In the link posted above there are references and orders from El himself about his followers the Israelites not socializing and participating in what others of other nations do. I think it is pretty clear in his command even if El doesn't outright specifically mention days like Halloween. He still states: "When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, be very careful not to imitate the detestable customs of the nations living there. Deuteronomy 18:9
How do Jews and Christians reconcile Halloween with their religious command and order from El itself?
Or any other pagan rituals and holidays that were usurped in the name of christianity? it seems to me El is explicitly against such actions.
That sounds like it is instructing people not to fall into worshiping idols or performing other sins that may be common in that society. Notice the word "detestable" when referring to the customs. I see nothing detestable about Halloween. It isn't like you aren't allowed to do anything that other people are doing when traveling. Like if you went to Japan. I don't think there would be any problem taking part in a tea ceremony.
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Or, as it is with some traditions old/new, religious leaders would just take the previous holidays that were familiar already and rename them. Then all converters have to do is show up to the same old stuff. Both Easter and Christmas are close to Celtic feast days - Christmas, the end to the long cold days.
I think Easter is actually Lughansa [or somewhere close]. I'd have to actually open a book to find that one out, though.
Ohgam stones/Pagan Religion/ check Wiki out.
It's actually really interesting - especially when Christianity started to become the main religion of the British Islands - because the old Gaelic stories and tales of Eire, stuff about faeire people, Fomhoire, Aengus Ohg.... a lot of stuff, just morphed into different characters and phases.
It's like the Romans did - all the statues that were Roman gods became God, Jesus, Virgin Mary, and all the Saints.
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Halloween was originally a pagan festival involving sacrificing to pagan gods. It was nothing like what it is today. So that excuse is not very relevant to the people who actually invented the tradition.
It is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints’ Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular, community-based event characterized by child-friendly activities such as trick-or-treating.
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So it was first a pagan holiday, then assimilated by Christianity, not the other way around. Christmas is the same way.
Regardless of how it started, what matters is what it is today. It is no longer anything "evil" or "detestable" so there is no contradiction in being Christian and celebrating Halloween.
Actually, in this instance it's not that clear cut. I think it is very hard to find credible evidence that suggests that Samhain was being celebrated before All-Saints Day. Samhain is one of those things the Victorians got a bit hot under the collars about and invented a fake mythology for that has crept into the public consciousness (similarly the makers of The Wicker Man were disappointed when they found that the stuff they based their film on was not, as it turned out, derived from ancient pagan sources but was made up less than a hundred years earlier).
Samhain always was one of the Celtic quarter-days, of course, but the direct connection of celebrations is rather tenuous. One particular issue is that at the point All-Saints Day came into being, almost no-one outside of Ireland was celebrating Celtic festivals so there would have been nothing to assimilate.
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Nov 1st, 2011 at 05:50 PM
Kind of chicken or the egg problem. I won't deny that details are invented about the past to suit a culture's purposes, but something existed that they co-opted into Christianity, even if the details of it weren't exact.
It would be like saying not all Christmas symbolism is pagan. It's not, but certain elements blended into the ones Christianity added to it.
I will point out, though, that the quote I provided starts with "It is thought..." which is an acceptably neutral modifier for something that isn't 100% reliable but is the accepted historical wisdom surrounding the holiday.
That's exactly the attitude being condemned in those passages; it WAS "evil and detestable", at the time. So wouldn't you say the catholic church was wrong to have assimilated it? The way it currently is, it has no connection to saints or to paganism. The issue is its origin.
It's not actually the accepted historical wisdom though. Quite specifically, there is no direct evidence that anything was co-opted.
Indeed, on the contrary- the existing historical records we have about All Saints day actually pre-date anything we have on Samhain. This would actually support the idea that Samhain copied All-Saints, as ADarksideJedi suggested.
I would also point out that, in historical study, 'it is thought' is not an acceptable modifier but is in fact gibberish (an unsupported attribution). Even Wikipedia doesn't like such a term; it would get a 'by whom?' tag.
People have their opinions here but the idea that All-Saints is based on Samhain is not actually any form of supported or established history. Any Christian can simply say "It was never a pagan festival in the first place" and I don't think you would be able to prove them wrong.
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Nov 1st, 2011 at 10:03 PM
Ok, that's cool. I'd be interested to know your sources. I'm happy to concede, because I'm really not a Halloween expert or enthusiast. But I did a google search for "Halloween History" and the first 5 links all had references to some sort of pagan predecessor. There were varying levels of detail, but all were pretty unequivocal about it.
Obviously it's the internet so we can't just say "yup, that's fact." I understand that. But you seem pretty adamant here about something that is hard to dig up.
Then puzzle me this, why is it december 25th?! The Bible never says when Jesus was born, at all. The only reason they picked that date was because there were lots holidays in that season already (its close to the solstice).
Well it wasn't called Christmas, but various historical predecessors exist. The festival of Horus was around the same date in ancient Egypt, for example, having to do with the solstice as Kandy mentioned.
The overlap with Horus doesn't end there, it makes for a fun connect-the-dots with historical predecessors to Jesus to research his story compared to the Christ myth. But that's not really our focus here.
I'm not sure why you find it hard to believe, though. Thousands of years of civilization existed prior to Christianity, along with hundreds of holidays and practices. And several hundred more years went by before Christianity as we know it today was solidified.
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Oct 31st, 2011 05:36 PM
