But I swear, the more I read people's arguments on why to NOT celebrate Halloween, I am filled with a dread that I can't shake. Are people really so paranoid of a holiday that PartyWorks and Hershey's have so corrupted from it's original form, that it is barely recognizable?? I understand the not wanting to expose your children to excessive blood and gore, okay, I get that. But to not even let them dress up and trick or treat?? Or worse yet, to be a TOTAL hypocrite and let them go to a trunk or treat at the local church. If they are trunk or treating, you are celebrating, so get over yourselves.
Let me give you a few thoughts to ponder. First off, if you have EVER gotten your information about Halloween from a Chick Tract, then please, click away from my page now and go and pray or something, cause you are too stupid to continue reading.
First off, Halloween started out as a harvest holiday known as Samhain. Now contrary to popular Christian belief, there was NEVER a pagan god known as Samhain. Samhain is derived from the Celtic word for Summer's End, cause DUH! it happened at the end of summer, LOL! So, no pagan god Samhain, and therefore no human sacrifices to him. Also, pagan's don't believe in Satan, and they sure don't worship him, cause he's NON-EXISTENT in pagan culture. So, no human sacrifice to him either. In fact, there is NO human sacrifice in paganism today, AT ALL! And if you look at history, Christians have killed many, many more humans then any pagans, I'm just sayin...
Secondly, the whole idea of poisoned, tampered with, or booby trapped candy. This is a myth that has been blown so far out of proportion, it's absurd! TWO, yes TWO cases of children being killed by Halloween candy have been recorded in the news since 1964 (yep, that was 44 years ago people). The first was a boy in 1970 who ate his uncles stash of heroin, and then the family tried to cover it up by saying the drugs were in his Halloween candy. The second, in 1974, a boy ate a pixy stick that was laced with poison. Upon investigation it turned out the boys own father planted the candy in his sons bag, to collect on the boys insurance money. NEVER has there been a recorded incident of a stranger handing out laced, tampered with or poison treats on Halloween, and contrary to the Chick tract above, it is not common practice to do this to harvest sacrifices for Satan!
So, while I can go on and on about the non-horrors of Halloween, I do want to make a point. These days, Halloween is another hallmark holiday, cleansed of all it's original roots, and make palatable to the masses. If you are a family who chooses to NOT celebrate Halloween because of it's pagan roots, then I recommend you think twice about Easter and Christmas too. Because while the historical activities attributed to those holidays, namely the birth of Christ and his resurrection, are widely accepted as accurate, the actual dates of said activities and the celebrating of those holidays are NOT specifically condoned in the bible. Shockingly the dates and MOST of the activities now celebrated for those holidays are in fact PAGAN in origin ;) Christmas trees or Easter bunnies anyone??
I will accept reasonable discussion of this topic in my comments. BUT keep in mind, any argument you make to me that uses God or the Bible as it's basis, will be countered with the teachings of the ALL POWERFUL AND KNOWING SQUIRREL IN MY BACK YARD :) After of course, the appropriate offerings of nuts and seeds are made ;)
14 comments:
Ok, let me just say that I have subscribed to your blog and I have Stumbled this post.
I LOVE HALLOWEEN!
Around here where I live, it's VERY conservatively Christian. I sometimes drown in it. No offense of course. But we are inundated with "harvest" parties. Everyone is so afraid of satan. Geez. I agree with every single thing you wrote about here. I even acknowledge the pagan holidays with my children here at home so they have a wide view of the world and its holidays!
You go girl!
Hope to see you at #gno again! What fun!!!
I love this post.
Great post Beckie. And I agree with you 100% people just need to get over themselves, ya know.
Now with that said, do you know of any books that are good for learning more on Paganism? My oldest is kinda sorta wanting to learn more about various religions. I personally want to find out more on Pagan holidays & ceremonies/celebrations, etc. So any you can recommend would be great. :)
We live near Salem, MA so Halloween is a big deal there, in fact, one of their biggest money makers.
I love Halloween, and bring my son to every Halloween thing I can.
