So, I nailed 95 Reese's to the church door.
This post got me thinking about my own anti-Halloween fundielite youth. Sure, there's church "harvest festivals" and "trunk-or-treats," but for some churches that is still too worldly (or satanic?). My church went HARD for Reformation Day.
What is Reformation Day? The tl;dr is that October 31 was the day that Martin Luther (big protestant reformer guy) nailed 95 theses to the door of the Catholic Church about why selling indulgences (paying the church pray harder to get your family out of purgatory quicker) is bad. If this is factually wrong, please correct in the comments, but this is how it was pitched at my church. (My church also believed that Catholics were non-Christian polytheists because of the saints, for more context.)
So how does one celebrate Reformation Day? My church had an October 31st celebration that included:
- The entire church watched the Martin Luther biopic in the main sanctuary
- Biblical-themed game stations where kids could win candy. (Nothing that was gambling / risk based, because we believed in predestination and... promoting "luck" was a sin?)
- Kids' costumes had to be pre-approved to make sure there was nothing scary, demonic, mean, evil, etc.
- I'm pretty sure there was some hymn-singing involved.
This was still too "Halloween-y" for some people, and they would leave after the Martin Luther biopic part.
So now I'm curious: For those of you with fundie or fundielite background, what were your Halloween-alternative celebrations? If you also celebrated Reformation Day, what did you do? Please share your stories in the comments!
