October 31: Happy Reformation Day!

To Protestants readers, and others who wish to join in the fun: Happy Reformation Day!

I grew up in Christian churches and schools that were always careful to avoid the secular aspects of holidays. Do you remember that graffiti on the bathroom stall in the movie Saved? “SANTA = SATAN”? It wasn't quite that bad, but that's the idea.

Usually, churches had “Fall Festivals” rather than Halloween parties. There were more cowboys and crosses than skeletons and jack-o-lanterns, but they weren't anything special. One year, however, sticks out in my mind as a favorite: the year my school had a big Reformation Day party. (On October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses, his first public challenge to the authority of the Catholic Church.) I must have been in first or second grade, and I recall the event only as a memory of a memory.

My favorite detail is one that may or may not be a collaboration of time and an active imagination. I hope that it happened, but I can't be sure.

I seem to remember that, instead of trying to pin a paper tail on a donkey poster while blindfolded, we played “pin-the-95-Theses-to-the-Wittenberg-door.”

If I ever have young children, they will get to play this game.

(To think that people say Christians don't know how to have fun…)

EDIT: One year, I dressed up as Moses for a church event, and just added a little fake blood and talcum powder to the same outfit to be an old man zombie (?) for trick-or-treating in the neighborhood.