Posted on 10/22/2002 5:11:40 AM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood
It never ceases to amaze me that most Christians would criticize me for being an atheist, yet they will "celebrate" a macabre pagan holiday. They inculcate their children into the practice of it and feed them the most unhealthful things you could give a child to eat.
Likewise, many atheists criticize me for being a "right-winger." Most atheists are so caught up in their polemics, they have become nothing more than anti-Christians - or what I call the Religious Left (a collaboration of the Marxist religion, neo-pagan animal/tree/earth worshipper eco-fascists and general technophobes).
Why do you "celebrate" on certain "holidays," what are you celebrating, do you really know? Or have you been so lost in the conformity of it all to really take a look at what you partake in?
As you ponder this, two noted Christian philosophers support my secular argument...
Søren Kierkegaard from The Sickness Unto Death:
The fantastic is, of course, most closely related to the imagination [Phantasien], but the imagination is related in it’s turn to feeling, understanding, and will, so that a person’s feelings, understanding and will may be fantastic. Fantasy is, in general the medium of infinitization… (emphasis mine)
The fantastic is generally speaking what carries a person into the infinite in such a way that it only leads him away from himself and thus prevents him from coming back to himself.
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.
[14] An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.
As you think further, exactly what is Halloween?
Originally, All Hallows' Eve was one of the great fire festivals of Britain at the time of the Druids. In Scotland it was associated with the time when the spirits of the dead, the demons, witches, and sorcerers were usually active and propitious.
Paradoxically, All Hallows' Eve was also a night when young people performed magical rituals to determine their future marriage partners. The youth of the villages carried on with much merry-making and sensual revelry, but the older people took great care to safeguard their homes from the evil spirits, witches, and demons who had exceptional power that night...
Can you guess my source here???
I'm wondering if these same people complaining about Halloween are giving up their Christmas trees too (pagan roots and all)
The mischievous tricks of the Halloween pranksters had become so out of hand by the days of World War II, that in fact, the day was known as Mischief Night. And like anything and everything that honors the Devil and detracts from the glory due to God, the ugly customs of the pagan holiday of Halloween were promoted and spread and practiced in greater malice until they became what we now know them to be.
We can easily see simply by reading the history of this holiday that what had been a pagan custom was combated by the Church for an honorable and charitable reason and how the Devil has used it in a perverted manner in order to destroy, if possible, what should be a ritual of beautiful custom. We have a duty, as Catholics, to practice ONLY those rituals designed for the honor of God and the relief of the suffering souls and given to us by Holy Mother Church as a means of furthering our salvation also. To partake in the practice of pagan and devil-honoring rituals is to offend God in a most demeaning way. We should therefore strive rather to return to the beautiful customs of our forefathers and practice in its entirety and with all the purity of its original intention, the customs of All Hallow’s Eve.
Source: Catholic Insight.
I can't see how any Catholic can participate in any Halloween activity--even one so seemingly benign as trick-or-treating--without committing mortal sin.
I did...
Should Our Kids Celebrate Halloween?
Good news! Trick or treating doesn’t jeopardize our faith
By Augustine Thompson, O.P.
Should you let your children celebrate Halloween?
What was once thought to be a harmless holiday is now said — by some — to be a pagan rite dating back to Celtic (and pagan) Druids. What’s more, it’s claimed that modern pagans and witches continue to celebrate this ancient festival even today.
The truth is that the origins of Halloween are, in fact, very Christian, and rather American, too. Halloween actually falls on October 31 because of a pope, and its observances are the result of medieval Catholic piety.
It’s true that the ancient Celts of Ireland and Britain celebrated a minor festival on October 31 — as they did on the last day of most other months of the year. However, Halloween falls on the last day of October because the Feast of All Saints or “All Hallows” falls on November 1. The feast in honor of all the saints in heaven initially was celebrated on May 13, but Pope Gregory III (d. 741) moved it to November 1, the dedication day of All Saints Chapel in St. Peter’s at Rome. Later, in the 840s, Pope Gregory IV commanded All Saints to be observed everywhere. The day before the feast’s evening vigil, then, came to be called “All Hallows Even” or “Hallowe’en.” But in those days, Halloween didn’t have any special significance for Christians (or for the long-dead Celtic pagans, either).
