume party and they had a Ouija board. I convinced them not to play with it, but if I hadn't been there, they might have contacted who knows whom.

Every Christian holiday incorporates pagan aspects, or is held on a pagan date. Christmas is the date of the Saturnalia. The Christmas tree is a Germanic Pagan symbol of eternal life. The word Easter is an Anglicization of a Germanization of a Middle Eastern godess, Asteroth. She's the one Gideon was told to tear down the poles of, which verse is often used to decry the use of Christmas tree, oddly enough.

We take the bits of truth from the pagans and use them in service to the Truth, Way, and Life. Halloween is no different. Halloween is a contraction of the term "All Hallow's (Saint's) Eve." The day before All Saint's Day. The Pagan name for the day is Samhain (pronounced Sa-wain), and it is the Pagan New Year's. They believe the veil between the living and the dead to be thinnest on this day. So, the early Christians took the day and redeemed it for a Godly purpose. Instead of trying to contact lost loved ones via divination or necromancy, we celebrate their lives and speak with them through God. The truth the Pagans know is that there is an afterlife, and that we should celebrate it. The fullness of that truth is that Jesus prepares a place for us in His mansions, if we accept it.

Paul exhorts us to not do anything we believe to be sin, and not to cause a brother to stumble, so fighting about Halloween is very unseemly. However, he also says we can eat food offered to idols, because we know the idols have no power over us. Halloween has no power over us, so eating a little candy offered to idols is not sin.

This year, many of the candy giver-outers were amazed at the size of my 9 year old's candy bucket. It was, in their opinion, too small. When I further told them that we go home when it's full, they couldn't believe it. And here is the true danger of Halloween for the average Christian, the sin of gluttony. When we teach our littles to go out and get as much as possible, rushing around to get to every house, we are not teaching them moderation. When we let them eat all their candy over the next day or so we are not teaching them self-control.

Done properly, Halloween is an excellent time to teach our children thankfulness, moderation, self-control, and generosity. It is a chance to meet our neighbors, to forge relationships that might eventually lead to their salvation and/or our edification. I would advocate Christian parents going with their children as they trick or treat, whatever their age, just so we can teach those lessons. Walking around with your glow stick, a literal light in the darkness, is there anything *more* Christian than that?

Apple Picking (or the lost art of creating)

Yesterday Mary and I went apple picking. We picked 1/2 bushel that I am getting ready to turn into jelly and apple butter. I was shocked by the number of people who paid for 1/2 peck bags for each person in their family and then only filled each half way.

I can remember going apple picking with my mother. It was a big day that we looked forward to all September. We'd go to the orchard and pick 2 bushels. It would take us most of a Saturday. Then over the next week I would help mom create all the wonderful pies, dumplings, apple butter, apple sauce and so on. It felt so good to know that the food going to my table was mine. I had seen those apples go from tree to finished product. I had pride in our food, because I had worked so hard on it. It reminds me of a commercial I used to see on Nick at Nite. "It's Shake and Bake and I helped!"

That's something I want to pass on to my children, their connection to the things in our life. I want them to be intimately involved in the process of creating. I want them to have that pride of a job well done. I want them to understand the work that goes into making something, and the spiritual nourishment that is derived from the creative process.

Mary and I were talking about how man is created in God's image the other day. One of the ways we are like God is in our capacity for reason. We are more than the sum of our chemical processes. But, another and equally important aspect of the Divine in our nature is the desire to create. To look at something we have made and say, "It is good."

I hadn't put all this together until I started listening to those half-bag families. They were there not to create, but simply to get in touch with Creation. For them, the $7 a person they were spending was worth it just for that. So many of the children didn't know where apples came from until that day. And one of the moms came up to me and said, "Wow, you must have something special in mind with all those apples." I told her what I was going to do with them and she was amazed.

I couldn't help thinking how few apples I was bringing home than in those by-gone days with Mom.

Remember the Pope's anti-Muslim speech?

Last week, Pope Benedict XVI made a speech in Germany, and quoted a Byzantine emporer who thought Muslims were violent and needed to be opposed (this was at a time when Constantinople was under direct threat of invasion). Now, some Muslims were so outraged that the Pope would characterize Islam as a violent religion that they burned him in effigy and destroyed three churches. Right.

