Halloween and All Saints Day

How I feel about Halloween

  • I like Halloween

    Votes: 15 55.6%

  • I dislike Halloween

    Votes: 1 3.7%

  • Halloween is OK

    Votes: 3 11.1%

  • I dont care either way

    Votes: 4 14.8%

  • I have mixed feelings

    Votes: 4 14.8%
  • Total voters
    27
Bandit,



I must have missed your other question, I just had a look but couldn’t see what you meant so if you could remind me…



I don’t scare easy; you are speaking to someone who insists on not having injections at the dentists! :eek: And horror movies are more like comedies to me.:p



What kind of thing are you looking for as concerns scares? Are you having a big Halloween party or something, my wife makes more of Halloween than Christmas. A very loud bang followed by all the lights going off usually does the trick, but may not be advisable these days [terrorists n all]. Ghost hunting in the woods at midnight is always a good one, tell people ‘this is where the witches used to come to perform black magic’, then go the wrong way back and say you are lost, taking the party to a pre-designed enclosure with ‘things’ hanging from trees, with a few hidden friends!



Perhaps that’s a little dark for you eh! :D :cool:



Btw, yes I agree Halloween should not be a Christian festival, some would question if Christmas [winter solstice] should be, as other dates have been put forwards as Christ’s birthday, and it really has become something other than Christian [a bit beyond even pagan gluttony etc.].

Z
 
Scarlet Pimpernel said:
Yeah, it's a big holiday in Mexico - Dia de los Muertos (sp?), which means Day of the Dead, and it's a day of celebration for the whole family. Seriously - though I'm not sure if the joyousness stems from the idea that you get to be around your lost loved ones again for a day, or if people celebrate the fact that their relatives are no longer suffering on earth but have reached heaven, or if they're looking forward to the day when they will join their relatives in heaven.

"Halloween" is just a shortening of "All Hallows' Eve", "hallow" in this case meaning the same as "saint". You know, like Christmas Eve is the evening before Christmas Day - All Hallows' Eve is the evening before All Saints' Day.

The Church authorities probably chose Samhain because it was already a day to remember lost loved ones, but as far as I know the justification for the holiday in the first place was that there was a need for a "catch-all" saint's day to honor all the saints who didn't have their own holy day in the Church calendar. I have no idea if it is celebrated in areas where the Orthodox church is influential, or if it's purely a Roman thing.

As for your objection that there's no reference to it in the bible, that's certainly true, but then there's no reference to saints either, is there? Or any of the holidays based on saints such as St. Valentines Day, St. Nicholas' Day, St. John the Baptist, Assumption of Mary, Three Kings Day....

The thing is, the Catholic Church has always considered Church tradition to be as important a source of revelation, or nearly so, as the bible.
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hmm. very interesting. i guess i just never seen it as anything religious or spiritual before. (except for ghosts & goblins) more or less a fun holiday to get spooked & watch the children have fun the same way I did growing up. so while others are carving a pumpkin to keep a bad spirit away, I am carving one to get scared.:)

for me, i think if i was going to a cemetary to do somehting like that, it would be on a different day than halloween. so i guess everyone celebrates it all differently- could be because every generation adds there own thoughts into it & that is what different ones remember about it. like you say, the same goes for St Valentines Day.
 
_Z_ said:
Bandit,



I must have missed your other question, I just had a look but couldn’t see what you meant so if you could remind me…



I don’t scare easy; you are speaking to someone who insists on not having injections at the dentists! :eek: And horror movies are more like comedies to me.:p



What kind of thing are you looking for as concerns scares? Are you having a big Halloween party or something, my wife makes more of Halloween than Christmas. A very loud bang followed by all the lights going off usually does the trick, but may not be advisable these days [terrorists n all]. Ghost hunting in the woods at midnight is always a good one, tell people ‘this is where the witches used to come to perform black magic’, then go the wrong way back and say you are lost, taking the party to a pre-designed enclosure with ‘things’ hanging from trees, with a few hidden friends!



Perhaps that’s a little dark for you eh! :D :cool:



Btw, yes I agree Halloween should not be a Christian festival, some would question if Christmas [winter solstice] should be, as other dates have been put forwards as Christ’s birthday, and it really has become something other than Christian [a bit beyond even pagan gluttony etc.].

