“Harry Potter and my Book-Banning Uncle”

If only to cement my membership in the Official Society of Dorkdom, I must confess that I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter book series.  Awkward Harry, bookish Hermione, fatherly Dumbledore…I love all of the characters (with the possible exception of Cornelius Fudge).  I am such a big fan of the Boy Who Lived that every time a new book or movie comes out, I dress for the occasion in taped-up glasses, socks bearing the seal of Gryffindor House, and lightning-bolt scar drawn on my forehead in ink.  As you can imagine, it’s quite fun to monitor the reactions to this at school. 

Yeah, Harry Potter is a fun kids’ series – a good read, engaging characters, important life lessons…a nice experience all around (though I am a bit disappointed in the movies).  Which is one of the reasons I’m surprised at the reception Harry Potter has experienced among certain Church leaders.  The Religious Right in America has demonized Harry and his friends because they teach children about witchcraft and other heathen, unspeakable things that actually do exist in the real world that these children will have to navigate someday.  But before I get to the point where my sentences are so long as to be incomprehensible, as happens when I get excited, let’s move on to the point of this narrative.

My family, regrettably, is a bastion of the Religious Right.  I have an aunt who rants about the rabble-rousers in the ACLU.  I have a grandfather who thinks that all non-Christian religions are cults.  I have an eight-year-old cousin who will tell you how “nothing Charles Darwin says is true.”  More to the point, I have an uncle who won’t let his kids read Harry Potter books.  And this is how all the fun began.

I didn’t know, up until it happened, that my cousins were barred from reading about the Boy Who Lived.  I’m close to my cousins—“Kayla” and “Emma” let’s call them—even though they’re a few years younger than me.  Kayla’s four years my junior, Emma six.  We hang out together whenever our family has a holiday get-together.  One time a few years ago, they came up to our house to stay for a few days.  One of the things we always do together at Christmas and Easter family reunions is to hole ourselves up in a dark, spooky closet and swap ghost stories.  Now, my ghost stories are never very scary, and this peeves me, since I’m very into writing.  So this year, I decided to be ready for their visit.  I wrote a piece of Harry Potter fanfiction chronicling the last night of Lily and James Potters’ lives.  I was pleased with myself once I’d finished; the story was both funny and suspenseful in the appropriate places.  I read it to them one night, and I found…that they had no idea what it was about.  They liked it, to be sure.  But they had never read a Harry Potter book.  Once I explained the premise to them, they caught on.  Kayla remarked that Harry Potter was “cool.”  And so it continued until the next Christmas, me never thinking twice about it, despite the fact that Harry Potter is a phenomenon sweeping the children of our nation, and that it was pretty weird that Kayla and Emma didn’t have at least a rudimentary knowledge of it.  Poor, sheltered kids.

Anyway, the next Christmas, we started talking about Harry Potter again.  At that time, the first movie had come out, and I had dressed up for my first “Harry Potter Commemoration Day” at school.  I told them about it, and they thought the story was funny.  So we got the brilliant idea to draw lightning scars on our own foreheads and run around my grandparents’ house like the little heathen witches we were.  This is when I discovered that their dad was dead-set against Harry Potter.

But that’s not the punch line.

You know, generally it’s good to have an idea about what a thing is before you ban it.  But the way I found out about my uncle’s anti-Harry Potter bent was not from my uncle, but from my aunt.  She called Kayla and Emma over to her and said, “Don’t let your father know that this is about Harry Potter.”  And that was it.  (She thought it was cute.)

Their dad saw them running around with things drawn on their foreheads and thought it was funny.  He didn’t recognize the most recognizable attribute of Harry Potter himself.  Of course, this might have had to do with my artistic skills in drawing the lightning bolts, but they were reasonably clear.  Kayla and Emma’s younger sister, “Ruth,” even joined the fun and ran around the house with a Harry Potter scar, just generally being cute.

Now, I’m sure there are many people who have read the Harry Potter books and have decided, from their experience reading them, that they are inappropriate for children.  But, unfortunately, I suspect many may have come to their anti-Potter beliefs simply because their church leaders told them Harry was evil.  This family event, and several letters to the editor in my local newspaper around the time the fifth book was released, leads me to this conclusion.

So if there’s a point to this essay at all, it’s this: if you’re intent on banning Harry Potter, or anything else for that matter, I’m not going to argue with you.  Well, yes, I am, but never mind.  It’s that whole free press thing.  But if you’re going to ban it, do me and the world a favor: learn something about it first.  It will give you more credibility.  Plus, if your niece ever tries to pull a stunt like this on you, you’ll be able to tell her off for it.

A/N: All apologies to my extended family.  I really do love you.  And you have a right to believe what you want to.  And you have a right to keep your kids from reading Harry Potter if you want to.  That being said, I still may tend to write sarcastic essays about you.  But I will always change your names.