Old Times

To my post on Halloween I received a comment.  And I would like to address it.
When we grew up, our school was segregated into Protestants and Catholics.  And the division ran pretty deep. Actually, I also should add, that some of the surrounding villages were either totally Catholic, or totally Protestant.  Without going into the history of the region too deeply, the division went back to the original owners of the land.  Parts of the area I grew up in belonged to the Diocese of Mainz, part of it to the barons of Simmern, some of it to the Diocese of Trier, and so on.  So depending on who had ownership of a specific area, the inhabitants were either Catholic or Protestant.  The barons of Simmern gave the people under their stewardship the choice, either protestant or catholic.
And up until the time I grew up, most of the people stayed within their traditions.
It  was still a scandal and drama when a protestant boy and a catholic girl got together.
I remember a good friend of mine, she fell in love with a protestant boy, ended up having to marry him, and, 40 years later, her mother is still mentioning it as one of her 'sins' to have married someone protestant.
It was a very strong line, and it took us a long time to realize that those lines were totally artificial.
I'm happy to say that those particular divisions have mostly disappeared.