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bible stories and holidays

Started by April, November 09, 2009, 07:18:32 AM

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April

Does your kids know the Bible stories?  My really doesn't :blush:.  Today he asked me how Easter started.  I asked him how he thinks it started.  He said, "well, I think that people thought that there are not enough holidays with candy.  They made up a new one where a bunny brings candy".  DH agreed and said that he was right Easter is all about candy.  I then told him that some people believe that Easter is the day when Jesus rose from the dead.  Others believe that that never happens.  Mostly Easter is just another holiday where the family gets together and eats.  

Bible references come up quite a bit it seems.  A couple of years we were delivering food to a food pantry at an organization called Noah's Ark.  On the wall was a mural of the ark with the animals.  The kids (we were with the scouts) were shown the mural.  The lady showing it asked the boys to tell her about it.  Issac actually asked who it was (oops).  All of the other kids were able to tell her the whole story.  This is just an example.  I need to find those (yes, there has been several) picture Bibles that my mom has given the kids and let them learn about the stories.  I am wanting them to learn the stories as stories.

TheOGMamaBear

For us, we aren't into holidays much.

Kyle (husband) gets teased at work because we didn't have a christmas tree.

We celebrate them in a sense...meet with family, exchange small gifts but we don't believe in the background so we don't celebrate a ton.

That being said our child is only 2 (almost) and our other is still in the womb.

I'm not sure what we will do. I guess we don't celebrate a lot of it also because of the consumerism attached. Christmas is frustrating because of the money and gifts and "things"....we aren't big on that kind of thing. And I think the real issue for us is not teaching our childre nto be addicted to "stuff" through holidays.



I don't know what we will do once they are older...
"The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it."

Don't we all love Mark Twain?

lesondemavie

I'm not yet a parent, but I often wonder what I will do about the holidays when I become one.

I teach at schools in Southern California, and one day this little 5 yo girl came up to me on the playground crying.  It turns out that her parents, atheists, taught her that santa isn't real and they don't celebrate xmas, but they forgot to teach her that other families do and that he at least in some sense is going to be 'real' to her friends.  She told her friends that santa wasn't real and they all got really mad and started making fun of her and yelling at her.  I helped them resolve the issue so they could go back to being 5 and being friends without (hopefully) interfering too much with what each family has decided to teach, but it wasn't easy.  Ever since then, I just keep thinking that's going to be my little girl - crying on the playground because her parents do things differently than most of their neighbors.

I don't think I'm really going to be able to completely avoid the holidays - I do cherish the time I get to spend with  my family and that we take the time to stay together for a couple days playing games and eating and sharing before we go back to our own cities and busy lives.  I don't want to keep my son or daughter from that and being there will mean that my dad will read stories from the bible like he does every year and that they'll want to do santa and the xmas elf and all of our little traditions that I enjoyed as a kid.  I guess I'll just have to try and figure out the best way to explain all sides without making it too confusing or expecting them to grow up too fast.

I do agree though, just as I think that parents should let their children be taught about all kinds of families in schools, I want my kids to learn about all kinds of beliefs that families have (stories and books sound like a good idea to me) because it's out there and very prevalent and they will need tools to navigate it well.

Puddinhead

I used to be terrified to teach my kids bible stories because I didn't want them remotely thinking they were true.  But then, I knew they wouldn't get a lot of cultural references - Eve and the fruit, tower of Babel, etc...  So I told them (this is embarrassing because in retrospect, it just sounds silly)...  I told them bible stories, but replaced the character "god" with "Wonko the Space Hamster."   They knew it was fiction, for sure, and many times they'd ask about original sin or something with a "Is this a Wonko thing?"

Looking back, I didn't need the "Wonko" step.  Kids get fiction.  They understood that Hercules wasn't a real person, but can appreciate the mythology all the same.

TheOGMamaBear

Quote from: "Puddinhead"I used to be terrified to teach my kids bible stories because I didn't want them remotely thinking they were true.  But then, I knew they wouldn't get a lot of cultural references - Eve and the fruit, tower of Babel, etc...  So I told them (this is embarrassing because in retrospect, it just sounds silly)...  I told them bible stories, but replaced the character "god" with "Wonko the Space Hamster."   They knew it was fiction, for sure, and many times they'd ask about original sin or something with a "Is this a Wonko thing?"

Looking back, I didn't need the "Wonko" step.  Kids get fiction.  They understood that Hercules wasn't a real person, but can appreciate the mythology all the same.
Very smart!
"The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it."