Anyway, turns out that the entire point of the speech has almost nothing to with Islam, and everything to do with Christianity (what a surprise, not). The money quote: "Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats..."

He goes on to detail the history of the de-Hellenization of the Christian faith, and to call for a re-Hellenization. It is a call for a return to reason among Christians, and I agree whole-heartedly. It could even be read (and I, of course, do) as a call for a return to a truly Classical education for Christians.

I encourage all Christians considering the place for the Classics in their curriculum to read this speech in its entirety. Pope Benedict makes an excellent argument in favor of the study of the Greeks.

EWTN Strikes Again

Thanks to the commenters to my post below about Catholic Apologetics. Upon following one of the links I ended up at the EWTN website. They have a helpful FAQ, with actual logical reasoning no less, and an option to ask a question if you didn't get the answer you were looking for. Bless the woman who started EWTN, as it is just about the most helpful and interesting Catholic resource out there. I prefer a lot of their programing to the crap my fellow Protestants put out.

Also, it looks like I'm going to have to break down and buy a copy of the Catechism. I have a copy of Science and Health, the Bahvad Gita, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, a couple of old Watchtowers laying around, and a whole pile of other such things, but not a copy of a book that I substantially agree with. Well, I guess I am going to finally break down and remedy that oversight.

And, in case any of you out there are wondering just what I do believe, I grew up in a strict fundamentalist Baptist church, am currently nominally a United Methodist, but if I could find a socially and Scripturally conservative Episcopal church, I'd join in a heartbeat. So, we attend the church my father in law pastors (UMC) about once a month, and home church with the old Anglican Book of Common Prayer (Rite I) the rest of the time. We'd attend fil's church more often, as he basically runs it as if it were Anglican, but their worship services grate on our nerves. I'm sorry, but How Great Thou Art was never designed to have a back-beat.

My main issues with Roman Catholicism are three-fold. Firstly, I have a hard time with about half of the Marian dogma. Second is the ridgid stance on Apostolic Succession and its accompanying doctrines (ie., binding and loosing, the Sacrament of Penance, etc.). Last and most important, my husband has no intention of converting. If he were to convert, I would make a good faith effort to follow his lead.

I'm not looking to be convinced that all Catholic dogma is true (if that happens by the Will of God, so be it), but rather that a reasonable person could believe it. I'm also looking for the chain of events in the development of doctrine and ritual, what did it look like in the past, how is that different from today, and why the change occured. I'm also looking for points of agreement between our family's doctrinal stances and that of Catholicism. I've found a few that I didn't know about, which is a very good thing.

Catholic apologetics?

My brother and sister-in-law are in the process of joining the Catholic Church. Yay for them, seeing as they were alternately Buddhist, Agnostic, and Atheist. However, Catholic wouldn’t have been my first choice. I have been doing some heavy-duty research into Catholic doctrine, as I think a family should be as ecumenical as possible, and I want to really understand what they believe. So, I’ve been perusing various Magisterium-approved websites on Catholic apologetics, and been on a steady diet of books provided by my sil.

So far, all I can say is that the quality of the defenses of doctrine that I’ve seen so far leaves much to be desired. Even on the points where I agree with the topic at hand I find that the “proofs” provided are sloppy and full of holes. Now, it could be just that the authors are going for brevity and don’t want to loose their audience (the dumbing down that plagues all the corners of Christendom), but I expected more. I mean, this is the same Church that nurtured Chesterton and Aquinas, right?

Which leads me to the conclusion that I am going to have to break down and read them. I have always intended to, but don’t really have time to slog through a translation right now and I don’t have the Latin skills yet to comprehend the original. I guess I will have to start with Chesterton, but I’m not even sure if he ever wrote anything approaching a definitive apologetic. I also could call a priest and just ask him my questions, but I feel like I’d be taking up way too much of his time, since I have no intention of converting. What’s a girl to do? Maybe I can find a priest we could “bribe” with food and have come over some time. At least if I feed him I won’t feel like I’m bothering him. Hmmmm…. Decisions, descisions. Any Catholics out there with suggestions? What would the protocol be for approaching a priest with a pile of what-ifs? Is there a good meaty modern apologetic?