My unanswered response

Fall as it ever is in my mind

As many regular guests to my blog know, we are a family of seasonal traditions.  And no season gobbles up more time and effort tradition-wise than that greatest of all seasons: Fall.  This year, with a host of changes and obligations and time constraints, we'll again have to broaden what, when and where we do things.

In the olden days, the rules were binding: We didn't begin 'Fall things' until after the Autumnal Equinox.  That is, no cider, caramel apples, bonfires, hayrides or fall decorations.  Then came October, when we quickly turned to the spooky side of life, with ghost runs in cemeteries, Halloween specials, horror movies (kid appropriate) and all the fun that went with that time of year.  In those days Fall and Halloween largely overlapped. 

Eventually we had to spread things out.  As the boys got older and filled up more space on their calendars, time became limited.  So we expanded to all things Fall by early September, right after Labor Day.  For a while we began with some 'generic' horror mystery type reading or viewing even in August - The Invisible Man, The Hound of the Baskervilles.  But our second oldest requested we hold off until after his August birthday.  So it was back to post-Labor Day for fall.

We still kept Halloween proper until October.  Nonetheless, as the years went on, we found a loophole and decided to designate the time after Michaelmas as the time we turn towards that season of spooks.  We still try to decorate only shortly before Halloween since I believe too early and the decorations lose their umph. 

This year we have to expand again.  Our second oldest granted us a dispensation by saying we can have our annual Harvest Fest before his birthday this year.  Heck, we can even watch a few things like Fantasia, that we've sometimes used as sort of kick-off viewing.  

Our youngest is old enough that we'll likely set aside some of the things we've continued to do for his sake.  Plus with my son's bookstore opening up over Labor Day, he will be an occasional guest visitor to the house.  This doesn't count the increasing time burden on the other two older sons in their vocational pursuits, plus more responsibilities for my wife with her position, and my mom who continues to move along nicely, if also more needy. 

That's why now, in these unusually cool August days, I find my mind beginning to wax autumnal.  Which brought to mind a 'spooky' fall post I did a year ago that cost me a reader.  Now there was some debate among my longer term readers if he was, in fact, a troll or not.  Since he usually kept things on topic - a tactic almost anathema to internet trolls - I generally assumed good intentions. 

Nonetheless when I posted my reflections on our secular age of tech and industry with spirit stuff relegated to Sunday mornings before the coffee hour, he swooped in with a very curt comment then kicked the dust off his heals and moved on, never to comment again. Here is the post with his comment and my response.  

I still stick to my guns, as my response that he never responded to makes clear. The older I get the more I become convinced that we Christians went the wrong direction in light of the amazing era of discovery and invention in which we grew.  We allowed the non-believer to have his way, and replaced the Christian worldview with a rather atheistic one, with religion stepping in  only if all else fails.  That was the purpose of my post, which set off who had become a somewhat regular commenter. .