History of Hollowe'en: Need Rebuttal help

Oct 26 15:49 UTC 1995

Who was it that said that a twisted truth is worse than an outright lie?
 The following was posted where I work, and has me so mad I could spit.  I'd
like to post a rebuttal.  Unfortunately, between a poor memory for the
research I once did, and a tight deadline that gives me no time to re-do the
research, I don't have the facts that I need on hand.  Can some of you help
me, please?

Mark, would you be wiling to post a cry for help on a folklore usenet
group, if there is one?  or do you have information (specifically about the
Jack story mentioned here) to help?

thanks,
Becca Price
ncr02!ncr02!bprice@ucs01!attmail.com
or ncr02!bprice@attmail.com

_________________________________________
THE HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN
(reprinted from some magazine, title illegible on my photocopy)

"Mom, can I dress up like Casper this year?  Dad, can we carve a
jack-o-lantern and put it on the porch?"

Halloween... costume-clad children happily skipping from door to door
shouting "Trick or Treat." expecting to fil their bags with candy, gum and
other goodies... houses decorated with jack-o-lanterns, pumpkins, witches
with broomsticks and black cats.  These are the most common sights of the
celebration of Halloween.  They are all make-believe and harmless... or are
they?

Each year at Halloween, parents are faced with the dilemma of what the world
calls harmless fun and their own concerns about the spiritual significance
of this holiday.  while we all have to hear God for ourselves concerning
these decisions, we thought the following history of Halloween might be
helpful to you and your family.

Halloween, which directly stems from Irish, Scottish and British folk
customs, was celebrated as the Druids' autumn festival.  The Druids were an
order of priests who worshiped nature.  This holiday was originally
celebrated to honor Sambain (sic), lord of the dead, on October 31  (the end
of the summer).  The Druids believed that on this date, Sambain called all
the wicked souls which had been condemned within the last year to live in
animal bodies.  He was believed to have released them in the form of
spirits, ghosts, fairies, witches and elves.

According to Druidic tradition, these souls of the dead roamed the city on
Halloween night and returned to haunt the homes where they once lived.  The
only way the current occupants of the house could free themselves from being
haunted was to lay out food and give shelter to the spirit during the night.
 If they did not, the spirit would cast a spell on them.  that is where the
phrase "trick or treat" comes from: they would be *tricked* if they did not
lay out a *treat*.

The jack-o-lantern was also part of this belief system.  The carved pumpkin
symbolized a damned soul named Jack.  According to the tale, Jack was not
allowed into heaven or hell.  So, he wandered around in the darkness with
his lantern until Judgement Day.  Fearful people hollowed out turnips (and
later pumpkins in the United States), carved an evil face on them,  and lit
a candle inside to scare him and other evil spirits away.

The Druids had other outlandish beliefs which

The Druids had other outlandish beliefs which have since turned into
tradition.  For example, they were afraid of black cats because they
believed that when a person committed evil, he would be turned into a cat.
 Cats were thus considered to be evil.  To scare them away, the Druids
decorated their homes with witches, ghosts and the like.  They also
decorated with cornstalks, pumpkins and other goods in offering of thanks
and praise to their false gods.

In addition to being Halloween, October 31 was also the New Year's Eve of
the Celts and Angelo-Saxons. To celebrate, they built huge bonfires on
hilltops to frighten away evil spirits, and often offered their crops and
animals to the evil ones as a sacrifice -- sometimes they even offered
themselves.

Some people believ that the only significance of Halloween was as All
Hallows' Eve, the evening before All Saints' Day.  But All Saints' Day was
originally celebrated by the Catholic Church in May.  About A.D. 834 the
Romans conquered the Celts, and moved All Saints' Day to November 1.  The
celebration remained the same, except for minor additions.  The Roman
Harvest Festival was then held in honor of the goddess Pamona, the goddess
of fruit and trees (the practice of bobbing for apples derived from this).
 They also wanted to honor the newly overpowered descendants of the Druids
in Germany and Scandinavia.  Therefore, All Saints' Day and Halloween became
unified, because of the same ties to reverencing the dead.
The combination of these customs eventually became the traditional
celebration we call Halloween.