You are right about Samhain, and fyi, I'll be performing at a Samhain Celebration in NH this weekend! www.nhrenfaire.com
OMG beckie you're going to hell!! ROFLMAO!!! (ah hell, that's where all the fun people will be anyway, right? LOL!!!)
well written, and you made me LOL, as usual. very well said!!!
i agree 100% and i particularly love the comment about chick tracts...those things are just hate-filled TRASH!! i find it so hard to believe that people actually believe those things...but then, there ARE a lot of stupid people in the world, eh?
now if we can just make it through the anti-halloween stupidity AND the stupidity of prop 8...we might just get ourselves back to a normal living again. *sigh*
hi, i was hoping you would play a game of tag with me. please go to my october 24 post for details. mj
Maybe my reasoning will resonate with you!
Here is why this Christian doesn't celebrate Halloween
oh give me a friggin break, nathan! did you even read any of beckie's post? i suspect not since your response made no sense at all in relation to beckie's post!
why in the world would you even think that ANYTHING in that blog entry of your would even remotely "resonate" with her?
she JUST SAID how she feels about halloween and how it has NOTHING to do with satan, PUH-LEEZE!!
so you hate halloween, so be it...that's your business and you can write all you want about it on YOUR blog, because that's what blogs are for...but don't clutter up someone else's blog with your garbage when she has made it very very clear how she feels about the same holiday! AND about people like YOU!
true, you didn't actually put the content there, but you know very well that people are going to click on that link and go right on over and read your blog entry!
next time you want to comment on someone's blog make sure you read the post first, sheesh! that just completely made NO sense after the content of beckie's post!
Settle down, Tina.
Is this meant to be an echo chamber or can someone post different viewpoints?
Obviously the 2 of you disagree, but maybe the 2 can understand eachother by presenting thought processes (gasp--in the form of a blog!).
Switch to decaf (or maybe just be less hateful)!
My bad.
Tina is correct (despite her vitriol)--I only skimmed the post.
I imagine my blog post means a whole lot of nothing to someone who doesn't recognize a higher power!
Josh, yes, you are right, people who disagree with me an a civilized manner with out personal attacks are WELCOME to post on my blog. And Tina, my good friend, was just coming to my aid, thank you ;)
But to answer you, Nathan, you're right, your blog post would mean nothing to me, but not for the reasons you site. I DO believe in a higher power, it's just not the same one you do ;) Plus, I have nothing against Christian who choose to not celebrate Halloween, I was speaking out against two specific types of Christians.
A) Christians who profess that Halloween is evil, and should not be celebrated, but then hold a trunk or treat/harvest celebration, that in my book is hypocrisy, pure and simple :)
B) Christians who use trash and lies like Chick Tracts to try and evangelize to CHILDREN who come trick or treating to their door. I can't understand people who feel such scorn for something, that they can't even be bothered to find out the truth about it. So they take the spoon fed lies as fact and sit smug in thier living rooms handing out what amounts to hate speech with their fun sized m & m's bags.
SO, Nathan, feel free to hate Halloween all you like, and thank you for using your own blog space to explain why ;) I personally hate Christmas, but more because of the pressures associated with it then any symbolism or deeper meaning of the holiday.
I understand your view :)
So glad I decided to open my reader today, what a fabulous post! I've always known that, about Christian holidays' dates being placed on Pagan dates for the express purpose of "stealing their thunder." Good to hear more about it here.
Amen to everything you said. We all make our own decisions but we should do it based on real truths and not fear-mongering and invented paranoidism. Thanks, mama!
I know it's already been Stumbled, and Halloween has passed, but I liked this post and Stumbled it again anyway.
I was totally raised this way--no Halloween. It was "the Devil's Holiday." One year we had to go door to door handing out Christian tracts and refuse to take candy that sympathetic neighbors tried to give us. Ugh.
My parents lightened up as we got older, thank goodness. We laugh about it now, but what do you think is more damaging to a kid--forcing them to evangelize on Halloween and refuse candy, or let them dress up and take a walk around the neighborhood? Yeah.
Anyway, just glad to see you discussing this issue with some intelligence. Thanks! :-)
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