Halloween?

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TrixieMcGee said:
Well, my family is fine with celebrating Halloween just as long as you don’t celebrate it in it’s historical way. Remember Christmas and Easter were both originally Pagan holidays until the church adopted them and assigned Christian meanings and practices to the holidays. .
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Really? So pagans were celebrating Christmas before Jesus was even born? Wow i need to give them some more credit. Christmas is not a pagan holiday. Its a day Christians celebrate Jesus birth. Sure we don’t know the day. So anyday we picked would have been on some pagan gods “day” Christmas has nothing to do with paganism. Even more so Easter. We didn’t pick that day. We didn’t go “O we don’t know the day. So lets pick This date.”
So easter has nothing to do with paganism. In fact the term “Easter” is only found in Germanic or English language bibles. And the word is not used because of eastre or what ever its name is. But because of the word resurection. In Other Bibles it has it own variant of passover. Like pasach (sp) in Greek bibles. To say the Church adopted the Easter holiday is to say the Church adopted the resurection. Bit frustrating to have to explain to this to Athiests non Christians every Easter/Christmas. Really sad when you have to explain it to a Catholic.
 
I plan on celebrating with a healthy mix of friends, sugar, and alcohol. Benefits of having a bunch of grad students around!
 
I’m helping set up the local haunted house our town has every year.
 
BListon said:
You must be a college student!:rolleyes:
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Graduate school 👍 . Old enough that everyone can drink (and typically have some sense about the amount), young enough to stay up late and not have to worry about kids.
 
AshJade said:
I love Halloween! We decorate a lot, and celebrate all of October.
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Yay, we do too! My birthday falls close to Halloween and my husband’s birthday is on St. Patrick’s Day, so we both like to make the months of March and October into the most festive times of our year. Plus our town is so darn hot in summer that October is some of the most beautiful, sunny-with-cool breezes weather of the year.

This October is going to be a blast: a concert the first weekend, then my sister’s wedding on the second weekend, then we’re going to the ballet the third weekend, and then every year our city’s major art museum throws an elaborate Halloween masquerade ball, with a costume contest, live music, DJs, dance performances, gourmet appetizers, and wine tastings from local wineries, with all proceeds to benefit the museum.

Dear Husband and I are longtime members of the museum supporters’ society, so we go every year, and it’s one of the highlights of our annual social calendar. He’s an actor and I’m a fashion history buff, so we love dressing up, and during the ball the entire museum stays open till 2 AM, so we get to wander through the galleries drinking wine and nibbling yummy canapes, and then the dancing gets started a little after 11. FUN times!

Plus I love all the delicious autumn season foods that come out: pumpkin spice and gingerbread lattes, pumpkin cheesecake slices and calvados-cinnamon apple tarts at my favorite bakery near work, and I always get the Godiva Halloween ballotin and some pumpkin-butterscotch caramels to share with my husband. We still love trick or treat candy, but our palates are a little more discerning these days.

This year some of our actor friends are working Fright Nights at one of our local amusement parks (it’s not Shakespeare, granted, but it’s fun and a reliable paycheck for them) so we’re going to put on costumes, show up and SCREEEEEM at their scary performances, then we all go out dancing afterwards.

A few years ago DH and I spent Halloween in New Orleans, and took some of the haunted history tours and went to some of the huge masquerade balls there, and we’d love to go back. We also want to visit Venice and Rio de Janeiro during Carnivale season sometime.

I just love Halloween! 😃 😃 😃
 
We love Halloween! Just did our outdoor decorating on Saturday; fun garland around my porch rails, a strand of skeleton lights on the porch, 3 gravestones (my hubby has aspirations of adding to it every year) with skull stake lights (5 of them) going through it, and a wreath on the door.

Not too much inside; I tend to do more fall than Halloween inside just so I can have it up longer. 🙂

We’ll go to the pumpkin patch in a few weeks, get our pumpkins, and carve them the weekend before Halloween and light candles in them each night outside! Our son (10) will go ToT with friends; he still isn’t sure what he wants to be this year.
 
kristacecilia said:
The first Halloween thread of 2012!! Oh, how very exciting.

Must be October!!
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It wouldn’t be October without it.

We already have our inside decorated. We will decorate the outside a week before Halloween, ghosts, skeletons and all. My son is going as a ninja this year. I have to work and will be coming home, so I will just stay in my uniform.
 
latin_rite said:
Really? So pagans were celebrating Christmas before Jesus was even born? Wow i need to give them some more credit. Christmas is not a pagan holiday. Its a day Christians celebrate Jesus birth. Sure we don’t know the day. So anyday we picked would have been on some pagan gods “day” Christmas has nothing to do with paganism. Even more so Easter. We didn’t pick that day. We didn’t go “O we don’t know the day. So lets pick This date.”
So easter has nothing to do with paganism. In fact the term “Easter” is only found in Germanic or English language bibles. And the word is not used because of eastre or what ever its name is. But because of the word resurection. In Other Bibles it has it own variant of passover. Like pasach (sp) in Greek bibles. To say the Church adopted the Easter holiday is to say the Church adopted the resurection. Bit frustrating to have to explain to this to Athiests non Christians every Easter/Christmas. Really sad when you have to explain it to a Catholic.
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The ONLY pagan influence I can think of for Easter is the name in English and German. En. Easter and De. Ostern are both derived from the pagan goddess Ēostre’s name.
kristacecilia said:
The first Halloween thread of 2012!! Oh, how very exciting.

