| Author | Message | ||
     Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.71 |
...which is why I post this link to encourage a united front against those who haven't the slightest spark of imagination... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220630/Church-claims-Halloween-trick-tr eaters-Devil.html?ITO=1490&referrer=yahoo Halloween is one of my favourite days of the year. Even more than my birthday, but that isn't saying much considering what birthdays become as one tiptoes like a giant with steel clogs towards the inevitable hole of our own making... Eh? Never mind. Just follow the link. | ||
| Steve Jensen (Stevej) Username: Stevej Registered: 07-2009 Posted From: 82.0.77.233 |
Good grief...and I suppose that people who celebrate Guy Fawkes Night are all terrorists. The article says: 'Celebrating Halloween means we are siding along with the Devil and all his works. I blame Frank and Steve.'  | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 93.96.181.75 |
They're just sad and pathetic. If they want to pray for me, I'll sacrifice a goat for them in return.  | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.106.220.83 |
Ah, cretinous religious types and The Daily Mail too! What's not to like? | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.80 |
Amen, my disciples. May those of forked tongue and cleft posteriors raise the demonic spirits in unholy matrimony in advancement of divine dark intervention. Steve - the Mail is often misquoting us. Why is it that, governor? | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.70 |
Apparently George Dubbya Bush - no really, he was President for two terms, hard as it is to believe - refused to give JK Rowling a Congressional Medal becuase the Potter books encouraged witchcraft. The supermarkets have their hallowe'en gear out now. It's fun to play with. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.201.80 |
Kevin Gildea said you'd never find someone falling asleep at the back of the church at a satanist mass, while everyone's up on the altar sucking the Devil's cock. That said, I don't care for the American "trick or treat" idea. Treats are lovely, but the trick part is usually just a license for anti-social types to overturn bins or torment someone else's pets with fireworks. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>.. but the trick part is usually just a license for anti-social types to overturn bins or torment someone else's pets with fireworks.<< At risk of being labelled a right miserable bastard (which I am, in fact!  ), I have to agree with you there Proto. Whilst the satanism rubbish in that church article is just that - rubbish, there is a tendency round here for the ASBO kids to think the haloween/bonfire night period is a licence to go round causing trouble. Here in Yorkshire they have "mischief night" on the 4th November too. I don't know the history behind that (maybe some of the real Yorkshire folk here could enlighten me?), but that's one night we tend not to leave the house empty for fear of getting a firework through the letterbox! In recent years, we've had eggs thrown at the windows and fence panels kicked in, so it's not a time of year I particularly enjoy.  | ||
| Steve Jensen (Stevej) Username: Stevej Registered: 07-2009 Posted From: 82.0.77.233 |
Steve - the Mail is often misquoting us. Why is it that, governor? The fiends! And they ignored the launch (by catapult) of my latest novel Socks of Satan! | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.68 |
When we were kids, Mischief Night was basically knocking on doors and running away (ok, after roping the door handle to a dustbin if some likely rope was about). We once found some tools and swapped some roadsigns around. But there was nothing vindictive in what we did. We were careful about our victims: no elderly or single women, etc. How things change. Now it's fireworks through your door (window if you're unlucky) and bb guns aimed at your car... | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.210.111 |
Yeah, harmless pranks are fine, good actually. Part of the trickster tradition. [To the English folks on the board] Do you find it odd that you guys burn a Catholic in effigy every year? If you saw that in a far away country, would you think it a sign or barbarism? Ir isn't, of course, but it's odd how the barbaric origins of such things become forgotten. Makes me wonder about judging other cultures from news footage of people burning flags in the streets. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.71 |
Proto - I've always thought the whole 'Guy Fawkes' tradition suspect. So much so, that at an early age I wrote a story about it. I wondered how I seemed to be alone in this way of thinking. I hated it so much that my mum would buy me a book on the night, every year, as a sort of substitute for her son not going out and 'celebrating' it. Not that I needed anything to convince me otherwise. In fact a large percentage of official bonfires are held on church owned land. They charge a fee, not at all nominal anymore, and provide food services as part of the 'festivities'. Rather barbaric considering the church's stance on paganism. But then, hardly surprising. Most ironic of all, most people in the UK have no idea that Fawkes was not behind the plot, but merely a foot-soldier given the task of detonating the explosives. Typical. So I understand your perspective. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Fwkes was hardly a mere foor soldier - as I understand it he was one of the main players (and put in charge of carrying out the task because of his military and explosives experience - hence his posthumus elevation to the "face" of the gunpowder plot). I think it's absurd that we continue this rather laughable tradition, and as far as I'm concerned both Halloween and Bonfire Night are just another excuse (if one were needed) for chavs to run amok and destroy stuff. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.187.123 |
