All Hallowed Evening
Whether you celebrate Celtic New Year’s Eve [Samhain], the evening before All Saints Day [Halloween], or the posting of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 [Reformation Day], have a happy one.
Wikipedia does its normally thorough job of covering all of the bases on the holidays that share October 31st.
I’ll include my remembrances of Halloweens past.
These “harvest festivals” aren’t fooling anyone and they are more in the tradition of the “pagan” Samhain, than the “Christian” replacement, Halloween. You should get with the “program” and have the congregation start nailing their complaints about the way things are run to the main door of the sanctuary. 😈
[Don’t forget to turn back your clocks before going to bed.]
8 comments
When I was a child, we lived a few houses down from some very conservative Christians who didn’t believe in Halloween. Instead, they left bowls full of religious literature on the front porch.
.-= last blog ..Saturday Video =-.
“Instead, they left bowls full of religious literature on the front porch.” – CK
One conservative Christian I know, a decent guy who is for the most part not a nut-case, celebrates only Easter among holidays. His kids are long since grown, and don’t seem too personally distorted, but it must have been a joyless NODWISH season around that household when they were young. And I don’t even want to think about Halloween there.
Thanks for the clock reminder. I remembered a few times, but I forgot as many times as I remembered.
.-= last blog ..Friday Feline Pillow Talk =-.
We had the little trick-or-treaters out yesterday evening. Was a HOT day, and we had a heck of a thunderstorm late in the evening. Anyway, I’d heard that around here the kids do the trick-or-treat thing (unlike in the city where if they do they are chaperoned by parents or armed guards). So I went to the store and got some appropriate candy (snakes, bats & spiders) and got a few bags ready just in case. We had a pair of young witches first (and their costumes were pretty good actually). 🙂 Was kinda fun… been well over a decade since I had any kids call at Halloween. 🙂 I hope they all made it home before the storm hit!
To each their own, but that runs smack into peer pressure on the holidays. Halloween really is more Christian than pagan the way it is celebrated in the West. Ghosts and goblins are really not part of most harvest festivals.
That sounds like Jehovah Witnesses, Steve, as I know that is their position on holidays, especially ignoring Christmas, although it was also the position of the “Pilgrim Fathers” who fined people for celebrating Christmas, as they felt it was really a pagan holiday.
We used to have trick or treaters, Kryten, then the tax-free, for-profit media complex down the block started a “harvest festival” to make even more money from their flock, so we just get a parking problem.
Not a single kid came knocking for The Mighty Fang to scare with his blackness and shining eyes. Yet another American tradition destroyed by fear and commercialization, sigh.
— Badtux the Saddened Penguin
.-= last blog ..Happy Halloween =-.
The same thing happened in San Diego, but there I could off load the candy on a friend of a friend who went hunting in the Mexican interior to distribution to kids in the little colonias in the middle of nowhere. Here my neighbor’s kids have too much candy from their grandparents, and there is no one to give it to, so I have to eat it.
It isn’t a lot, and it lasts a long time, but I really don’t like packaged candy beyond Cadbury Fruit & Nut bars, and I am not going to risk one of those on little kids.
I have a neighbor with high hopes who decorates his half of the duplex every year, but no takers.
All part of our lost childhood, Badtux. I feel bad for the Mighty Fang – it is sort of his holiday.
The hilarious part is that TMF is such a sweetie that he really *would* have enjoyed people knocking on the door. Where most cats run when strangers come a’knockin’, TMF says “Oh boy, somebody new to play with!” and runs to greet whoever is at the door. Oh well, he’s getting plenty of cuddle time on my lap this weekend, so I doubt he cares :).
I didn’t bother buying candy. I already knew the score. If someone had actually knocked, I would have gone over to the pantry and given them a few Powerbars left over from my last hiking trip, but never had to resort to that…
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I wouldn’t have bothered, but a new family with 4 kids moved in on the block, and I wanted to be prepared.
No one other than the parkers came down the street.
Really a major bummer for those of us who remember Halloween.