Posted on 10/31/2008 9:49:19 AM PDT by NYer
The Church “baptised” Pesach and Sukkot as Easter and Pentecost, respectively; one could argue that Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah have been incorporated into Advent and Christmas.
I think that about covers the Torah-mandated festivals—am I missing any?
I also think Purim has been long overlooked by everyone Christian as a great opportunity for a clearly God-mandated party, even though it is extra-Torah. It also is a great fancy-dress opportunity in the Spring which balances Hallowe’en nicely.
Although I suppose a lot of dry evangelicals could stumble over the “drink until you are unable to tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman” tradition.
It’s of course your right not to participate, but thaf doesn’t change the social and cultural aspects of the question.
Society has to come to grips with death, and Halloween, properly used, can be a useful part of that process IF the Christians show up to inform it. If we withdraw in scorn, the matter goes to the materialists and others by default.
How many people do you think are actually worshiping Satan by dressing in costume and begging for candy?
I thank God every day that He led me out of this sort of legalism.
....These early missionaries actually liked the people they were converting. They liked their folkways, and their culture. They liked their music, their dances, and even their local death festivals — or liked, at any rate, everything about them that could be liked without compromising the faith. Interestingly enough, we know from history that Pope Gregory sent his missionaries out with explicit instructions that anything in the local culture which was not actually incompatible with Christianity was to be left strictly alone....the truth is that the whole evangelization of Western Europe (325-1100 AD) was accomplished under this principle.
....The pagan death festivals were superceded in just this way by two Christian holy days based on a similar theme — All Saints Day (November 1) and All Souls Day (November 2). The pagans found it natural to remember their departed loved ones at this time of the year, and the Church wisely allowed them to maintain continuity with the old ways. To say, however, that the Church merely “Christianized” the existing paganism is to miss the point badly. As St. Paul dramatically points out in his Epistle to the Romans, paganism already had a good deal of inchoate truth in it already. What the Church actually did was to gather up some of these inchoate truths, sift out what was patently unusable, and then point the pagans to the final fulfillment of their ancient longings as revealed in the faith of Christ....
....You might say that Halloween is an “echo-holiday.” Halloween is to All Saints & All Souls Days as Mardi Gras is to Ash Wednesday — sort of their outlaw second cousin. Halloween is that part of the ancient death festivals which couldn’t quite be comfortably domesticated. It’s the part that still wants to run wild on the autumn winds, to soap windows and overturn outhouses. And yes, like Mardi Gras, this urge is difficult decently to restrain at times; the sowing of wild oats often produces crops that have to be reaped by the whirlwind. But just because a thing is subject to abuse doesn’t mean the thing itself is evil....
....[Jehovah's Witnesses] teach their disciples to hate and fear all holy days and holidays alike, and will have nothing to do with either Christmas or Easter for precisely the same reasons that Evangelicals are now despising Halloween. And this is the reason I have found it worthwhile to mount, from time to time, a Christian defense of Halloween.
Ping for reference.
LOL. That is scary.
Vatican plea to uncover Virgin Mary and show her breast-feeding baby Jesus
That's Pesach and Shavu`ot. Sukkot comes in the fall (just ended last week). And Ro'sh HaShanah and Yom Kippur come nowhere near chr*stmas (the old 1936 St. Andrew's Missal said that Ro'sh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot had all been changed to the ember days of september)!
I think that about covers the Torah-mandated festivals—am I missing any?
You missed the funnest one of all--Simchat Torah!
I also think Purim has been long overlooked by everyone Christian as a great opportunity for a clearly God-mandated party, even though it is extra-Torah. It also is a great fancy-dress opportunity in the Spring which balances Hallowe’en nicely.
Of course.
Although I suppose a lot of dry evangelicals could stumble over the “drink until you are unable to tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman” tradition.
Why does everyone put down the teetotaling thing? I for one think it is a charming relic of the old proto-abolition New England and Northern Protestantism (back when antebellum Southerners considered whiskey a necessity of life).
Then of course the Orthodox Union seems to be very down on alcohol (they posted an article one year saying "It's not a mitzvah to get drunk on Purim!" and advocating drinking grape juice. Of course, the Orthodox Union is "Modern" Orthodox . . .
Nursing an infant is equivalent to pornography? Oh my goodness... someone (many someones, perhaps) needs to lighten up!
Jesus Christ established a new covenant. He is our Paschal lamb. We now celebrate Jesus Christ born in a cave, circumcized in the Temple, rising from the dead, and ascending into heaven. We celebrate Passover at each and every Mass. There is nothing pagan about any of these feast days, all of which fulfill the promises made to but ignored by many Jews.
Puritans, you know.
You’re not kidding!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again... I’m SO thankful to God that he led me to the Catholic Church, where we appreciate the implications of the Incarnation.
So since this "new covenant" supersedes and replaces Jewish holidays, why weren't pagan holidays superseded and replaced? Why were they instead "baptized" and made chr*stian? Couldn't Ro'sh HaShanah, the anniversary of the day G-d created Adam and Eve, have been chr*stianized as well as any Celtic harvest festival or Roman fertility festival?
So my original understanding is confirmed: Catholicism/chr*stianity replaces Biblical Jewish holidays and adapts non-Biblical pagan ones.
Oh well. At least you don't have to worry about the ACLU coming down on this holiday!
It gets more materialist the more Christians opt out, in the absence of any better contextualisation.
As I say, you don’t have to participate, but it is now the second-biggest holiday in the country, bigger than Independence Day now in terms of holiday-specific observance by the population and consumption. Christians need to show up, or be left out of the conversation.
I say that all Christians “need” to do is to love God and be good neighbors...this will keep their seat reservation in the “conversation”.
So when the block throws a party, do good neighbours grimly abstain, or do they participate?
How are the two the same?
I can only speak from my past evangelical experience, and yes... we would grimly abstain, and solemnly inform those inviting us that we were taking our children to a Harvest Party at church instead.
We quickly learned that our neighbors didn’t want to hear our perspective on religion if they felt judged from the outset.
BTW, the article should be renamed “ A Catholic defense of H’ween”...it would make much more sense.
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