A Little Pre-Programming, Anyone?

Why do parents pre-program their kids in certain departments?

I don't mean training them to have good manners, behave in the store and restaurants, actually sit and watch a movie or teaching them to read. Those are all good ways to program your kids and they'll be more appreciated by strangers like me who get frustrated by the howling, whining monsters of the world - and tell me these little winners aren't at least 2/3s the population of kids under 15?!

No, that is definitely not the kind of pre-programming I have in mind.

Religion is the biggest beef. I do - before you say it - know quite well that I am in the minority and when it comes specifically to Catholicism and (to a degree) general Christianity, quite closed off to them. I find almost any other religion to be forgivable. At least if you are Christian or Catholic and you accept that I have my unorthodox - see Celtic Wiccan - you fall into the smaller category of those Christians/Catholics who truly understand the world and love of diversity. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Go, Vulcans! They all raise their children to believe in IDIC.

Nope, here, the flawed human race pre-programs their kids into this or that religion. My parents did not. My father is an agnostic. My mother is an atheist. Me, well, I started out atheist, went to agnostic, read all kinds of books on different religions, different religious history, and steered as far away from Catholicism as possible. What a bloody and unforgivable history! Christianity? Not too much better. The horrors the Jewish people went through is much more believable (and I can sympathize, having been terribly abused by my classmates in the eighth through twelfth grades. Their pain is something I can understand. Same with the treatment of the general Islam populace. I do not, however, condone any group that follows terroristic practices and buys into the most unlikely of beliefs to accomplish a political ideology. Not ever.

But Celtic Wiccans have persevered throughout centuries and still have their holidays (no matter where the idiots in the Catholic Church stuck theirs): Imbolc - 2 February; Ostara - Vernal Equinox; Beltaine - 1 May; Litha - Summer Solstice; Lughnassad - 1 August; Mabon - Autumnal Equinox; Samhain - 31 October/1 November (normally All Souls' Day); and Yule - Winter Solstice. If you look carefully, you will see how the Catholics stuck their pointless holidays to coincide with ours. Such as...

...the birth of Christ. Assuming - a big assumption by me - he lived, he was born in a range of time from July through October. The North Star, 2,000 years ago, was not Polaris. It was Jupiter (I admit to getting a huge laugh out of it when I read about it. The Wise Men knew less about astronomy than the ancient Egyptians - whom they tried to eradicate. The last laugh is on the Church. And I laugh long and loud knowing that!). Go figure. In 2,000 years, who knows what will be the North Star then, if anything.

Well, what started this, you ask?

We got an invitation to a kid's Communion, one of these weird little celebrations one foists upon the unwilling and unwitting party to pre-programming (and in the wrong direction, if you ask me, not that anyone did, but you're getting it none-the-less, because aren't you here willingly? Exactly.) We know the parents well and the child, too. It just happens that the minute our friend got married, suddenly church and all that goes with it was thrust upon him, something I am diametrically opposed to. And the same with the child.

Fortunately, he is scary-smart, so I hope his first adult act is to dump this junk and find his own way, spiritually. That is the best and healthiest way to live. Especially against a group who knows nothing - not a single thing - about diversity, the best of all things!