This is the chat thread. Proceed to talk.

[Ariel.of.Narnia]

The only thing I did about Halloween was eat the extra candy a coworker brought in today.

[hobbit_of_narnia]

@ Hans: You used to be a Lutheran? Which synod were you?

This is the second year I've gone trick-or-treating. Our family doesn't usually observe Halloween.

[Lucy Took]

I was a fairy for annual have to dress up in costume at the ice cream shop day. 'Tis a fun day.

It's finals at school right now. Got most of my stuff done.

[hansgeorg]

@ Hans: You used to be a Lutheran? Which synod were you?

I was Swedish state Church, but sympathiser with the Free Synod which is a Swedish counterpart to the Augustana Synod. Not immediately after baptism, at fifteen, but after about a year. However, I never came to go to their services.

I staid with the usual parish services until I decided to really get around to being Catholic.

During the time I sympathised with Free Synod, I also did so with some counterparts to Anglo-Catholicism. "Melenchthon was not so much a Protestant as a Reform Catholic, and if Rome gives on on this or that point, we might unite". Not sure it is true about Melanchthon, but this is what they said, and what I did not sympathise with was certain tawdry reservations against Rome, not due to Vatican II, but due to Catholic customs.

This is the second year I've gone trick-or-treating.

There are two versions I have heard about origin of this custom.

The one I posted on a status of Father Gabriele Amorth (one very famous exorcist) was that Catholic on Ireland used to go "souling" : young people who had fewer souls to pray for, or back when one could gain more than one plenary indulgence a day in this octave, would on the eve of its first day go around begging for buns, also beer or wine, in return for saying one prayer for the dead of the donor family per bun. So much for treat part, and I thought the background to "trick" was that Presbyterians who rejected this were under excommunication (if Catholics happened to stray the way to their house) and so had bad luck - which THEY thought was a Jesuit trick.

The OTHER story I heard is it has to do with Guy Fawkes Day. Catholics being originally victims of a racket on November 5th. Those refusing to give beer and buns would be victims of human tricks indeed. This I providentially read on Mark Shea's blog AFTER posting my status. That post ALSO specified that this was in Britain, and by the time it came to be associated with Halloween customs of Irish and French origins (Jack-O-Lantern and Masquerade) it had lost its anticatholic bias.

[elanorelle]

So, my first semester is over, officially! I don't have any set plans for the winter break, but I imagine I'll make myself busy with things I had to put off due to schoolwork. I still need to do my Christmas shopping, so there's that too. How about everyone else? How's your Christmas holiday looking?

[Ariel.of.Narnia]

Hurrah!! Congrats on that, Ela.
Well, I've got a week off work, so that's nice. Hope to meet up with a friend or two (or three, now that I think of it). Gonna go out with my mom for a day. Dad's side of the family's already got together, so now it's Mom's side's turn. Yeah. Oh, I guess I should probably try to do some work on the second job too.... And oh, goodness, I better hurry up with this fic!

[hansgeorg]

I somehow seem to get less and less holiday and less and less peace for writing fan fic of my homeless situation.

But I do not seem to have been getting out of it by my writing, some seem to have stopped that.

[anunknownpevensie]

Wow. What happened to "Chat thread"? What is the best thing that happened to you most recently?

[Ariel.of.Narnia]

@Pev: haha, yeah, about that.... Part of the problem is that a couple of the game threads have become chat threads, more or less. Let's try revive this one, shall we?
Best thing? Remembering that I have a lot to be thankful for and joyful about.

[elanorelle]

Recently? Making a friend and getting As in my (two) courses.