Halloween

Halloween is tied with Christmas for favorite holiday in my book.  I love the costumes, the haunted houses, the marathon of horror movies that are on television, etc.  My house looks like the inside of a b-horror movie during this time of year.  My kids have gown up with bloody handprints on the wall, a six-foot butler that talks, a shower curtain that had a psycho theme and a host of other horrific creatures that move and talk.   Along with decking the house out for Halloween my husband and I dress up every year, this year I’m evil Alice form Malice in Wonderland and he is the dark Mad Hatter.  It’s a little sad to know that my fourteen year old has aged out of being able to celebrate the holiday because in our area the age limit is twelve or thirteen.  But I still pass out candy to children of all ages.  It’s a holiday that I go over board with as an adult because I wasn’t allowed to celebrate it as a child. (Due to the whole razor blades in the apples urban myth.)

But what makes me sad is the way people have missed construed the holiday and turned into something demonic and evil all because of miss information that has been passed down from generation to generation.  It originated as a Celtic holiday called Samhain. It was mean to celebrate the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter.  Then it became know as “All Hallow’s Eve” which is the day before “All Saints Day” which is a catholic holiday that was started by Pope Gregory III to celebrate all saints and martyrs.  

I know a few people who treat Halloween as a taboo holiday that should never be celebrated.  About a year before moving to Illinois I lost a friendship behind my love of Halloween and even worse my daughter was no longer slowed to play with her daughter.  She even went so far as to knock on my door and tell me that my family was going to hell because we celebrated Halloween. (If celebrating Halloween is the one-way ticket to hell, it’s going to be shoulder to shoulder there) When I tried to convince her that we weren’t doing anything wrong and that even if she didn’t celebrate it our daughters could still be friends she quickly produced this piece of paper that was littered with miss quoted bible verses, verses that had been taken out of context or altered by the author to support anti Halloween theories and her justification for severing all ties.  No matter how many untruths I pointed out in the author’s work she wouldn’t listen to any of my points even though I had listened to all of hers.  My point is that it was never a demonic holiday, satan’s birthday, satan’s day or anything like that.  I don’t understand how such wild accusations about a simple holiday become solidified as truth especially when the history of the holiday is so well documented.