Don't we all love Mark Twain?

pinkocommie

My parents are about as atheist as they come and I always celebrated the holidays.  Like, crazily.  My parents were the kind of people where on Christmas we had half the living room full of gifts, the inside and outside of the house decorated, my mom even collected nativity scenes because the appreciated them as art.  The same thing for Easter, man, we always had a HUGE basket and would spend literally hours looking for all the eggs they hid in the yard and in the house.  I remember getting older and asking why we even celebrate religiously based holidays and my dad said something that I thought was really smart -

The Christians stole these holidays from the Pagans and made them into religious holidays pertaining to their beliefs.  Pagans celebrated these holidays because of their belief in the importance of the solstice and other sun/moon related occurances.  We celebrate because it's fun every once in a while to party for essentially no reason and partying with other people is even more fun.  So yeah, maybe they're celebrating because of zombie Jesus, but we're celebrating because it's fun.  The motivations of people are hardly ever the same, but that doesn't mean their fun and your fun can't be shared.

So yeah, I celebrate the eff out of holidays with my son the same way my parents celebrated with me, because I think it's fun.  It's fun to pretend when you're a kid, so the Santa Clause thing never bothered me.  My son is 6 and he already told me he 'figured it out' when it comes to Santa.  I asked him what he meant and he told me Santa was like the idea of Christmas made into a person so little kids can understand it better.  I can also understand not celebrating holidays because you don't think of that kind of celebration as fun, but I can't understand refusing to celebrate a holiday only because someone else thinks of the holiday as religious.  Who cares?

As for bible stories, I've never really considered going out of my way to share those stories with my son.  Honestly, I'm not even familiar with many stories myself beyond Noah's Ark and old Charlton Heston movies.  Maybe he and I could learn together.  :)
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
http://alliedatheistalliance.blogspot.com/

TheOGMamaBear

Quote from: "pinkocommie"My parents are about as atheist as they come and I always celebrated the holidays.  Like, crazily.  My parents were the kind of people where on Christmas we had half the living room full of gifts, the inside and outside of the house decorated, my mom even collected nativity scenes because the appreciated them as art.  The same thing for Easter, man, we always had a HUGE basket and would spend literally hours looking for all the eggs they hid in the yard and in the house.  I remember getting older and asking why we even celebrate religiously based holidays and my dad said something that I thought was really smart -

The Christians stole these holidays from the Pagans and made them into religious holidays pertaining to their beliefs.  Pagans celebrated these holidays because of their belief in the importance of the solstice and other sun/moon related occurances.  We celebrate because it's fun every once in a while to party for essentially no reason and partying with other people is even more fun.  So yeah, maybe they're celebrating because of zombie Jesus, but we're celebrating because it's fun.  The motivations of people are hardly ever the same, but that doesn't mean their fun and your fun can't be shared.

So yeah, I celebrate the eff out of holidays with my son the same way my parents celebrated with me, because I think it's fun.  It's fun to pretend when you're a kid, so the Santa Clause thing never bothered me.  My son is 6 and he already told me he 'figured it out' when it comes to Santa.  I asked him what he meant and he told me Santa was like the idea of Christmas made into a person so little kids can understand it better.  I can also understand not celebrating holidays because you don't think of that kind of celebration as fun, but I can't understand refusing to celebrate a holiday only because someone else thinks of the holiday as religious.  Who cares?

As for bible stories, I've never really considered going out of my way to share those stories with my son.  Honestly, I'm not even familiar with many stories myself beyond Noah's Ark and old Charlton Heston movies.  Maybe he and I could learn together.  :)


That was well put, and fun!
"The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it."

Don't we all love Mark Twain?

notself

It is odd how many of the bible tales do not carry a moral.  The flood ends with a rainbow and a promise, but there isn't any lesson on how to lead a good life. Unless you consider "obey or drown" a moral.  You can dilute Christian influence and teach history and culture by reading these stories.

Aesop's Tales are excellent stories and form a large part of our oral and written culture.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=a ... q=Aesops+#

Jakata Tales from India are fun as well.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?sou ... B0QqwQwAw#

pinkocommie

Quote from: "notself"It is odd how many of the bible tales do not carry a moral.  The flood ends with a rainbow and a promise, but there isn't any lesson on how to lead a good life. Unless you consider "obey or drown" a moral.  You can dilute Christian influence and teach history and culture by reading these stories.

Aesop's Tales are excellent stories and form a large part of our oral and written culture.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=a ... q=Aesops+#

Jakata Tales from India are fun as well.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?sou ... B0QqwQwAw#

Haha, it's funny you mention this, because last night I was talking to my fiance about this post and bible stories and I started trying to remember everything I knew about the flood story and realized halfway through that the story teaches nothing beyond 'obey god' which I have little use for.  I can still understand wanting to expose a child to the culture of the bible, but I don't think there's anything in the bible morality wise that can't be found in other places.   I have a book of Aesop's fables and we read and talk about those quite a bit.  Thanks for the link to the Jakata Tales, I've never heard of them before!
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
http://alliedatheistalliance.blogspot.com/

notself

I typed it incorrectly.  The word is jataka tales.  You may be able to find some books on Amazon.

elliebean

In my view, biblical stories are good for two things:

1) Historical/Cultural Reference. As in, "people used to believe this stuff (and amazingly some still do) and a lot of our literature alludes to it so, in the interest of understanding those references and not appearing undereducated, it's best to have a basic knowledge of what the most common stories are about."