**Information for this article was taken from several sources.... all easily
found at your local library.  Most encyclopedias even have information on
the origin and history of Halloween.**

 -------------------

Poster's Note:

Even if the facts stated in this article *had* been correct, referring to
"outlandish" customs and "false gods" is offensive.  Grrrrr.

 -becca 

response 2 of 60:

Oct 27 00:39 UTC 1995

*blink blnk*  For starters, I thought black cats were good luck in England.
*ponders*
Anyways, such tripe originates in small minds incapable of comprehending
rebuttals, so I'm not sure whether it would be worth it.
*builds a shrine to Sambain, then realizes such a deity has never 
existed, and trashes the shrine.*

response 4 of 60:

Oct 27 04:25 UTC 1995

If you think that's bad, you should check out how ridiculous the Chinese
idea of Feng Shui sounds to the western mind of open-minded people.

response 6 of 60:

Oct 27 05:21 UTC 1995

  Distorted as #0 sounds, I find this even more frightening:
 
    Hell Night (Newsweek 10/30/95) "Many fundamentalists forbid their
    children to participate in what they see as Holloween's glorification
    of Satan.  But an Arvada, Colo., Pentecostal church, the Abundant Life
    Christian Center, is taking a different approach.  For $5 a person,
    visitors can descend into a 'Hell on Earth' where church members will
    enact scenes including an abortion, a human sacrifice and an AIDS
    victim's funeral.  At the end visitors will be offered a choice of
    'Christ over Satan.'  'Churches have to compete with MTV,' says youth
    pastor Keenan Roberts.  'We anticipate a swell of response.'"
 
  I wonder if the AIDS victim's funeral is supposed to teach the price of
homosexuality, or heroin use, or what?  <shudder>  And a human sacrifice!?
If I were closer, I would be *really* tempted to show up, just to loudly
choose Satan as my savior at the end.

response 8 of 60:

Oct 27 17:56 UTC 1995

What sort of demented individual comes up with *hit like this and #0?
<now Starwolf remembers one of the main reasons he turned Pagan>
What I wonder is *how* they do the *abortion*?

response 10 of 60:

Oct 28 06:42 UTC 1995

Why use the conditional, Bruin?

this is why *I* stopped being a Christian.  It had nothing to do with my
moderate Methodist father, it had to do with the guilt and horror of
the Religious Right.

response 12 of 60:

Oct 28 15:43 UTC 1995

If there's a hell, I've already been there, for it exists in the physical
world.
Aren't Jack o' laterns really to help the poor spirit find his way?  That's
the way I learned about Jack's plight.

response 14 of 60:

Oct 30 22:36 UTC 1995

Random thoughts on
Cats used to be considered evil in Europe.  People would kill cats if they
could get there hands on them and in France they used to throw them
out of the window of some large public building on some holiday <if i 
remeber my facts straight>  This is why the Plague got such a hold on Europe.
Cats were't welcome around residences, so rats flourished, and the fleas
on the rats then spread the Plague.

response 16 of 60:

Oct 31 04:30 UTC 1995

re: # 12- that's right.
re: # 13- would you post it, please, and the source?
re: # 15- bingo!!!  And of course, since disease came from demons, and 
witches were in league with demons, they wouldn't get sick, right?  Ick!

I agree that refuting that particular bit of misinformation (#0), which is
pretty close in many facts but chooses a warped interpretation, would be
kinda pointless.  However, I *did* write a longish refutation to a newspaper
in DesMoines, Iowa for a letter from a Lutheran minister of similar ilk.
I posted it to the Nemeton list, along with the letter to which I was 
responding.  I can go retrieve it if folks want.

response 18 of 60:

Nov 5 16:49 UTC 1995

While channel-surfing last week, Kenn caught Pat Robertson saying that if good
Christians wanted to participate in Hallowe'en, they could _turn it into_ a
"celebration of the harvest of the great bounty God provides".
<still chuckling at the irony>

response 20 of 60:

Nov 7 18:20 UTC 1995

I caught the ass-end of a really *good* documentary on Wiccans on Lifetime
Recently.  Wondering if anybody taped it, I would kill for cpoies.
It affected mee so much, tan't evn type straight! ;}

response 22 of 60:

Nov 11 05:44 UTC 1995

        Missed it. Sorry.

response 24 of 60:

Dec 5 11:19 UTC 1995

yep.