To go to church toddler group in devil horns tomorrow?

[MrsMotherHen]

Its our toddler and baby group tomorrow and my DS2 doesnt and didnt want a outfit but does like a handband the glow in the dark types. So i just picked him up some devil horns.

Our play group is at a church hall. The priests wife helps to run it and he then comes and does song time with the guitair.

AIBU for him to wear the devil horns tomorrow? he is so looking forward to it.

Honestly Christianity is such a stealer of things, festivals and Gods.

The Horned God was a pagan god, a nice guy who represented nice things and who actually died on Halloween. And now he’s been turned into the devil by the invader religion and can’t even be depicted on his own day!

It’s a bit like an evil stepmother forbidding all mention of the original wife she replaced. I’m sure there was a thread about that somewhere.

Anyway sorry, I’m sure the priest doesn’t know that. And I’m sure if he’s a nice priest he won’t begrudge a kid wearing a silly meaningless costume.

It’s more a false perception of what is bad taste. By that I mean, the devil is something to fear beyond all else and very prominent in the Christian teachings. It is not something to be mocked. However, this is 2017. Although technically it could offend some christian’s it’s very unlikely to.

Why does DS even need to dress up? It wouldn't hurt him to not wear it (or any costume) for a few hours?

My son goes to an RC primary school they had a spooky disco before Half term he got a prize for dressing up as zombie Dr covered in blood and my very religious led by nuns RC convent primary school always celebrated halloween too.

Pengggwn
I am aware of the origins of Hallowe’en. This isn’t the only pagan festival appropriated by Christians. I think the most noticeable one would be Christmas.

It's not a church service it's just a playgroup that is on church property. I'm a Christian and I would have no issue at all with this.

Halloween is traditionally a celebration. Remembering past loved ones, saints etc.
People visited the graves of their loved ones and the church celebrated it.
It’s only recent that it’s turned into gore fest , Americanised .
Let him go in his tshirt and horns. He’s a child.

Now if this thread was about bonfire night party at a Catholic Church and my son wanted to go dressed as guy fawkes......

to some extent it now appears to have outlasted Catholicism and for the cycle of appropriation and repackaging to have begun again, as Christian worship has declined.

That would be the ultimate irony. And make far more sense to worship one’s own history of god’s rather that a religion from thousands of miles away.

Christianity is dwindling and I don’t think the priest would see getting all her up about it as a good PR exercise for his religion.

Let your kid wear his horns if that’s what he wants. And report back as to whether anyone fainted or not.

A small child with horns would probably look cute. If he was running around in a scary zombie outfit waving chewed body parts and blood dripping out if his mouth they might complain.

The real answer to your question is how you'd repond to @EmmaGrundyForPM 's question:

Calling Christians nutters or over reacters or launching into a history of paganism if someone questions the appropriateness of wearing something that could be taken as disrespectful or potentially deliberately offend is not OK.

Is this an actual Halloween party, a "light party' or just some people have decided to dress up?

YABVVVVU

I actually think it's different to the mosque question entirely - because bacon is something Muslims don't eat- none of them. It's very clear.
Plenty of Christians, particularly catholic ones of irish and Scottish decent do take part in Halloween and have done for a long time. The recent angst about it seems to be more happy clappy churches seeing it as celebrating the devil rather than poking fun.
My catholic church would have a good giggle and the school host an brilliant Halloween disco before vigil. The more modern evangelical CofE church hold a light party and distribute tips about how to respond to children celebrating evil

The type of Christians who object believe Satan buried the dinosaur bones and the great flood created the Grand Canyon.

What? Really, what on earth are you on about? Most of the evangelical Christians that I know are scientists not slack-jawed idiots.

The type of Christians who object are the ones who take baptism vows seriously, including:

‘Do you reject the devil and all rebellion against God?’

OP if it is a nice toddler group I’m sure nothing would be said directly to you. But you know you’re being wilfully ignorant about someone else’s faith.

I worked for the church and met only a very few people who would have had a problem with this (clergy not included at all!).

It tended to be those with a renewed vigour for the religion who take every word of the bible as literally The Word of God. They seem determined to find religious relevance in every chuffing thing as if they had a hotline to the big wo/man themselves and had a greater insight into the religion than say, the bishop. Always complaining, most often self educated in bible studies. You had to admire their dedication though..

The type of Christians who object believe Satan buried the dinosaur bones and the great flood created the Grand Canyon.

I know no Christians that think this and I know many Christians.

What? Really, what on earth are you on about? Most of the evangelical Christians that I know are scientists not slack-jawed idiots.

I agree. I know Christians that do all kinds of jobs from psychiatric consultants to professors to police officers. I loathe this judgmental ‘idiots who believe in sky fairies nonsense’. Judgemental and narrow-minded (the very things they often accuse Christians of being funnily enough).

I said every word. Adam, Eve, serpent, miracles... the whole lot.

Really? I'm not even a christian but that would irk me as being plain disrespectful. I wouldn't really expect a church to be celebrating Halloween anyway, leave it to us pagans