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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 20127
[Religious]
Date Posted:
10/20/2008
2:04:04 pm EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 3,258
RSS: 16,435
Comments: 8
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Halloween's Origins Traced To The Harvest
Author: Kristy Davies Source: Cherry Hill Courier-Post(NJ)
Title: HALLOWEEN'S ORIGINS TRACED TO THE HARVEST
Hannah Montana, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, vampires, witches and fairies will be flooding the streets this Halloween.
But what many don't know or understand is where Halloween, All Hallow's Eve, began or what it means.
Some religions view it as a sacred evening while others try to curtail activity during the night by holding festivals in their churches.
"It's not that we're against it," said Mary Tretina, children's ministry director for Maranatha Christian Fellowship in Moorestown. "We don't agree with the traditions of it or the origins of it. We don't want to celebrate (Halloween). Our faith is not in line with the traditions and origins of Halloween."
"Its origins are very much surrounded around witchcraft," she added. "It exists, but is the opposite of Christianity."
Local pagans are eager to celebrate the upcoming holiday.
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Community Thoughts: There are 8 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Small Addition | Oct 21st. at 11:05:14 am EDT
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Ravenowl (Amboy, Illinois) - Email Me
Has anyone actually tried to find a Christian holiday thats actually either truelly theirs or at least the original dates for them? I would find it a rather interesting study to see how many days all these religious holidays actually occupy the average month. This one only is three days I believe, but I havent really delved deep into it.
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| Riduculous | Oct 21st. at 9:10:19 am EDT
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Rowan Foxfyre (Indianapolis, Indiana) - Email Me
It's so sad when they keep spouting the same tired drivel. Halloween or All Hallows Eve is of Christian Origin, being another holiday celebration "copied" from it's original pagan roots by the early Church.
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| FWIW | Oct 21st. at 8:51:04 am EDT
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stalkingwolf (Bullhead City, Arizona) - Email Me
The legend of Stingy Jack,
Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. He persuaded the Devil to turn himself into a coin so he could pay for their drinks, but then pocketed the money and kept the coin next to a silver cross to keep the Devil from reverting to his original form. Eventually, Jack freed the Devil on condition that he not bother him for one year and, should Jack die, the Devil would not claim his soul. A year later, Jack again tricked the Devil to climb a tree to get a piece of fruit and scratched a cross into the bark to prevent the Devil from coming down until he promised not to bother him for another 10 years.
Finally, Jack died. God didn't want such a deceptive character in Heaven, while the Devil, honouring his promise not to claim his soul, wouldn't allow Jack into Hell. Jack was sent into the darkness with a burning coal in a carved-out turnip to light his way and has been roaming the Earth ever since.
The Irish began to refer to the ghostly Stingy Jack as Jack of the Lantern, or Jack O'Lantern, and carved scary faces in turnips and potatoes to place in windows and near doors to frighten him away. Immigrants brought this custom to the New World and found that pumpkins, indigenous to North America, made excellent jack o'lanterns.
The reason we continue to carve pumpkins on Halloween then is not to invoke evil sprits, but rather to keep them away. This should put to rest the notion that Halloween is a demonic festival that celebrates witchcraft and the macabre.
While its association with horror and gore is a modern twist on Halloween, the ghoulish and gross now seem as integral a part of the holiday as apple bobbing, an age-old party favourite that has its roots in the Roman conquest of the Celts around 70 AD. The Romans incorporated into the Celtic tradition their own harvest festival, Pomona, named after the goddess of fruit, who is symbolized by an apple.
Now that Halloween has been demystified and undemonized, we can all enjoy the costumes and candy without fear. But beware Stingy Jack.
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| For The Most Part, A Positive Article; However... | Oct 21st. at 1:12:22 am EDT
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Keyra (Plano, Texas) - Email Me
"Its origins are very much surrounded around witchcraft," she added. "It exists, but is the opposite of Christianity."
This one line alone is what I take some measure of offense toward. Paganism, and specifically witchcraft (which many will say is not a religion in and of itself) and the religion of Wicca (which IS the religion of Witchcraft) is by no means the "opposite" of Christianity. To state that it is the "opposite" of it would be to conclude, verbatim, that whereas Christ is the Light, withcraft, and by relation, Paganism as a whole, as well as the religion of Wicca, is the opposite of this light - ergo, the "dark", or "evil".
Now while the Abrahamic philosophy of Christianity may well view anything that is NOT of Christian teachings as being "against" Christianity, at least insofar as modern teachings decry, this is simply not the case. The true teachings of the Christ (read the 5th Century Latin Vulgate, not the King James Version) has never been about black-and-white, good-and-evil, war-and-peace, light-and-dark exclusively, but did, actually, impart some measure of understanding within the myriad gray that exists between these two extremes. It is only later, in the mid-15th century, that the absolutes were devised by the church. These have been subsequently tempered and re-tempered throughout the ages until we have what exists today, which is actually a severe bastardization of the initial teachings.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that today, anything that is not of one specific sect of modern-day Christianity is looked upon as being "evil". For the hard-core Protestants, this is anything from Catholicism to Paganism. For the orthodox Catholics, it is anything that promotes the power of the feminine. The list goes on.
We are about as "opposite" of Christianity as the moon is opposite of the sun, if you go into absolute semantics through the specifics surrounding the religion of the Christ; however, in today's society, and its bastardization of the same, we could well be seen as "opposite" in that we promote individuality and the imminence of Godhood, versus the transcendental view held by modern-day Christians, and the unenlightened vs. priesthood separation thereof.
Still, being lumped in with the Hollywood-style "Satanists" and those whom are fully against organized religion in any form is what I take offense toward, for the word "religion" is NOT, by any means, synonymous with only the Abrahamic philosophies, and here in the US, this equates solely with Christianity, and even more specifically, fundamentalist Protestantism. We are a melting pot of not only cultures, but beliefs. This is what has made this country what it is, and to try to separate it into what is "right" vs. what is "wrong" based upon these criteria alone is what is further destroying our nation.
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| Blah | Oct 20th. at 8:37:19 pm EDT
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Ravenowl (Amboy, Illinois) - Email Me
all this sort of "article" does really is make me really want to shout from the rooftops that the origin of christianity really is Pagan... its just annoying hearing how bad Paganism is, when the person saying all that blargness is celebrating Pagan ways ALL THE TIME... It wouldnt bother me if they only were less oblivious about there own religions origins. It just makes one really want to call the local channels and get some air time.
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| ... | Oct 20th. at 6:29:45 pm EDT
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Draken (Bronx, New York) - Email Me - Web
Ahh, the usual fundie bullsh*t.
And great Fark reference.
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| Looks Like The Usual Tripe.... | Oct 20th. at 4:06:00 pm EDT
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
In between the lines concerning the usual mantra of Paganism and the harvest is the usual plug about "safe" churchy places to be.
At least -this time, there's a little less of the panic - in this article anyway.
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| The First Of Many | Oct 20th. at 3:24:38 pm EDT
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Blue Fox (Toronto (Etobicoke) , Ontario) - Email Me
Hey, guess what, its that time of the year when Pagandom becomes front and center in your local newspapers. That's right, with Samhain only a week or so away, we're going to be up to our collectie eyeballs in "origins" of Halloween stories.
And because of the lovely "equal time for nutjobs clause" that seemes to be the mantra of mainstream media these days, half of the articles will involve concerned and dissenting parents who want to protect sally and billy from the evil of their Pagan origins.
Though it is kind of nice that Pagans are front and center for a little while. Ah well...
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