Submitted by fairiefire t3_zwp67t in tifu
(obligatory "this happened many years ago") I used to work as an in-home counselor for families. My client was a kid living with his aunt and her 2 children, who were around his age, 10ish. The case was difficult as I was supposed to help the kid grieve his mother's impending death, but the aunt did not want him to know his mother was more than "sick" back in the Caribbean, while he was in the US.
The aunt was a devout Jehovah's Witness and the kids were being raised in that religion. No problem. I was sensitive to their beliefs and practiced cultural competence. We mostly focused on how he was settling into a new home/country/school/setting, how he was handling his mother's illness, and his homesickness as a result.
The week of Halloween, the kids asked if they could tell me a secret. As a counselor for children and families, you have to treat secrets carefully as I am mandated to report certain things and don't want to lie. I asked what sort of secret, if anyone was being hurt, something like that. They said it wasn't anything like that, but that the mother/aunt would be mad if she knew. I said I might have to tell, if it was serious, but probably I could keep their secret if they still wanted to tell me. They opened their backpacks to show loads of candy. I asked where they got it. In hushed voices, they said their school had a Halloween party. Ah, this was a secret I could keep! "Are you not allowed to eat candy? Is that why it's a secret?" They informed me that Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed to celebrate anything (not birthdays, and certainly not Halloween) in order to not be seen as seeing themselves as higher than God. I asked how they felt about having had a Halloween celebration that clashed with their faith. They said they thought candy was great and what's wrong with that? Fair enough. They went on to say that Halloween is Satan's birthday, so it's very bad to celebrate it, which is why this is a secret. I said I would keep their secret; the statute of limitations has run out since they're now all adults.
Here's where IFU: We're having a kind of surface-level conversation on religion and I'm a curious person. I asked "Satan has a birthday? And he was a fallen angel, right? So do all the angels have birthdays?" There was utter silence as they looked at each other and me. I think they realized that they were sold a bag of lies. I needed to blow this off. "Well, I guess they were created or born, so they must have birthdays. We all do." They kind of shrugged it off and we changed topics. I hope I didn't do any lasting damage, but I do hope they are critical thinkers and made the decisions that were right for them as they aged.
TL;DR: Asked if all angels had a birthday, since they were told Halloween was Satan's birthday, which made them fall silent.
LeftStatistician7989 t1_j1w292v wrote
If this was your noteworthy tifu in all these years you’re a saint. It seemed an honest enough question to invite him to explore.