Chavs may be spoiling these traditions nowadays (I don't know, living abroad as I do) but I remember back in the late '60s and early '70s, these were great times of the year. I always had a blast with my family and friends. It is what you make of it, I think, and idiots and louts do tend to spoil everything they come into contact with. Zed, what we need are your infamous gun-toting apes patrolling the streets on the nights of Oct. 31 and Nov. 5 - that would keep the chavs in line.  | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.212.40 |
Yeah, Hallowe'en has been hi-jacked by thugs with their own interests at heart. And I don't just mean Christianity. Ba-dum tish. Is this thing on? I once met a pagan who talked at length about how pagans were demonised by the church throughout history. Hmm, who was throwing whom (whom?) to lions in ancient Rome then, I thought? | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.187.123 |
Modern-day 'pagans' love to say this kind of thing, Proto, despite the fact that 'paganism' and 'wicca' as practiced today are a rather recent invention. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.77 |
Paganism/Christianity - for want of sounding lazy, it's all the same. The argument for one against the other, always falls at the first hurdle, that hurdle being common sense. Zed - yes, Fawkes was chosen for those reasons, but he was neither the organiser nor the instigator for the plot. I'm not demeaning his role in the event, merely highlighting that historical accuracy hardly seems to play any importance in the matter. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.251.159 |
Not only pagans were demonized by the Church - dissenting Christian sects, too numerous to mention, were as well. It's funny now to think how Christian notions taken so completely for granted - even by non-Christians - were pounded out over centuries of blood and toil. The snatching at gnats that Christians were capable of, would have appalled the Biblical Jesus (just Wikipedia the term filioque, and be amazed).... To me, all monotheistic religions fall to faith alone (i.e., there's no other objective evidence or reason) to answer the most basic of all questions about the very nature of religious-based reality: Why god, and not gods? The reverse, for the pagans, wouldn't have the same effect: the discovery of one God behind many gods, isn't Earth-shattering or religion-busting (many polytheistic religions believe in a form of one-behind-the-many). Paganism is by far the more logical decision to make. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.85 |
Craig - again, not wanting to be charged of laziness, I do not think their is any justifiable logic in any of them, paganism or otherwise. That doesn't mean I don't respect the right of the individual to have a faith, and believe in that faith. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.255.209 |
I'd agree, Frank. I'm just saying there's more logic in choosing many gods, than one, if faced with having to choose between the two. I've never understood the whole "watchmaker" theory, car found out in a field theory, etc. Why would ANYONE assume just ONE person made those things?! A watchmaker makes a watch from parts - so who made the parts? The same watchmaker? And nowadays, it's a whole company of people on an assembly-line making watches, let alone cars. The "Creationists" grasp at gnats too, finding evidence of "god" in the fields and rocks and streams.... Leaving aside all impossibility of discovering anything about the leaver of these footprints - as well as arguments over whether they are footprints or not at all, but given for the sake of argument that they are - why would one assume one "god" left ALL the footprints? | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.85 |
Craig - yes, but have you watched the sequel to DD? Fundamentally, this question may determine not just your fate, but the fate of all mankind. Be careful how you tread, dear boy. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.205.70 |
Paganism might be the best way, but only if you don't take any of it literally. The caprice of the gods is more comforting than the indifference of the universe. The gods as personality archetypes, myths healing tales of comfort and woe. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.205.70 |
Someone should send all those Guy Fawkes masks and cloaks out to every citizen, march on Westminster and change Britain forever. But then there's the postal strike... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.85 |
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| Matthew Fryer (Matthew_fryer) Username: Matthew_fryer Registered: 08-2009 Posted From: 90.202.180.16 |
At least the Daily Mail didn't blame asylum seekers for once. |