Must be October!!
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🍿
 
Razanir said:
The ONLY pagan influence I can think of for Easter is the name in English and German. En. Easter and De. Ostern are both derived from the pagan goddess Ēostre’s name.

🍿
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The colored Easter eggs, the bunnies…the converts to Christianity took the party favors from their spring fertility celebrations and transferred them to our Resurrection celebration. We’ve tried it out for several centuries*…call me wild, but I think it is safe.* :rolleyes:
 
EasterJoy said:
The colored Easter eggs, the bunnies…the converts to Christianity took the party favors from their spring fertility celebrations and transferred them to our Resurrection celebration. We’ve tried it out for several centuries*…call me wild, but I think it is safe.* :rolleyes:
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Way I see it…we don’t believe that all aspects of paganism were wrong. The pagans celebrated the coming of new life and the survival of another winter, giving thanks to their gods for the new spring. Even the Bible uses the metaphor of the new crop for eternal life. We have not ceased to thank God for the temporal gifts, only added the greater eternal gifts on top. It’s simply a matter of directing worship where it properly belongs.
 
DarkLight said:
Way I see it…we don’t believe that all aspects of paganism were wrong. The pagans celebrated the coming of new life and the survival of another winter, giving thanks to their gods for the new spring. Even the Bible uses the metaphor of the new crop for eternal life. We have not ceased to thank God for the temporal gifts, only added the greater eternal gifts on top. It’s simply a matter of directing worship where it properly belongs.
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I agree. One can be so wound up in distancing from the errors of paganism that one tries to leave behind the basic human inspirations that their religion expresses. Besides, the Catholic Church has never been afraid of adding sensory aspects to our religious celebrations, nor of connecting ourselves to nature via actual touch and aligning ourselves to the rhythm of the seasons. We aren’t afraid of color or smell or sound, of fire or water; we aren’t afraid to be earthy, and we aren’t afraid to look outside at the sky.
 
TrixieMcGee said:
Well, my family is fine with celebrating Halloween just as long as you don’t celebrate it in it’s historical way. Remember Christmas and Easter were both originally Pagan holidays until the church adopted them and assigned Christian meanings and practices to the holidays. We don’t know quite yet what we are doing for Halloween, I am being a train conductor and we haven’t figured out what my hubby is going to be. We will probably go to a party or something. I trick or treated as a kid and if I had kids I would take them trick or treating. I know many people will flip out on me for celebrating Halloween, but this is all I am saying.
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EASTER was NEVER a Pagan holiday. EASTER in the Catholic Church is the celebration of the Resurection of our Lord. It is not a spring fertility holiday co-opted by The Church.

As for Halloween, I like the old fashioned traditional stuff…dress up in fun costumes and go beg for candy. What the heck, have some fun!
 
I said that is all I was going to say, do you guys expect me to debate you. I will not. I do not want to debate you, I learned about this from history classes.
 
Razanir said:
The ONLY pagan influence I can think of for Easter is the name in English and German. En. Easter and De. Ostern are both derived from the pagan goddess Ēostre’s name.

🍿
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Why would early Christians name Easter after a pagan god? A Group of ppl who have been Tortured, killed in the most gruesome of waysfor the past 300-500 yrs for not even accepting another god could exist. Are going to all of a sudden base the most important and holy day in the Christian calendar around some pagan god? Easter comes from the words ester and oster. Early English and germanic Both have their roots in the word aus. Meaning East, shine and dawn in various forms.
Some scholars say that ostern has it roots in the word auferstehn. Meaning resurrection.
Anyway. To other posters who think Easter is some how pagan. Easter is not about spring. It isn’t about harvest or fertility. Easter is about Jesus. It marks an even when Jesus Died for us. We know it happened at passover. Thats why we celebrate it when we do. Not because we wanted to convert some pagans in germany. If Jesus was crucified in novermeber we would probably have some pagans saying we are really celebrating the god nov nov or something.
 
My family sees halloween as an annual celebration of demonic forces…we do not recognize it.
 
LSK said:
EASTER was NEVER a Pagan holiday. EASTER in the Catholic Church is the celebration of the Resurection of our Lord. It is not a spring fertility holiday co-opted by The Church.

As for Halloween, I like the old fashioned traditional stuff…dress up in fun costumes and go beg for candy. What the heck, have some fun!
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Easter was never a pagan holiday. Rather, pagans who became Christian incorporated pagan celebratory symbols into the Easter observances.

Likewise, All Saint’s Day was never a pagan holiday, but it was moved from March to November 1 in order to transform the Celtic pagan New Year’s celebration into a Christian holiday. Likewise, the Dia de los Muertos (Days of the Dead) are the re-expression of an Aztec festival that used to take place in August, but which was moved to November 1 to coincide with the feast of the universal church that best coincided with it. (Then, ironically enough, the modern pagan festival of Samhain was re-constructed from out of the Nov. 1 date of Celtic New Year, but that is another story.)

As one Jesuit explained it to me, “Our goal is this: We go in their door; they come out our door.” Many fully Christian feasts incorporate re-conditioned traditions brought in by converts or brought in so as to help make converts. It has made the Church a richer place.
 
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