Why I Won’t Watch Midnight Mass (2021)

Sorry, I’m not interested in religious trauma

Religious trauma is a valid type of trauma that needs to be acknowledged more

I don’t have a good relationship with the Christain God. Despite being raised in a Greek Orthodox household (mother was Greek Orthodox, essentially “old school” Christianity; father was methodist, although not seemingly “super religious”), I never had strong attachments to Christianity. I didn’t formally break away until my late teens. Now, I am much more spiritually happy identifying as a Hindu Pagan polytheist.

Midnight Mass (2021) by Netflix is all the rage now. A troubled priest, a town filled with polar opposite beliefs relating to Christianity. The show features a Muslim character as well. Episodes are filled with sermons, being extremely emotionally heavy. God this, God that, it’s brutally exhausting.

Now, if you are comfortable sitting through these kinds of heavy religious speeches, and you like these types of macabre dramas, this will likely be right up your alley. However, for me, it triggers a strong repulsion. I have seen religion be used in horribly macabre and malicious ways. I’ve seen it be used to justify rape, murder, genocide, racism, and other horrible hatred-based crime. A good chunk of my own ancestors was murdered by religious zealots.