Maybe it was named after an uncle of a god, or maybe an ant.
Is that the study of stcesni?
:smack: I always get those two words mixed up, and spell check doesn’t help! :smack:
Here’s a useful mnemonic.
Entomology | Antomology.
This just told me all I need to know about you. Carry on.
Could Jesus even pass out candy? I mean, wouldn’t it just fall through His hands?
Come to my neighborhood. There’s a Catholic church two streets over and the rectory passes out candy.
I went to a Catholic school and while we didn’t wear out costumes TO school, we had a Halloween party at the end of the day, and changed into them after lunch.
This definitely seems to be a fundamentalist/Protestant issue, this idea that Halloween is somehow religious, or anti-religious. A few years back, one of our neighbors didn’t mark the day at all, because (as their daughter told our kids) it was “the Devil’s birthday.” Seriously? I guess the Methodist church of my childhood never got that memo, as we had a Halloween party every year. Yes, it was mainly so we could trick-or-treat for UNICEF (remember those little orange boxes?), but also so we could dress up in our costumes, play games, and have a creepy dark funhouse where we got to touch eyeballs (grapes) and brains (spaghetti) before we had candy and treats. Oh, the devil won many souls that day, I tell you!
Only the Fun Size bars. That’s why he’s the guy on the block who passes out full-size Snickers.
Yes it seems like you moved into a neighborhood where the local custom of the ‘Halloween’ celebration is not to your liking, you think your custom should prevail for some reason.
Perhaps you should also move to France and try to get them to celebrate the 4th of July
Yep. It’s mentioned in the Chick tract in this post but not even Chick believes that. Similarly, my SO doesn’t do Halloween because she was raised that it “celebrates the Devil”.
Be very wary about all of these claims. They are often repeated online, and those who repeat them never verify them. For instance the date of Easter is, of course, derived from the date of the death of Christ, itself connected to the passover. It certainly wasn’t adjusted by anyone ever with the idea of being on some pagan date.
No ancient source records any “birthday of Mithras”. I got interested some years back, and researched it. The idea actually derives from a bit of speculation in Franz Cumont’s “Textes et Monumentes”, from 1899-ish, which started modern Mithraic studies. Not even Cumont offers any evidence.
As for the “old Norse custom”… erm, surely we should ask which source records this? And which source shows the transfer?
If we find that in Mexico in 1 AD, people celebrated a winter festival by stuffing turkeys (I am making this up), would that prove that Christmas is really a Mexican feast? 
You have to keep your scepticism firmly turned on about all this. Always ask to see the evidence. It’s never forthcoming.
With my sceptical hat on, I’d want to see some evidence. I suspect most of the “traditions” of this sort are like morris-men, or santa in his big red Coca-Cola livery; the product of no more than a century or so.
It’s worth remembering that the Christians are really hostile to pagan borrowings. This, indeed, is why atheists take great pleasure in jeering things like “Jesus is really Mithras! Hee hee!” and the like. But these people aren’t scholars and don’t really care – it’s just a form of harassment, based on knowledge that Christians are really hostile to paganism. But, because they ARE, this means that it is quite unlikely that any recognisable pagan influence would survive, unless it could be very thoroughly depaganised. Even then, there are periods when purges happen, such as the Puritans banning Christmas, just on the off-chance that there is a pagan link.
It’s certainly possible, of course. Things like the Green Man and Wayland’s Smithy are, we hope, relics out of prehistoric times. It would be nice to think so. But we need to be sceptical, especially of what we hope might be so.
All the best,
Roger Pearse
Concerning the date of Christmas, the very old-fashioned Catholic Encyclopedia mentions various pagan possibilites, but ends up thus:
So, the dead of winter is a good time to celebrate. In the same vein, the Day of the Dead has its roots in Aztec commemoration of the dead & was moved to the All Souls/All Saints days; better to Christianize the celebration than attempt to stamp it out entirely. The more retrogrades Protestants have swallowed the Pagan roots stories for all the Church holidays. Their resistance to Halloween is as much anti-Catholic as anti-Pagan. Ian Paisley:
If some prefer a neutered Fall Festival, good for them. Or take the kids out Trick Or Treating as you were taken; I never was, we lived in the country. Let the neo-Pagans celebrate the rites they find meaningful. (You’ve heard of Cafeteria Catholicism? The Pagans have giant banquets from which to pick their favorite dish!) Solemnly decorate the family graves for Dia de los Muertos or paint satirical skeletons in the tradition of Jose Guadalupe Posada. Wear risque outfits & party with other consenting adults; take a cab home–or wherever you end up!
Pick several of the above or none at all…
ETA: Christmas is coming!
A lot of the country folk around here bring their kids into town to trick or treat.
I always went to my cousins’ neighborhood, since the way mine was set up (at least where we lived when I was little), it wasn’t really ideal for trick or treating. Plus it was more fun that way, because we could all go together as a group. My dad and my uncles would take us out, and my mom and my aunts would stay back and pass out candy. My aunt liked it because she got extra help. (They live in a HUGE neighborhood). My other cousin came too, even though he lived in a big neighborhood. We always had a blast.
One fun movie to rent is Hell House, a documentary from 2001, about some fundy’s alternative to a Halloween Haunted House. The fundies staged scenes of “horror” about abortion and gay sex and teenage shootings and suicides and how all of that sends sinners straight to hell. The fundy in charge’s wife ran off with someone she met online, so the terrors of online hookups was a big subject in that year’s house.
Oh, and the satanic pentagram at the entrance of hell? A six point Star of David. Nice.
Of course, after your fun scare going through the house, you get a chance to pray with a church member and accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior.
I know I’d be saying on exiting, “Jesus Christ, save me from morons like these.”
Oh lighten up, OP. If people want to go, it’s no skin off your teeth.
Plus kids tend to score more candy at churches than they do trick or treating.
My (Catholic) grade school in San Diego has figured out that if you can’t beat the pagans, you can join them.
On the Saturday before Halloween–today, in fact–they now sponsor a Halloween parade, closing down adjacent El Cajon Boulevard (one of the busiest streets in the city) for two miles – which normally serve as a market place for prostitutes and drugs.
The word out is that if you go to Mass today, the priest doesn’t say, “Body of Christ,” when you receive Communion, but instead he just says: BOO!.
And on Halloween night – the church is locked up and well-guarded. No “fall festival” there.
Piffle. Ēostre happens to be the goddess of fertility, so unless you’d like to regale us with citations of the multitude of rabbits and eggs in the manger you can let this one go.
Furthermore, it is absurd to dismiss Bede’s writing because he was ‘just one guy’.
Umm, according to who?
This is the ONLY original source mention of Eostre:* Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.*
Where does it say “Fertility” in there? I will repeat myself- The Bede is the ONLY original source for any mention of Eostre at all.
Everything else is made up by later sources, usually in the 1800’s or later.