Happy Halloween (Full Version)

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pinkpleasures -> Happy Halloween (10/31/2005 5:04:19 PM)

i was watching the History Channel today about the origins of "Halloween" and it was great; i love the holidays and it eas fun to find out just how old it really is, and who changed it....i hope everyone has fun tonite!

pinkpleasures

p.s. If you care to share, would love to hear what you did for Halloween; me; i'm gonna watch horror movies....a sercet passion, LOL.




mystictryst -> RE: Happy Halloween (10/31/2005 9:53:58 PM)

It was quite. I ate pizza. No kids came around. :(

Was supposed to go out of town, but the road was very dark, black pavement, wet rain, below freezing temps. I wimped out and came home.





NakedOnMyChain -> RE: Happy Halloween (10/31/2005 11:58:16 PM)

Happy Halloween and Merry Samhain, all! I had a gigantic party Saturday night, which went very well. Everyone had a great time. Tonight wasn't that eventful. We didn't get any trick or treaters, but my sister and I went out and caused our own bit of mischief. Just doing good deeds for the community again .... involving "For Rent" signs. I haven't had that much fun since I was sixteen. [:D]




Faramir -> RE: Happy Halloween (11/1/2005 7:55:13 AM)

[ranton]
I had a very frustrating Halloween.

My town is dominated by evangelical protestant and charismatic churches. In the main, those churches are hostile to anything that has the least association to to any other faith, but that antagonism and fear is most pronounced with regard to anything associated with pagan traditons.

The cultural war over Halloween is pretty much over in my town. Almost no one, excpet in the very densest neighborhoods does trick or treating because the celebration has been coopted by "Hallelejah Festivals" at local churches.

What drives me bats is the inconsistency of the position - it is intellectually and morally bankrupt.

"We musn't have children dressing up in costumes, going from place to place to collect candy in a cultural festival that has pagan echoes. No no - that's from the Devil. Instead we must have children dress up in costumes, going from place to place to collect candy in a social festival that has pagan echoes inside the church fellowship hall 'cause that's from God."

Holy crap - wtf are they thinking?

I feel this way every Halloween and Easter, as the least thoughtful and angriest parts of my faith rise up in inconsistent and wicked fury. As a Christian who has a Hellenic and Pagan* cultural heritage, Easter Eggs and Halloween masks don't make me shit my pants in distress. Like CS Lewis and Tolkien I honor my Pagan and Hellenic roots - I think they were given for a reason. Lewis felt that one people were given the Word, and other peoples were given stories and images - that resonates with me. Well, I'm a descendent of the peoples who got the stories. I like 'em, and there is no reason to disavow them.

[/rantoff]



*I mean the broad weaving of Celtic, Norse and Germanic threads in my cultural heritage.




LuckyAlbatross -> RE: Happy Halloween (11/1/2005 8:17:39 AM)

Yes I agree it's annoying, but if they get the people to their events, obviously they want them. And religions have long been using the practice of stealing other cultural rituals and transforming them over.

I went to the Crucible's halloween party on Friday, a bonfire/kink party on Sat and last night chatted online and went to bed early because I had a headache.




perverseangelic -> RE: Happy Halloween (11/1/2005 10:09:14 AM)

Halloween and Midsummer's Eve are my two favorite holidays.

Of course, I was sick on Halloween. I spent last night in bed being miserable. Didn't even dress up for work yesterday 'cause I was running a fever.

Stupid.




MadameDahlia -> RE: Happy Halloween (11/1/2005 10:48:21 AM)

I worked until six-thirty and then came home to pass out candy to kids. What an entertaining evening... -twitches-




sub4hire -> RE: Happy Halloween (11/1/2005 11:20:23 AM)

Same thing we've done every year on the actual day. Sat at home, ate dinner and gave out candy. We do several parties each year but decline the actual day.
The holiday is for children. So we make sure we dedicate it to them.





candystripper -> RE: Happy Halloween (11/1/2005 7:15:41 PM)

quote:

I feel this way every Halloween and Easter, as the least thoughtful and angriest parts of my faith rise up in inconsistent and wicked fury. As a Christian who has a Hellenic and Pagan* cultural heritage, Easter Eggs and Halloween masks don't make me shit my pants in distress. Like CS Lewis and Tolkien I honor my Pagan and Hellenic roots - I think they were given for a reason. Lewis felt that one people were given the Word, and other peoples were given stories and images - that resonates with me. Well, I'm a descendent of the peoples who got the stories. I like 'em, and there is no reason to disavow them.

Faramir


If i remember correctly, the History Channel show described a holiday around Nov 1st or October 31st as occuring in most cultures -- perhaps only western ones, not sure -- since the beginning of recorded time. The Christian/Catholic Church, as it spread throughout Europe, at first tried "co-opting" the Pagans by "consecrating" their traditions and places of worship, and this included what became two Catholic Holy Days; Nov 1st, All Saints' Day; and Nov 2nd, All Souls' Day. However one of the popes during the 14th century (i believe the date is right) became frustrated by the fact that Pagans were still around and began attacking their priestesses as devil-worshippers, burning them at the stake or otherwise disposing of them. Other sects were just as guilty, and the last such frenzy was the Salem Witch Trials, in which some 16 or so women were found guilty and hanged and -- in one especially gruesome event -- crushed to death by stones.

However, the holiday was celebrated in the Americas by other Christian sects at the same time as the Salem Witch Trials, and eventually lost any religious meaning as the country moved into the Industrial Age. In the 1950's and 1960's, the holiday was celebrated mainly by children, trick or treating. The "razor in the apple" scare in the 1970's has changed that to a degree; some parents only take their children to the homes of close neighbors, or have their candy x-rayed.

As we moved to the current Age, the holiday is primarially an adult one, with parades and Haunted Houses...and children still trick or treat. i was shocked to hear Halloween is the second biggest cash cow holiday for retailers, with only Xmas leading the way. Some Chrisitian sects have sought to provide their followers with a Halloween of sorts; setting up "Hell Houses" meant to illustrate the wages of sin by showing people being tormented...as if in Hell.

The show did not touch on this, but i have a family member who teaches school here. Halloween is concealed as a "Fall Festival" and children are allowed little in the way of costumes. The first-grade exerience we had of cutting out black cats and bats from construction paper and decorating the school room is long gone, killed off by someone's hyper-sensitivity.

One thing the show made quite clear -- the holiday is much too beloved to ever die off altogether, no matter how it may morph, and for Pagans today it has lost none of its mystical and cherished meaning.

candystripper




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