[Northkeep] Halloween

[Chuck Kaun]

The early church was very big on taking over existing holidays.
 
They stole holidays right and left to make it easier to convert the pagans.  Its much easier to make a new convert follow your religion if you give him the same days but alter the meaning instead of giving him new dates and making him forget the old ones.  Halloween, Easter and Christmas are the three biggest examples of this.  Yule was replaced by Christmas, even though scholars are fairly sure that Jesus of Nazareth was probably born in the late winter/early spring and All Saints Day was created to replace Samhain and most of the other pagan harvest festivals.  Easter replaced Passover and other spring holidays about that same time frame of the year dating all the way back to Babylon.
 
Karl T
 
 
 
 > From: Jennifer Carlson <talana1 at hotmail.com>
> 
> Actually, Halloween is a Christian holiday. Yes, it was plonked on top of the time of year of the old Samhain celebrations, but Halloween itself is not just a thinly-disguised remnant of an earlier practice. "Halloween" means "Eve of Hallows," specifically "All Hallows," or All Saints Day, which is November 1. The eve of a Christian celebration was the day before that celebration. Likewise, Christmas Eve, which you could call "Chisteen" if you wanted, is the day before Christ's Mass, or Christmas.
> 
> Halloween trick-or-treating comes from the English tradition of ritual begging - typically youths going door to door on a holy day begging for food or gifts. This is also done on St. Stephen's Day (December 26) on which boys went begging from door to door, carrying either a dead wren or a caged living one. There is argument that traditional Christmas caroling fits this mold: groups going door to door entertaining, with the expectation of being invited in for refreshments.
> 
> In the United States, largely in modern times, a blending of harvest festivals and commercialization have layered on the newer traditions of associating Halloween with ghosts, the devil, dressing up, and mischief. "Devil's Night" (Halloween Eve, October 30) in cities such as Detroit have taken this to an extreme.
> 
> Samhain (pronounced sow-ween) and Halloween occur at the same time, but they are two different events, with different purposes.
> 
> In servicio,
> 
> 
> Talana
> Marry an anthropologist, it rubs off on you
>