People are fine with being disrespectful to Christians

[Flymetothezoom]

At a church playgroup. The people who run it are very devout Christians. I am taken aback, by the number of parents, who thought it was appropriate to bring their kids to the church dressed for Halloween. Kids are dressed as witches, goblins, skeletons, creepy pumpkins etc..
The church holds a light party every year on Halloween and is very clear that they do not endorse Halloween.

Christianity has hijacked nearly every festival going, It's utterly hypocritical of any church group to have a problem with one they don't claim.

It's not rude but it is ignorant.

I would like to know where in the bible it says my two year old cant dress up as pumpkin.

Nice to see you encouraging people to Christianity with your open arms and mind, tolerance and comparing pre school children to gimp fetishists.

This is not the case. I know of at least 3 churches around here that are holding them and this is leafy, middle class suburban England!

One of the churches hosted the end of term disco for for DS2s school as they had a large hall. The head messaged parents to request that they were respectful of the venue and didn't send children. In Halloween costumes.

As an aside there are some real generalisations on this thread about the only evangelical Christians having an issue with Halloween etc. My parents, brother and several friends are all different flavours of Christian and none take part in Halloween.
It was pretty rubbish not being able to get dressed up etc as a child so I really go to town now with my kids! 😂

It’s disrespectful to assume all Christians are the Borg. I have no problem with Halloween, people dressing up or trick/treat. In another stunning disclosure I have no issue with Harry Potter, it’s a cracking read.

Seriously, people don’t do this with bad/evil intent , it’s a feel good day for kids and I can’t think of anything better in these times. Personally, I don’t think Jesus would object, and imagine he may have had a bit of fun with it.

Read part of the thread and had to run up to the only device I can log in on. Granted the lights at the start of winter (and thanks for the info about the Sanskrit source of the name Morrigan), and Christmas, openly nicked by Constantine who really followed Sol Invictus and had a covert agenda to destroy Christianity, nothing Celtic there) but you don't have Easter. NIcked, like everything else, but not from the pagans. All the other countries have names for it which derive from Hebrew Pesach, or Passover, because that is what it derived from. The English just nicked the name from a passing goddess (etymologically related to oestrogen, isn't she?). The Church for a very long time tried to obliterate the Jewish connection, as the festival could not be celebrated at the same time as Passover. And thats origin myth has nothing to do with spring in Celtic lands, but the end of slavery for a Semitic group in the Middle East. It's very explicit. And despite the "it has nothing to do with us" Christian angle pursued in the MIddle Ages, that explicitness carries over into Easter.
Meanwhile, when I were a lass in the Guides, we did apple bobbing, and trying to eat buns hanging on string from a washing line, and trying to peel apples in one go to find the initial of a sweetheart, and looking into a mirror to see the reflection of such a person. There was a rumour of telling ghost stories and passing round peeled grapes to represent eyeballs. In the dark. No witches. It was ghosts in them days. As, paganly, it should have been. We were attached to a church. Nobody took it seriously.
There used to be an American person on BBC message boards who did, and whose Texan church would have "Helloween" activites involving exposing children to people dressed as demons acting out what would happen to them if they did not reject the devil and accept Jesus. Light parties sound better. But not as much fun as apple bobbing.

I am aware of this

But I had never heard of a Light Party, had you?

Well it uses a very pagan method of calculating the date each year certainly! (The first Sunday after the full Moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox)

All the other Christian holidays are bolted onto earlier pagan festivals and have largely subsumed them but arguably the most significant of all is still based on an astronomical calendar.

It's nice to see the resurgence of celebrations for the old pagan festivals even if they are done in a secular manner ( as of course are most of the Christian ones now).

I imagine people level more criticism at Christianity in this country because it’s the dominant religion here, and the one that’s had the most palpable impact, for better or ill.

If the country was predominantly Muslim, or Hindu, then those would be the religions most commonly criticized.

I would in some ways agree with the title of your OP that I think people do show a lack of respect to Christianity compared with other religions. However - I don't think that the situation you have described in your OP is a case of this . The children are wearing dressing up clothes for a play group - there is no intention to offend .

@whumpthereitis 😂😂😂

I don't think they're necessarily being disrespectful to Christians... unless the dress code was made very obvious to parents beforehand and they decided to deliberately ignore it. Lots of people see Halloween as simply a bit of fun and are unaware of the controversy that exists in some (though not all) churches and denominations. I personally have never heard of the concept of a Light Party before and I would have no idea what that entails. There are genuine examples of anti-Christian sentiment in this country, but I don't think this is one of them.

I think church should have made it clear no Halloween fancy dress. Never heard of a light party. I’m sure most young parents won’t have thought and made the connection that some Christians don’t like Halloween.

I’d bet nobody has any idea op. Halloween is a mainstream thing these days - promoted in shops and in public. All it is is a reason for a kid to wear a costume and get sweets - big supermarkets have loads of both - it appears to be the done thing and I’d say parents feel they therefore ought to.

they aren’t really glorifying the darkness

Why can't the the Christians forgive them? Is it such an alien concept?

Sounds fun...

@Flymetothezoom I'm a bit confused. I've attended Halloween parties at Methodist and Unitarian churches as a child and adult. I thought it was a (probably syncretic!) church tradition about scaring off demons on All Hallows Eve. And I know Halloween is a much bigger things in the US, where church attendance is far more mainstream. I wouldn't deliberately disrespect someone's place of worship - I'd cover my head when visiting a mosque for example - but I think the church should make it known that they would not like Halloween costumes at a playgroup on Halloween.

Yeah, I probably wouldn’t take my kids to a church playgroup in halloween gear, i do think it’s a bit disrespectful. if I felt that strongly about doing something for halloween, I’d take them elsewhere, it just doesn’t really sit right with me. We didn’t do halloween at my C of E School when I was a kid so maybe it stems from there.

FFS Halloween isn’t an evil celebration so how is it disrespectful to Christians, stop being so dramatic over a celebration that’s been around long before it became commercial!

I didn't know that Christians have a problem with Halloween, (really, do they?) and I bet most other people don't either.
It's not unreasonable to expect children to dress up for Halloween on what is essentially - a Halloween party.
If the organizers had wanted something different, they should have made it very clear on the invitation.
To be honest, it's a bit 'holier than thou' to foist your ideas about dressing up onto others.

As an aside there are some real generalisations on this thread about the only evangelical Christians having an issue with Halloween etc. My parents, brother and several friends are all different flavours of Christian and none take part in Halloween.
It was pretty rubbish not being able to get dressed up etc as a child so I really go to town now with my kids! 😂

That's my experience of it though. I don't know anyone who is against Halloween and who holds Light
parties. Obviously they exist but it isn't a mainstream belief in my area. I don't know people who attend CoE churches though but perhaps it's more common there. It's a pretty extreme belief to me and I definitely associate it with American far right evangelical churches

Are you joking? I hope you are. Otherwise you need to get out more.

I used to take my kids to a "light party". But we used to call it a colour party where you had to dress in bright happy colours.

We loved it. Much better than looking at demons and witches and everything gross.