Z
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yah. that is the stuff I ma talking about. anything that goes bump & catches people by suprise.:D
horror movies dont really get me scared. it is more something like a real practical joke that does it for me.
i am not having a party but we would make a good team with some fun tricks together that is for sure. it is hard to find people who really get into it.
i played around with sound over the years & would wait til people get right on the porch then crank the stereo with some odd organ music. that has always worked.
i bought a 6 foot zombie that is going into the bathroom at work to scare the girls. when they flip on the light it starts talking & moving side to side. this thing is uglier than frankenstiens monster.

also, going to a good haunted house that has tunnels usually gets me to jump at least once.:)

BTW, Disney is supposed to be having all the good funny halloween movies on all month...like the one with bette midler where she plays a witch.
 
Bandit said:
ii also must admit that i have been spooked quite a few times. (mostly on purpose). and i have also spooked quite of few people over the years by the element of suprise & stories.
one thing for sure- never spook someone who is in a bad mood or had a bad day OR can get scared real easy. they can get real angry.
like grouchy people.
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I used to put up a sign on my door. "keep on knockin on Satan's door, and someone will answer you, and you don't want that." Kids continued and continued to knock though... me and a few old friends dressed in our ritual robes and masks, they keep knocking then boom two goat men come out of the bushes behind them so when I open the door quickly with aggression they jump back into the others arms, were great times I guess.
 
17th Angel said:
I used to put up a sign on my door. "keep on knockin on Satan's door, and someone will answer you, and you don't want that." Kids continued and continued to knock though... me and a few old friends dressed in our ritual robes and masks, they keep knocking then boom two goat men come out of the bushes behind them so when I open the door quickly with aggression they jump back into the others arms, were great times I guess.
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i have father time mask that i do that with. it has spooked a lot of people, especially adults.
my neighbor across the street goes all out with a cool grave yard, caksets & all.
 
I think the only other thing we put effort into was making "people" models that looked like men and women boys and girls... and we'd attack them with hatchets and smash and chop them up... Iside we filled them with red candy and lirqorice... so it looked like blood and guts lol, then kiddies would pick all up and eat it.... the beautiful innocence of the youth, MAWHAHAHA. Sorry *composes him self again* basically a spooky gory mexican thing, not sure how to spell it pinada? lol
 
Scarlet Pimpernel said:
:D Hah, Bandit, you got me!

The first one I've seen - it really did air as a commercial in Germany - but I fell for the second one hook, line, and sinker!
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Very good then Scarlet:D
Sweet. now i feel better, like i accomplished something.

there used to be a real good one out titled WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS SONG (& the lyrics scroll) then the excorcist girl pops out. that was one of the best ones ever, but i have not seen it around for about 3 years.
 
Hey bandit you are more dastardly than I thought! I liked the tricks – zombie one was great! :D I’ll be watching the movies – well the ones we got over here, ill look out for the bette midler one.



Oh how I would love to have a trap door for those trick or treaters eh! :p Ah well beastly hands that come out of the bushes and caress their feet will have to do!:eek:

Z
 
I had volunteered at the local public museum for their Halloween hauntings (until they :mad: me once too often [not abiding by their own rules, not feeding us when they promised {I shared a couple of filled rolls with a gentleman who is hypoglycemic}, and letting a five year old girl in to watch Nosferatu when she didn't want to go].) I played the Schoolmarm from Hell, and I used to tell the "patrons" who weren't following the rules that they were registered for my class within the next three months.

What I do now is I take out a few books by Edgar Allan Poe and Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, get a couple of taper candles, invite a few people over for "chow" and read ghost stories by the light of a single candle. The gentleman I shared my dinner with has been to a couple of my Halloween readings, now he and his wife do the same thing with their friends.

btw, Nosferatu was the German silent film that followed Bram Stoker's Dracula pretty closely.

