Hey Churches, just leave Halloween alone!

[Pumpkin_Man]

Again, what's really starting to bother me this Halloween season is not religion. It's politics. They are really, REALLY laying it on thick with the campaigning, and I don't just mean Obama and Romney. There are several judges, the county clerck, and a lot of other 'meat ball' politicians running for dog catcher and just about everything else, and it's a never ending parade of flyers in my mail box, campaign buttons on children's Halloween costumes, and on Halloween itself, it's likely that I am going to have at least 3 campaigners at my door yammering a mile a minute about how I should vote for their candidate because he or she is better for the local ecconomy or what ever, and all I want to do is go back to watching my horror movies and hand out ToT candy.

I will vote on November 6th, but I don't need to hear about it on Halloween. I wish that POLITICIANS would leave halloween alone.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

Apparently there is a huge difference this year from state to state, re political activity. There has been so little campaigning around here that it is almost hard to believe we are having a Presidential election. But then I got a letter from my friend in VA, and she said they are being swamped with it up there, too.

BTW, Mike, that was a great post about the origins of Thanksgiving. I believe you are also correct about Samhain, how it had nothing to do with the Devil. I think the church, during the Middle Ages, misrepresented what it had been all about, because they were trying to get the common people to stop celebrating the pagan festivals.

Castle, I'm with you. Halloween is just plain fun, period. As for those denominations that try to ban it--I recall something I read in National Review a number of years ago, referring to the fear of Halloween as being mostly a "middle-class anxiety." It was pretty clear from the context that the writer thought the fear was over-blown. NR is not a religious publication, of course, but its founder, William Buckley, was a devout Catholic, and most of those who write for that magazine are religious people.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Thanks for that nice compliment, Murf. The Church, did do exactly that in the middle ages, in order to convert people from Peganism to Christianity.

Mike

[Castle]

So it was first a Pegan, and then a Christian observance. It was NEVER a satanic observance.

Mike

That was my point. I was saying that that's what most Christians or churches think you are doing when you celebrate Halloween. I know Halloween's history and its purpose, but some people misinterpret it simply because they don't understand it, and assume it has something to do with the devil.

[Murfreesboro]

I think the Church's position back then was that if it wasn't Christian, then it had to be of Satan--no middle ground. That's probably where all the images of the devil and scary witches came from.

To be fair, though, I think there was a lot of fear in the various pagan religions, too. They didn't have a concept of an all-powerful, loving God, so they were always having to placate capricious deities. I'm not talking specifically about the Celts here, but just about paganism in general. You know, like the Aztecs practicing human sacrifice in what became Mexico, that sort of thing. For all the ills of colonialism, the Catholic church did put an end to that.

I don't really know much about the "dark" side of ancient Celtic practice. If there was any fear connected with Samhain, it was most likely that some of the spirits of the recently-dead were not too happy with those who had survived them.

[Pumpkin_Man]

In ancient Rome, peganism was THE oficial state religion. Christianity, in particular, was illegal and punishable by death in the Roman arena by being fed to lions, among other torturous deaths.

That is not an indictment against Pegans, it's just what's in the History books.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I actually studied Latin for a number of years (seven, including an undergraduate major and a year & a half in grad school), so I know a bit more about the Romans than most people do, I guess. By the time of the Empire, most Romans didn't believe in much of anything, actually. They more or less "worshiped" their emperor, but it was a pro forma thing. The Christians were targeted because they refused to offer sacrifices to the Emperor. The Romans didn't care whom you worshiped, but they were very serious about loyalty to the state. For some reason, the Jews were exempt from this demand. I guess that had gotten worked out much earlier than Christian times. If Christianity had remained within Judaism, the early Christians wouldn't have had the trouble they did with the Romans. But when the rift came about between the Jews & the Christians, it left the Christians exposed to the wrath of the Roman state.

There were several eras of intense persecution of Christians under the Romans, but the two I recall best were Nero & Domitian, both of them first-century emperors. I believe Nero was the first, and the story goes that he used the Christians as scapegoats for the Great Fire of Rome in the early 60s.

What I said earlier about "fear" in pagan religions really had more to do with the nature of some pagan religions themselves, rather than animosity toward Christians. In the ancient Mediterranean, the concept of many deities was that they were capricious, all-powerful but not necessarily all-good. There are ancient stories of human sacrifice to placate some god or other, like the one about Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia so his fleet could get fair winds to sail to Troy. It is my understanding that Judaism ended human sacrifice through the story of Abraham and Isaac, and then Christianity ended animal sacrifice through the death of Jesus on the Cross--the "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice," after which there was no need for any other.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Interesting reading, Murf. I read the story of Agamendon years ago. However I was not aware that the Jews ever did practice human sacrofice. I thought that Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isac as a test of his loyalto to God.

And you're right about the Roman state. They did tolorate a lot of religious beliefs, but belief in their emporer being a god was forst and formost, and for that reason, any philosophy that went against it was seen as a bad thing and subjected those who practiced such philosophies to persecution. I also understand that Nero, who fancied himself this great "artist" who wanted to rebuild Rome, deliberately had the great fire set by his orders and then blamed it on the Christians.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

Interesting reading, Murf. I read the story of Agamendon years ago. However I was not aware that the Jews ever did practice human sacrofice. I thought that Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isac as a test of his loyalto to God.

Oh, I think you are right about the Jews, Mike. I have just always figured that that story showed how they weren't going to practice human sacrifice, although many other ancient peoples did. Of course the Abraham & Isaac story is also a foreshadowing of Jesus' sacrifice centuries later--the notion of a father being willing to sacrifice his only son (or in the case of Abraham, his only legitimate son, anyway). All those Biblical stories work on a lot of different levels.

As far as I know, Abraham was really the founder of Judaism, wasn't he? He's the one who left Ur of the Chaldees to seek the Promised Land, right? Moses was the lawgiver centuries later, but Abraham was the first Jewish man in the Bible, I think. So whatever he did must have been a way of setting his people apart from others. At least, that's the way I have always viewed him.

[Pumpkin_Man]

There were 3 great patriarchs of Judaism int he Bible. Abraham, Issac and Jacob, so yes, I think Abraham was the founder of the Jewish religeon, but I am not a Bible scholar so I couldn't say for absolute sure.

Mike

[NeverMore]

While searching for short animations to throw on the projector I found the one below. I think it does a good job of capturing the spirit of Hallowe'en.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4erlzcP-VA

[Pumpkin_Man]

Great animation. I especialy like the witch skeleton on the broom stick.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

Oh, that was terrific! I want to show it to my daughter.