Hi y'all!!
This time of the year is always an interesting and frustrating time for me. See, I haven't celebrated Halloween since I was 10 years old. This year has been particularly difficult, as both girls are in school now and have started asking why.
While the current "traditions" (if we can call them that) surrounding the holiday, historically, Halloween finds its roots based in fear. According to www.history.com;
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of “bobbing” for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.
On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III (731–741) later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1. By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted the older
Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
While it is well known that the Roman Catholic Church utilized and often supplanted native holidays and traditions the world over as a tactic to convert those in the new lands they were conquering, Christmas (which I'll discuss in a later post) is another example of this, the traditions of Halloween, as noted above, were originally based in fear and have very much remained based in fear. Not just trick (dressing up so that evil spirits don't recognize the person) or treating (leaving treats so the spirits pass by the house), but think about the movies that are shown on almost every possible cable channel throughout the month of October. Instead of celebrating the harvest and the change in seasons, we, as a culture, much like the ancient Celts and Romans, celebrate death and fear.
We do not want our girls to learn that ungodly fear is a positive thing. As I said early in this post, the girls have started asking questions about why we choose not to celebrate Halloween, and I have struggled with how best to answer those questions. My good friend, Klancy, put it in the best way possible. We believe that love drives out fear and that we should not operate out of spirit of fear, but of love. Since history shows that Halloween is not only rooted in fear, it also encourages celebrating fear, that is reason that we don't celebrate this holiday.
I refuse to judge those who disagree with our decision, and I would request the same courtesy be extended to our family. I am simply outlining our reasons for making this decision.
That's all for now! Thanks for stopping by!
{Becky}
