The early Christians called the festival Pascha. The name Easter was the name the feast got when it was explained to the Saxons–that is, in the process of translating the idea of Resurrection into their language–so the name for the feast in English is Easter.
“Pagan origins” only means that a monotheist can’t be proven to have employed the practice first. By that measure, using fire, making tools, and burying the dead have pagan origins. IOW: Pagan origin hardly taints a practice for the rest of eternity!
That’s fair. It’s not on the General Calendar, so you’re free to take it or leave it, according to whether you judge its effect on your family to be good or not. That’s the parent’s job.
Random: I’m curious what you consider a horror movie? In my view the really good horror doesn’t indulge itself in excessive violence.
This could describe me most days
Yeah. My biggest problem with halloween celebrations is the sort of costumes they think adult women want to wear! Since when did a mini-skirt and bra qualify as a costume?!!? I tend to avoid more public stuff for that reason - I don’t like the sort of environment that results in.
Halloween becomes the meaning you pour into it. If you want to embrace the roots of it’s dark side, that’s what you’ll see.
I am not embracing the darkness of this day. Period. That is the whole point.
You have free will to do that if you wish.
Lighten up. The point is you see what you want to see which is the bad side of Halloween, and you are free to do that. There is another side to it that others enjoy. Maybe you don’t see that.
I’m light as a feather. Yourself?
No. That would be called relativism.
I do not see another side. Sorry.
When you take Halloween above the level of middle schoolers and especially when it is aimed at single people over the legal drinking age, it gets very vulgar and very inappropriate very fast. Even the pagans are offended…actually the pagans might even be the most offended! Can anyone blame them? It was their Dia de los Muertos, not a carnival of drunkenness and debauchery.
Live and let live means letting her leave it alone, too! It isn’t an established good, so she doesn’t have to approve in order to please someone else.
I have heard that in some places people are exhorted to keep close watch on any pets or farm animals they may have because there are Satanists who steal animals to sacrifice in public parks on Halloween night.That’s fair. It’s not on the General Calendar, so you’re free to take it or leave it, according to whether you judge its effect on your family to be good or not. That’s the parent’s job.
I don’t see it as a celebration of a demonic forces, though. I see it as a refusal to be in any way dominated by fear of those things that pretend power they do not have. I have no fear of death, and so I have no fear of skeletons or bloody injuries. I have no fear of black cats or people who have odd looks or black clothing. Dress up as scary as you like…I know better. I see Halloween as a sort of the opposite of the Salem witchcraft trials: that is, as a refusal to get hysterical when evil tells its lies. It is all Hallow’s Eve, and the day after shows where the power really is!
Still, that is just my take on it. I can understand the other side, particularly since evil is already glamourized very much these days. The Church leaves these questions up to us because this is in the province of the parent in a particular home and a particular culture to decide. That is why unless a particular culture pointedly made local observances of Halloween into an anti-Christian holiday, I don’t expect the bishops to direct this one way or the other.
As an example, I could understand it if the Archbishop of San Francisco advised Catholics to stay away from adult Halloween observances in that city. Those are so blatantly anti-Catholic and so blatantly celebratory of serious sin, and particularly so vulgar and hateful towards clergy and professional religious that it is hardly to be believed. If a priest in his clerical clothing couldn’t be seen at an event without being openly taunted or thought an enemy of the Church, that’s an event that conscience requires us to boycott!
I’m missing the part where I said someone had to please me about Halloween. Many people see a fun, playful side to Halloween. If one wants to look into Halloweens roots and see only the dark side, is it not normal that this is their version of Halloween?When you take Halloween above the level of middle schoolers and especially when it is aimed at single people over the legal drinking age, it gets very vulgar and very inappropriate very fast. Even the pagans are offended…actually the pagans might even be the most offended! Can anyone blame them? It was their Dia de los Muertos, not a carnival of drunkenness and debauchery.
I don’t think the topic of death ought to be avoided, but holidays that aren’t rated PG are just bad. Sin becomes not just a risk, but de rigueur among those who feel a need to compete in their outrageousness. Very small kids might not be able to handle A Christmas Carol, but any worse than that, and you’re past what ought to be incorporated in a tradition.
Live and let live means letting her leave it alone, too! It isn’t an established good, so she doesn’t have to approve in order to please someone else.
It’s easier to get away with rejecting all rock’n’roll written after 1969 than to reject Halloween.
I think you are the one being hypersensitive. There many people who do not see a light or fun side of halloween…include some saints.
What exactly is offending you? That multitudes of Catholics see another side of Halloween and I brought it up to you?
Several stores in our area put signs on their doors saying that no one is to enter the store wearing a Halloween mask. They are, I suppose, attempting to foil someone who might enter with the intention of holding the places up.
. This whole thread has been about the fun side of Halloween. If it’s so offensive to see the fun side of Halloween someone should shut the thread down. Oh, it must be wrong of me to bring up the fun side of Halloween to one of the people who doesn’t like Halloween even though they are on a thread about Halloween. This is still CAF, right?
Not really. Not the whole thread.
I am not offended by anything that anyone has said. We all have free will.
Why must you be overly dramatic?