Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Deep question from a 5 year old

"Does Jesus want us to Trick or Treat?"
How do you answer that? My thoughts are bouncing from "why would He care?" "why would we even ask Him?" "Where did you get this idea from?" "what *would* Jesus do? Would He go trick or treating? I've never met any Jewish people who have ToT issues, so maybe he would. Would it fall under the 'rendering unto Ceaser' rule?"
Having thoroughly distracted myself in a matter of a second & sidetracked onto the Roman rule of Egypt before Cleopatra came to the throne and the SPQR mysteries, I fell back on the standard I-have-no-fucking-clue Mom answer.
"Well, what do you think honey?"
him: "I don't know."
me: "Do you want to go trick or treating?"
him: "yes"
me: "so we'll go trick or treating then"
Did I pass up a 'teaching moment' by doing that? A more on top of it mom would have used that question to discuss the history of trick or treating and why some people think they shouldn't do it and why that doesn't mean it's bad for others and then merge the whole thing into a little conversation about how we should all accept one another's differences and we're all still good people no matter how we see god.
I know this because I have been informed of this by several of these more on top of it moms, who told me that is exactly what they would have done. Me, I just brush the question aside & distract the kid with mental images of candy. The boy is going to be knocking on doors wanting to talk about people's 'relationship with Christ' by the time he is 14 if I don't get my witchy act together apparently, and I'll be too busy reading about the adventures of Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger and Marcus Didius Falco to notice.
I probably shouldn't have said that if he really believes he ought to be doing that, then it's ok with me if he does.
Bad witch! Bad mom! Bad bad witchy mom! :)

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