2) Debate Ammunition - for when you have to actually talk to someone who still believes in the literal truth of these stories, so that they can't pull one over on you by basing their arguments on passages that are nowhere to be found in any bible. Of course you can always require them to show you chapter and verse, which some are all too happy to do (albeit usually not using the exact passages that were requested). More often than not you can count never hearing back from them on that particular question, though.

Either way there's no hurry for children to learn them. There will be plenty of time for that when they're in college, if they're the type of person who will ever encounter either of the above scenarios.
[size=150]â€"Ellie [/size]
You can’t lie to yourself. If you do you’ve only fooled a deluded person and where’s the victory in that?â€"Ricky Gervais

elliebean

Holidays:

Fun! Why the hell not? :animeyay:
[size=150]â€"Ellie [/size]
You can’t lie to yourself. If you do you’ve only fooled a deluded person and where’s the victory in that?â€"Ricky Gervais

notself

Here is a bible story for the children that will help them understand the Abrahamic god.

Once there was this perfect being that, for some mysterious reason, ceased to be perfect and became lonely.  The being, we’ll call it god, could do anything except cure its own loneliness, so god decided to create.  Now god could have created beings as powerful as himself, but it seems that this god was not only lonely, but was also insecure and couldn’t tolerate the companionship of equals. (The male form of the personal pronoun will be used because this story is based on a religious text that uses it.) Therefore, god created a garden and two beings called humans along with wonderful animals who could talk. The humans and animals were friends and all of them only ate fruit. The god walked with them every day and the humans loved and trusted this god.

The god was no longer lonely, but now the god found that he was bored so he decided to play a trick on the humans.  The god planted a tree with lovely fruit in the middle of the garden.  The god then told the humans that the tree was the tree of knowledge of good and evil and they should not eat the fruit from this tree or they would die.  The god then left the humans.  

What the god had said about good and evil and death did not make sense to the human. They had never seen death and did not know what death meant.  They had no knowledge of good or evil so they did not understand what those terms meant.  They obeyed the god anyway because they liked him.

Well, this obedience did not sit well with the god.  He decided he needed help in encouraging the humans to disobey him. He created a snake and put the snake in the garden.  This snake could walk and talked like all the other animals.  The snake’s job was to convince the humans to eat the fruit.  The snake did just that by telling the humans that eating the fruit would give them knowledge and they would be like god.  The humans really liked god and were convinced by the snake that the humans had misunderstood the instructions and that it would be a good thing to be like god.  God was nowhere to be found in the garden, so the humans couldn’t check.  The idea seemed like a good one and they went ahead and ate the fruit.

Bang! The humans had barely finished swallowing the first bites when god appeared and was incredibly angry with them for eating the fruit. (He was really laughing his ass off but did a good job of hiding it from the humans.)  He cursed the humans saying that they would be kicked out of the garden, would experience pain and disease and death.  He made all the animals experience pain and death as well even though the animals hadn’t done a damn thing.  He then cursed all the children of the humans and animals for all time with pain, disease, and death.

Suffering began in the world and god was very happy and no longer bored or lonely.

Oh yes, from then on, the snake had to crawl on its belly.

JackieB

This is a topic that I was hoping to find on this forum...

I have 2 sons, they are 7 and 5.  They both think(for whatever reason)  that god created the world and that their grandma(my mother-in-law) is in heaven.  I never told them either of these things and yet they know all about them.  Probably from my parents or my father-in-law.  We celebrate Christmas and Easter just the same as a Christian family would, except without the religious stuff.  They just think that Christmas is a day to get a bunch of stuff.  They have never been to church and do not know any bible stories, they don't know about religion at all.  They just think that god is there because someone told them that he is.

The problem that I am having is, when or how should I tell them that there probably is no god, grandma is not in heaven, and what the real meaning behind Christmas and Easter is.  They are both very, very smart boys, and they both have a desire to learn(just like daddy).  I just don't know what to say when they ask questions about god.


Wow, look at me go.  Sorry, wordy post.


"If that chick don't wanna know, forget her."


    "You know a lot of people go to college for seven years."
    "I know, they're called doctors."
    [/i]

elliebean

I don't have any children, but I used to be one.  :P

If it were me and I did have them, I think I'd treat it like it's not that important (after all, it's not; it's just that most people think it is). If it came up, I'd just be nonchalant about it, like, "Meh. Some people still think that stuff is real." or whatever and leave it at that. I think the impression that would create would be a lot stronger than anything you could say to explain it to them. Of course I'd answer any direct questions directly, in as detailed a way as they can understand, but that's just honesty. Kids appreciate honestly. I just wouldn't act like it's a big deal  because that sends the message that it is a big deal to you, even if you don't believe in it.
[size=150]â€"Ellie [/size]
You can’t lie to yourself. If you do you’ve only fooled a deluded person and where’s the victory in that?â€"Ricky Gervais