My parents had me baptized in the Episcopal church, but they didn't take it too seriously: one of my godmothers was Swedenborgian, the other was Jewish, and my godfather was Russian Orthodox.
We never went to church, but my older brother went through a religious phase in his teens and went every Sunday for a while. He insisted on dragging me along once when I was five. I don't remember the service, but I vividly remember what happened in Sunday school. We were modeling animals with clay (this was in California
). I had been reading
The Jungle Book, and the one animal I could actually make from that was Kaa, the snake. The teacher came along, got all excited, and started telling me some story about a garden, an apple, and two kind of dumb-sounding people. I got on my five-year-old high horse and told her that had nothing to do with MY snake, Kaa. She insisted on going on with this stupid story about a "serpent" which was supposed to be evil.
I was furious, and when we got home I told my parents that I was never ever going back. That was the end of religion for me.
And yes, God is
exactly like Santa Claus and the Easter bunny -- just not as cuddly.