Area Teen Traumatized by Holiday Family Feud
🎶 It's the most pugnacious time of the year 🎶
TRICKUM, GA - Halloween is upon us again and 13-year-old Whitfield County native Martin Erasmus Hinn is in turmoil. “I always hate this season,” he told the Dalton Daily Citizen during an interview on Saturday afternoon. “Each year, I face the same problem: how can I get through October 31 without offending at least one of my parents?”
While Martin’s procreators are both confessing Protestants, his father adheres to Reformed doctrine, whereas his mother is a staunch Arminian. “Opposites attract, alright,” Martin mused. “They attract controversy. I mean, my parents couldn’t even agree on what name to give me. The anomaly they came up with is a twisted compromise that haunts me to this day.”
Named after Martin Luther (proponent of free grace) and Desiderius Erasmus (proponent of free will), Martin Erasmus Hinn (who prefers to be called Marty) has been plagued with identity issues ever since he can remember. “My father wanted me to attend Saint John’s First Trinity Lutheran School of Trickum, while my mom preferred Rocky Face Independent Free-Will Baptist Elementary,” he recalls. “But because they couldn’t come to an agreement, they finally just threw me into the [local public school] Trickum and Treatum, where all the heathen children made fun of my name every stinking day. My schooling experience was a nightmare of purgatorial proportions.”
The present, Martin says, is no better than the past. “How can I be expected to follow in the footsteps of two men who went in opposite directions?” he said, throwing up his hands in frustration.
Throughout the years, Martin’s parents have pulled him in different directions on a number of issues—whether to eat Chick-fil-A or Popeyes, whether to read Francine Rivers or Frank Peretti, whether to watch Christian films or films with Christian themes, whether to prefer C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien, and whether that viral dress picture was black & blue or white & gold. (Martin is colorblind, which heightened the stress of that last situation significantly.)
All of this leads to the controversy surrounding October 31. “Mom wants me to be culturally relevant by participating in the customs of our day. That includes Halloween. She thinks I can be a light to the world by dressing up as the bloody Jesus from The Passion of the Christ, or as the faceless Jesus from Ben-Hur, or as Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi (because he can pass for Jesus). Last year, she had me dress up like Jesus from The Chosen, and she made me read from a script at each door. Instead of the typical ‘Trick or treat,’ I had to say, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone gives me candy, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me.’
“And if anyone refused to give me candy, I had to hold up a portable Bluetooth speaker I was carrying and say, ‘Alexis, play “Trouble” by Dan Haseltine,’ while pretending to shake the dust from off my feet. And if they made fun of me for that, I was supposed to say, ‘It will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for this house.’ And if they threw anything at me, I was to turn over any tables, flower pots, bird baths, or garden gnomes in their yard. And if they chased me, I was to run to the biggest and scariest-looking trick-or-treater I could find and beg their protection. And if, heaven forbid, I was beaten to a pulp and found myself in heaven, I was to beg Jesus to send me back to earth so I could comfort my poor, grieving mother.”
Martin’s father, however, takes a different approach to the holiday. “My dad doesn’t even want to hear the word Halloween in our house,” Martin said. “He calls it the ‘h’ word. He prefers that I celebrate Reformation Day with him. After all, October 31 is the date on which Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg [in 1517]. My dad has repeatedly said that this day isn’t about creepy, flying goblins and mounds of candy—not unless you consider the ancient Roman Catholic leaders as the creepy goblins and Luther’s 95 Theses as the tasty antidote. I don’t think that analogy really works, though.
“Anyway, a lot of Christians don’t even know Reformation Day exists, but my dad says that’s because they’re a bunch of ignorant Semi-Pelagians.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” Martin asked with obvious frustration. “On one hand, my mother claims I may lose my salvation if I dishonor her wishes. On the other hand, my father says my eternal security is in jeopardy if I choose to rebel against the head of the household. I’m literally darned if I do and darned if I don’t! And the only reason I use the word ‘darned’ is that I’ll have my mouth washed out with soap if I say the other word—which is why the King James Version of the Bible is banned from our home.”
Martin’s one attempt to solve his family’s Halloween feud didn’t end well. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said, his lips quivering in pain at the memory. “I convinced my dad to let me go trick-or-treating dressed as Martin Luther. The stipulation was that I was to exchange copies of the 95 Theses for the candy I received. But the first house I came to was a disaster.
“Initially, when the man living there opened his door, everything seemed cool. Strains of ‘Ava Maria’ echoed from inside the house, and there were some impressive Catholic relics, or replicas, displayed in the foyer. But then the guy’s eyes narrowed angrily as he noticed my costume. I swear, he must have been bipolar, or drunk, or both. He was so infuriated that he grabbed an ancient-looking hammer from his relic display and nailed my hood to his front door, along with the stack of 95 Theses I had with me. He never stopped chanting, ‘Recantare, hereticus Luther!’
“His yelling activated my portable Bluetooth speaker, which glitched out and played the first several seconds of ‘Trouble’ on repeat. In desperation, I escaped the man’s clutches by slipping out of my robe and running home in my Jedi undergarments. I hate this holiday!”
No one from The Associated Press contributed to this report
© 2022, Taung En Chiek
This is a compilation of two posts originally published at capstewart.com, updated with new material.