[Joker_vD]

> We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it.

On one hand, if we want the children to grow up into the better world, and for them to keep making it better as adults, perhaps we should set up in their minds more examples of the better world, than of the worse kind of the world. Sounds somewhat reasonable?

On the other hand, there is this "shattered assumptions theory" of psychological trauma: that such traumas are caused by the reality violently shattering one of three core assumptions, one of which is "overall benevolence of the world". So it can be argued that the more you try to shield children from the unpleasantness, the more traumatized their experience will be when they inevitably meet it; vice versa, someone's who never really assumed the world is all the benevolent ("yeah, there are nice parts of it, but you have to maintain and upkeep them") can't have that assumption shattered since he never held it.

One of the main themes of Lovecraft's work is that a man is alone in a vast, uncaring universe filled with terrible, powerful, and unknown things. Which is factually true, of course, and is not really that scary of a thought — unless you're a devout Christian who had a sudden crisis of faith, got interested in astronomy, and then lived through WWI. In this case having a benevolent God who made the world for its beloved children replaced by an empty mechanistic universe where life has sprang up mostly accidentally is indeed quite a traumatic experience. Others would those "things the man weren't meant to know" quite unpleasant, sure, but being driven to madness simply because apparently the rest of the universe doesn't revolve around humanity? Yeah, we knew that already, it's not news.

[bitwize]

It's funny, because I think that to certain other cultures, for example the Japanese, Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions) are Lovecraftian horror. Shinto isn't really a religion in the sense you or I know it, it's more of an animistic set of practices related to daily life. The kami are very much real to the Shintoist mind; the big ones, like Amaterasu, don't have much of a direct interest in your life, and the little ones are more like neighbors. You have to pay them their due respect, and they could grant you boons if you made them the right offerings. OK, now tell this person that there is only one all-powerful god who lives in the sky, that he is keeping meticulous track of everything you do, and that he will doom you to eternal torment if you do not meet his threshold for good behavior, or even fail to properly believe in him. (Japanese have a concept of hell, borrowed from Buddhism, but it's much more a place of repaying karmic debt than of eternal suffering. Japanese hell is time-boxed.)

To me there is a reason why when Japanese media invokes Judeo-Christian themes, it's with a sense of grandiosity and terror. Think all of Evangelion. Or how in a JRPG, any time there's a "pope" character, he's the bad guy (or at least the penultimate boss just before God himself).

[4bpp]

After reading your first paragraph, I was already drafting a slightly standoffish response in my head, to the effect that the children who grew up on our sanitised fairy tales seem to be blowing each other's heads off on the battlefields of 2026 with undiminished enthusiasm and sadism, and the only difference is that now more of them need a Xanax prescription afterwards. I appreciate that you actually addressed this view with less snark than I was able to.

[junto]

There are cultural differences here though. Brüder Grimm aren’t quite as toned down in Germany as we see in US stories being Disney-fied.

The U.S. was born out of Puritanism. That prudishness and absolutism continues to echo through into its modern culture. Most people don’t even realize it does.

[Joker_vD]

> The U.S. was born out of Puritanism.

That reminds me: apparently, the Puritans have actually managed to ban the celebration of Christmas and other church feasts in the Britain during the English Interregnum (An Ordinance for Abolishing of Festivals, June 1647):

    Forasmuch as the Feasts of the Nativity of Christ, Easter and Whitsuntide, and other
    Festivals commonly called Holy-Dayes, have been heretofore superstitiously used and
    observed Be it Ordained, by the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, That the
    said Feast of the Nativity of Christ, Easter and Whitsuntide, and all other Festival
    dayes, commonly called Holy-dayes, be no longer observed as Festivals or Holy-dayes
    within this Kingdome of England and Dominion of Wales, any Law, Statute, Custome,
    Constitution, or Cannon to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding

Talk about the war on Christmas!

[gourlaysama]

> Talk about the war on Christmas!

Not just a war on Christmas, but an actual war too: this led to a whole bunch of Christmas riots throughout England, including Canterbury's famous "Plum pudding Riots", where rioters ended up sacking the mayor's house and taking over control of the city for weeks. The whole of Kent ended up revolting after the rioters' trial, essentially starting the Second English Civil War.