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| Halloween | | Date Created: Nov 01, 2005, 03:30 PM |
I've never gotten behind Halloween - even in my youth. Of course, when I was younger, any excuse to get knee-walkin'-drunk was a good enough excuse to party for me. But Halloween was not something I ever got behind. It's probably due to the fact that I read way to much when I was a kid and actually know the history of it - I never got how people could celebrate something with a such a history. In my mind, it's kinda like celebrating "Columbus Day" after knowing that he killed (either directly or indirectly) every inhabitant of the place he had "discovered". I put quotes around the word discovered there, because he really didn't - THERE WERE ALREADY PEOPLE THERE!!!
For the record, my father's family is originally from Ireland - we were Celts. Now, the modern celebration of Halloween is a VERY distant descendant of the ancient Celtic fire festival called Samhain. It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year. The Celts lived more than 2,000 years ago in what is now Great Britain, Ireland, and France. Their new year began on November 1.
Celtic legends tell us that on this night, all the hearth fires in Ireland were extinguished, and then re-lit from the central fire of the Druids at Tlachtga, 12 miles from the royal hill of Tara. (The Druids were the learned class among the Celts. They were religious priests who also acted as judges, lawmakers, poets, scholars, and scientists.) Upon this sacred bonfire the Druids burned animals and crops. The extinguishing of the hearth fires symbolized the "dark half" of the year. The re-kindling from the Druidic fire was symbolic of the returning life that was hoped for in the spring.
In the Celtic belief system, turning points, such as the time between one day and the next, the meeting of sea and shore, or the turning of one year into the next were seen as magical times. The turning of the year was the most potent of these times. This was the time when the "veil between the worlds" was at its thinnest, and the dead could communicate with the living.
The feast of Samhain is described as order suspended. "During this interval the normal order of the universe is suspended, the barriers between the natural and the supernatural are temporarily removed, the sidh lies open and all divine beings and the spirits of the dead move freely among men and interfere sometimes violently, in their affairs" (Celtic Mythology, p. 127).
The Celts believed that when people died, they went to a land of eternal youth and happiness called Tir nan Og. They did not have the concept of heaven and hell that the Christian church later brought into the land. The dead were sometimes believed to be dwelling with the Fairy Folk, who lived in the numerous mounds or sidhe (pron. "shee") that dotted the Irish and Scottish countryside.
Sidenote 1: I don’t believe in this crap. Suspension of time between natural and unnatural worlds, fairies, blah, blah, blah…
The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own – they could not stop them, so they absorbed them. But in the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.
Sidenote 2: I don’t believe in any of this crap. Multiple God’s, blah, blah, blah…
The Catholic Church was unable to get the people to stop celebrating this holiday, so they simply sprinkled a little holy water on it and gave it new names, as they did with other Paleopagan holidays and customs. This was a form of calendrical imperialism, co-opting Paleopagan sacred times, as they had Paleopagan sacred places (most if not all of the great cathedrals of Europe were built on top of earlier Paleopagan shrines and sacred groves).
Sidenote 3: The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. I'm far from being catholic (which is to say, I don't agree with the whole Saint thing) - if anything, you can call me Lutheran, but in reality I'm non-denominational Christian...
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians (Roman Catholics) would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.
Sidenote 4: I don’t believe in any of this crap. You can’t buy your salvation, or anyone else's. This is where you may call me Lutheran. The Catholic believes that you can earn your way to heaven through works, the lutheran knows that the only way is through faith - and faith alone...
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So, knowing the history, there’s no way I’m gonna celebrate something that goes against everything I believe. As an American, that is my priviledge. As a vet, that is my right. I don't care what you think it means, I don't care what you want it to mean, I know what it means. You can do, or think, whatever you like – I fought for your right to do just that – but don’t try to impose your B.S. on me, or my children… |
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