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
 
The Day of the Dead is also celebrated in Mexico at this time (usually November 1 and 2) .... this is suppose to be the time of the year when the "veil" between the worlds is the thinnist and the ancestors can communicate easily,just as we can communicate with them .... so many cultures use this time to giver offerings to those that passed over in rememberence .... just as interesting note, there was a special ceremony on the hawaiian islands many many years ago to move the "iwi" (bones) of the "ali'i" (the high chiefs) to another burial place .... it took place on all hallows eve because of the opening of the 'veil' ....in the early years there were no formal marriage ceremonies, but later when marriage ceremonies were in place my grandparents were married on holloween eve .... which i always thought was pretty interesting since they were on the hawaiian islands ..... and later I found out about the "veil" .... he hawai'i au, poh
 
That’s interesting pohaike’! I wonder if the American cultures thought of themselves as children of the underworld like the Celts did [tirnanog – land of eternal youth, not hell of course]. :)

Z
 
pohaikawahine said:
The Day of the Dead is also celebrated in Mexico at this time (usually November 1 and 2) .... this is suppose to be the time of the year when the "veil" between the worlds is the thinnist and the ancestors can communicate easily,just as we can communicate with them .... so many cultures use this time to giver offerings to those that passed over in rememberence .... just as interesting note, there was a special ceremony on the hawaiian islands many many years ago to move the "iwi" (bones) of the "ali'i" (the high chiefs) to another burial place .... it took place on all hallows eve because of the opening of the 'veil' ....in the early years there were no formal marriage ceremonies, but later when marriage ceremonies were in place my grandparents were married on holloween eve .... which i always thought was pretty interesting since they were on the hawaiian islands ..... and later I found out about the "veil" .... he hawai'i au, poh
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that is interesting. but you know what i have found is the veil is there & just as thin any time of year. i guess i just dont have much of a religious perspective for halloween except for ghosts & goblins in the make believe sense.
interesting again how the holiday is connected with the dead by moving the bones of the ali'i.
 
_Z_ said:
That’s interesting pohaike’! I wonder if the American cultures thought of themselves as children of the underworld like the Celts did [tirnanog – land of eternal youth, not hell of course]. :)

Z
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WHAT? Am I missing something? The Celts celebrated the start of summer and the end of summer? Children of the dang underworld?

Waiter!

I'll have what he's having.....
 
Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine said:
I had volunteered at the local public museum for their Halloween hauntings (until they :mad: me once too often [not abiding by their own rules, not feeding us when they promised {I shared a couple of filled rolls with a gentleman who is hypoglycemic}, and letting a five year old girl in to watch Nosferatu when she didn't want to go].) I played the Schoolmarm from Hell, and I used to tell the "patrons" who weren't following the rules that they were registered for my class within the next three months.

What I do now is I take out a few books by Edgar Allan Poe and Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, get a couple of taper candles, invite a few people over for "chow" and read ghost stories by the light of a single candle. The gentleman I shared my dinner with has been to a couple of my Halloween readings, now he and his wife do the same thing with their friends.

btw, Nosferatu was the German silent film that followed Bram Stoker's Dracula pretty closely.

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
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the schoolmarm form hell. LOL
Edgar Allem Poe is one of my favorite writers & a great choice for Halloween tales.
i think the tales are a good idea.
i found a site online that has house of usher & pit & pendulum for anyone interested. actually i think it has everything he has ever written.
enjoy!:)

http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/Work.html
 
17th Angel said:
WHAT? Am I missing something? The Celts celebrated the start of summer and the end of summer? Children of the dang underworld?

Waiter!

I'll have what he's having.....
Click to expand...

remember the mole people? the ones who lived underground. literally underground. that was good creature feature
 
17th angel,

not heard of the dis-pater! Here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dis_Pater

all.

October 30th Wickerman

The scariest event of the season, Archaeolink celebrates the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain when the spirits of the dead return to the land of the living. The Celtic Mythology Haunted House returns in its 2 nd year even scarier than before. Spectacular Fire Juggling and Drumming displays! Traditional Harvest Games and Spooky Storytelling make for frightening family fun. In a spectacularly spooky finale, witness the Celts take part in a human sacrifice and then set alight a giant Wickerman.

http://www.archaeolink.co.uk/

hope they ar not still actually putting people in there! we just use furtilizer to bring in good crops nowadays :p

Z
 
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