By 998, St. Odilo, the abbot of the powerful monastery of Cluny in southern France, had added a celebration on November 2. This was a day of prayer for the souls of all the faithful departed. Called All Souls Day, this feast spread from France to all of Europe. So the Church now had feasts for those in heaven and those in purgatory.
What about those in the other place? It seems Irish Catholic peasants wondered about the unfortunate souls in hell. After all, if the souls in hell are left out when we celebrate those in heaven and purgatory, they might be unhappy enough to cause trouble. So it became customary to bang pots and pans on All Hallows Even to let the damned know they were not forgotten.
But what about our dressing up in all sorts of fanciful costumes? The wearing of costumes on All Souls Day began in France during the 14th and 15th centuries. When late medieval Europe was hit by repeated outbreaks of the bubonic plague — the black death — about half its population was wiped out. It is not surprising that Catholics became more concerned about the afterlife at this time. More Masses began to be said on All Souls Day, and artistic representations were devised to remind people of their own mortality.
We know these representations as the “Dance of Death,” which came to be painted on the walls of many cemeteries of the day. Showing the devil leading a daisy chain of people — popes, kings, ladies, knights, monks, peasants, lepers, etc. — the Dance of Death leads in one direction, into the tomb. Sometimes the dance was presented on All Souls Day itself as a living tableau; people dressed up in the garb of the various states of life to hit the point home.
But the French dressed up on All Souls, not Halloween; and the Irish, who had Halloween, did not dress up at all. The two became mingled probably in the British colonies of North America during the 1700s, when Irish and French Catholics began to intermarry.
But, as every young ghoul knows, dressing up isn’t the point; the point is getting as many goodies as possible.
Where on earth did “trick-or-treat” come in? Trick-or-treating, perhaps the oddest and most American addition to Halloween, is a contribution of the English.
During the penal period of the 1500s to the 1700s in England, Catholics had no legal rights: They could not hold office and they were subject to fines, jail, and heavy taxes. It was a capital offense to say Mass, and hundreds of priests were martyred.
Occasionally, of course, English Catholics resisted, sometimes foolishly. One of the most ill-fated acts of resistance involved a plot to blow up the Protestant King James I and his Parliament with gunpowder. This was supposed to trigger a Catholic uprising against their oppressors. But the ill-conceived “Gunpowder Plot” was foiled on November 5, 1605, when the person guarding the gunpowder, a reckless convert named Guy Fawkes, was captured and hanged.
Thus, November 5 — Guy Fawkes Day — became a great celebration in England and remains so today. During the penal period, bands of revelers began donning masks on this date and visiting local Catholics in the dead of night, demanding beer and cakes for their celebration: trick-or-treat!
Consequently, Guy Fawkes Day arrived in the colonies with the first English settlers. And although old King James and Guy Fawkes had pretty much been forgotten by the time of the American Revolution, trick-or-treating was too much fun to give up. In time, it was moved to October 31, the traditional day of the Irish-French Dance of Death masquerade.
The mixture of various immigrant traditions into what we now know as Halloween had become a fixture in the United States by the early 1800s. To this day, it remains unknown in Europe, even in the countries from which some of the customs originated.
But what about witches? Well, they are a most recent addition. It seems that the greeting-card industry added them in the late 1800s. Halloween was already “ghoulish,” so why not give witches equal billing on greeting cards?
Though the Halloween cards failed, the witches stayed. So, too, in the late 1800s, ill-informed folklorists introduced the jack-o’-lantern, thinking that Halloween was pagan in origin. Since lamps made from turnips (not pumpkins) had been part of ancient Celtic harvest festivals, they, too, got added to the American Halloween.
So the next time someone claims that Halloween is a cruel trick to lure children into devil worship, consider relating the real origin of All Hallows Even. Invite your friends to discover the holiday’s Christian significance, along with the two greater and more important Catholic festivals that follow it.
Condensed from Catholic Parent, 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, Ind. 46750. Sept./Oct. 1995. © 1995 Our Sunday Visitor Inc. Reprinted with permission.
Many protestant churches have attempted to "convert " the holiday too...but the bottom like is Halloween is not Godly and ALL the churches should say so and encourage All Saints Day in its stead..but you and I know that is unlikely to happen
<> It has been a LONG time since I asked you to source this in the Bible.
When you do, I'll give you a cookie, as a treat<>
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