What follows amounts to personal opinion based as much as possible on what I believe to be factual – but I could very well be wrong.
Halloween, as celebrated today, is a ‘corruption’ (used in as nonjudgmental a sense as that word can be used) of All Hallow’s Eve, which is part of the older (and now largely discontinued) extended celebration of All Saint’s Day, November 1st.
All Saint’s Day is itself a holiday created by the Catholic Church as part of its systematic practice of pagan assimilation in the 10th through 14th centuries. The second full moon after the equinox (as best as I can figure) seems to have been a traditional time for the major harvest festival (identified as modern pagans as “Samhain”) which seems to have been treated as a “new year” celebration and a festival in recognition of honored dead. According to some pagans, the “veil between the worlds” is thinnest on this day. (Modern pagans disagree as to the date upon which this festival is supposed to take place.) The Catholic Church appears to have converted the all-night “Samhain” festival into a “All Hallows Eve” vigil in preparation of All Saints’ Day on November 1st.
So Halloween is a faint echo of an ancient European pagan harvest festival/festival of the dead. IMO the form as it is now celebrated in the United States is so commercialized that it has lost all religious or spiritual meaning whatsoever, much as Groundhog Day has lost any spiritual meaning it once had and is now merely a calendrical curiosity.
As far as I know, Satanists give no particular heed to Halloween, although many goofballs claiming to be Satanists see the day as a good one to act especially stupid. For narrow-minded people who label all non-Christian religions as “Satanist”, yes, there are “Satanic” elements in Halloween, but then again there are “Satanic” elements in virtually all aspects of popular western celebrations of so-called “Christian” holidays, due to the to previously mentioned practice of pagan assimilation during the early second millenium.
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Hot spit, Jess my birthday’s Oct. 30, too! IMnotsoHO it’s the best day of the year to have your birthday.
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As for Christmas, it’s too bad that most people don’t realize that it’s a secularized pagan festival. It would be less divisive. Non-Christians should understand that they don’t need to shut themselves out, that it’s OK to put up a “Christmas” tree and exchange gifts on Dec. 25 cuz you’re not observing someone else’s religion.
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As one of this Boards resident “Christians” I can tell you that halloween is perfectly safe & sane, and not directly related to Satanism (altho there are a few Satanists who do like Oct 31st, they came after).
Yes, Dec 25th, when we celebrate Christmas, was originally a pagan Holiday. And it is now mostly a secular holiday- which is fine with me.
Easter, altho the name seems to have some pagan influences, is a “non-borrowed” Christian holiday- altho there are certainly pagan spring holidays around then. (There are pagan holidays for just about every week of the year)
Did anyone else see King of the Hill last night? It was all about this. It was great!
Some weird family had a Hallelujah Club they wanted Bobby to join. They took kids through a room, showed them a couple, whose hormones were going to get them in trouble. Then they turned the set around showing the couple dead, from sex presumably. Funny!
At the end, all the parents went thru the streets Halloweening. It was really good. I needed to see it.
My church has print outs of why halloween is satanic.
Some guy even passes out Jack Chick’s Boo! tract around now.
Nah. Not buying it. Halloween is Not evil, its fun.
Sigh.