At work yesterday a conversation about Halloween came up. A large group of people said that they don’t celibrate Halloween because it worships Satan.
What are the Straight Doper’s opinion on this issue?
Although Halloween was originally a pagan (I think) festival people who say it worships Satan are wrong on two counts. Firstly it never did that. Secondly they are taking it out of the context it now assumes, which is just a fun holiday for kids. I personally love Halloween cos of all the cool horror movies. In fact on halloween me and my g/f are going to see What Lies Beneath and then I’m going to come home and watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yup, you can’t been Halloween.
Halloween as it is celebrated in this country bears little resemblance to the pagan celebrations from which it derives, nor has it EVER been a Satanic holiday.
Here is a fairly well researched site discussing the origins of Halloween, with commentary from readers and an Afterword from the author.
Unless you actively worship the devil, Halloween is just fun. But I have a friend who belongs to a church that believes Halloween is devil worship, so their church has a harvest festival instead, and no “satanic” costumes are allowed, such as devils, or murderers (Freddy Krueger, the Scream character) or any other costume which might depict a violent or evil character.
No one else can know that someone celebrating Halloween is worshipping evil, that is just their assumption.
I think, in the Catholic religion, Halloween is All Soul’s Day, when you pray for the souls of the dead, and November 1st is All Saint’s Day.
close. November 1 is All Saint’s Day, a feast for those in heaven. November 2 is All Soul’s day, a day for all who have died.
All Saint’s Day used to be called All Hallow’s Day, hence the day before was Hallow’s Eve, shortened to Halloween.
I believe the origional pagan holiday was called Shamain. For celtics it was also (IIRC) when the courts of the fae swapped who ruled.
Fundemanalists have a habit of calling that which is pagan evil and Satan worshiping. The Chick (as in http://www.chick.com) brand of Christianity believes in pagan gods, they are demons created by Satan to lure souls from Christ.
I’m sure some devil-worshipers use Halloween as a holiday because hard core Christians say it is. However I’ve always heard the night before Halloween being called Devil’s Night, where I used to live that was when all the dumb ass punks did their overly destructive pranks.
Samhain
Well of course if you consider all other Gods to be Satan in disguise, than all pagan holidays are Satanic. But then you should be consistant and give up Christmas, another pagan holiday. Shouldn’t that have lingering evil associations too?
From what I know about the pagan celebration (based admittedly, mostly on how it is celebrated now) it’s a harvest festival (not unlike what the Christians are trying to “replace” it with), and marks the transition from the fertile part of the year to the “dead” part. Winter. Therefore it’s the time of the year the dead are closest to the living. At the Wiccan circle I went to we sent off greetings to those we missed and who we might feel we hadn’t said a proper goodbye to.
Then we passed around the roast baby. Yeah right.
Halloween as practiced is as evil as mild made-for-Saturday-AM-programming horror stories, and if we follow it’s origins, as “evil” as Christmas is.
Weren’t both ceremonies co-opted from Pagan ritual?
Yer pal,
Satan
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Thanks for reassuring myself that I’m not crazy. Halloween is my favorite holiday. It was just that so many of them said that they don’t because it is evil. I could see one or two and pass it off as the fringe lunatics but ten. I guess my co-workers are more conservative than I thought.
Its got to be evil its my birthday. 
Ditto. Carrie’s on at eight tonight…hey any holiday that advertises The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Pet Sematary in lieu of Its a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carroll is my kind of holiday, bebe.
you can always ask them if the reason that they don’t like the Halloween is because it is Pagan in origin, then why do they celibrate Christmas and Easter when both have Pagan origins.
“Halloween worships Satan”? What a load of crap.
Satan and God both are hocus-pocus conceptualizations that are only important to weak-minded people who can’t deal with their own mortality and the fact that their puny little lives really aren’t all that important in the grand scheme of the universe.
I think the reason you hear so much “paganism=Satanism” rhetoric from Christian leaders is that they know there are only so many superstitious morons around. Paganism, as intellectually bankrupt as it is, tends to draw in the same kind of energetic simpletons that Christianity does. At least paganism doesn’t seem to come with the extra baggage- the moralizing, judgmentalism, and prosetylization that you only see from Christians.
Happy birthday, Threll! My birthday is on October 30 – Devil’s Night, apparently! ::holds up fingers like horns and says “OOOOO!!”:: This year it will be an evil night – I’m turning 40!
As for the OP – yeah, WiredGuy, your coworkers are full of what, now that I am Mature, I will call nonsense instead of crap.
Ohh boy. I think there’s gonna be some fallout from this one.
[runs away and takes cover in the bomb shelter]
But…I’m a weak-minded person who can’t deal with my own mortality, or the fact that my puny little life isn’t important in the grand scheme of the universe. So how come I’m an agnostic?
I’m tempted to say that you just explained why yourself. If you weren’t so troubled by these things you might be an atheist, not an agnostic. 
Religion appeals to people who have these concerns. Not all of them necessarily take advantage of it. Some, like you, have not. I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit for being a free thinker and being able to critically reexamine dogma that you were indoctrinated with at an early age.
My next door neighbors are fundamentalists. They have two wonderful daughters that they are home schooling. A few years back they suddenly stopped carving pumpkins or trick or treating and instead had only a “harvest” theme. Yup, you guessed it. Halloween is a form of devil worship. What a truckload of tripe!
Ignoring the fact that Halloween has shed almost every last vestige of its previously religious overtones, it still remains a day of fun, that’s it, just fun.
Bear in mind that right after I got my wolf hybrid (in 1998), I told these neighbors that they could get a sister from the litter for free. Their reply was that they were waiting until after Y2K to get an animal. When asked why, the reply was, “We’re concerned that the production of petfood might be disrupted by Y2K so we’re going to wait.” (I kid you not!)
Of course, I told her; “We live in the country that invented the integrated circuit. I don’t care if we do our books with pencil and paper, there will be no major disruption caused by the Y2K bug. Our industry is far too strong to allow such a thing to happen.”
Needless to say they never had the courage to tell me that I was right. So what all this is leading up to is;
Golly gee willykers, you still celebrate Christmas too. And what with? A Christmas tree, that overglorified Druidic symbol of rebirth and eternal life. So, will they reject this evil totem of pagan worship? Of course not, it is now inextricably intertwined with their darling little baby Jesus.
::hypocrisy meter pegging noises::
All I can see is that they have denied their children some fun and made further asses of themselves. How sad.
[simpsons]
Tod Flanders: Daddy doesn’t let us play the game with dice, they’re evil. We just move one square at a time. It’s less fun that way.
[/simpsons]
And people wonder where my sig line comes from…
Golly, Lipochrome (and to a lesser extent Zenster), speaking as an atheist I sure wish we could keep this discussion focused on the erroneous notion that Halloween=Satanism without gratuitously bashing theists, Christians, or even fundamentalist Christians in general (many of whom do not have silly misconceptions about, say, evolutionary science or the history of religions). After all, religious people hardly have a monopoly on believing stupid things: I know atheists and agnostics who believe in psychic powers, Velikovsky, and Pan-babylonianism, for chrissake.
Anyway, happy birthdays to Jess and Threll and a happy Halloween to all! God bless us every one, unquote! 
— Tiny Kimstu
My church has “Fall Festival” on Halloween night. It drives me crazy. All the little kids are dressed up and getting candy. Who do they think they are fooling? I love my church, read my Bible daily, and am a devout Christian, but I’ll never understand “Fall Festival.”
I believe that Christmas trees are from a pagan festival, but most Christians would think you were sacrilegious if you didn’t have one. LOL!
My daughter is going to have fun trick or treating when she is old enough.