Writer's Block: The witching hour

[fridi]

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The most commercialized holiday in the year (probably after Christmas).

Besides whoever keeps saying it's in any way related to Christianity, is deluded beyond repair.

But I still like it. :)

Comments

[thiefqueenriyo.livejournal.com]

Sorry, random commenter reading through the answers. I hope you don't mind...~

I'm definitely not Christian and I love Halloween, but it is related to Christianity. It has roots in both the pagan holiday, Samhain, and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day.

It is not, however, as many seem to think, the Devil's birthday, or about doing evil things. =P Even in pagan traditions, it was about warding off evil spirits.

So, yes. Christian, too. I don't know where all the hate comes from, though. Ignorance, I suppose.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I don't mind an interesting discussion. Question. Where did Christianity borrow the idea of All Saints' Day from?

[thiefqueenriyo.livejournal.com]

Everywhere. Pretty much every culture has one, and often around the same time, just under a different name.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

So it wasn't an originally Christian invention, right?

[thiefqueenriyo.livejournal.com]

It wasn't originally any one culture or whatever's invention, and it doesn't matter, because it was still given such a meaning, regardless of origination.

Halloween stems from that, which stems from something else. But it's still within that line. You can't say that if something goes from point A to point B then finally to point C, that point B doesn't matter because it wasn't originally from there. It's a process, and Christianity was a part of that process and we've taken things from that to have what it is today.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Actually, iirc, the 1st is Reformation Day, I know that this is Reformation Sunday and this year it happens to fall on Halloween.
I used to know about 3 different theories on all this, different Christian sects take different approaches; I suppose we could wiki it :D

Halloween isn't celebrated everywhere, I mean even in all non-muslim countries. In Mexico they have the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) which in on Nov 2nd. I think this is some kind of amalgamation of All Souls Day, All Saints Day, and some existing pagan thing. The Catholic Church was very good at adapting.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Thank you for explaining.
Christianity has heavily borrowed from many other traditions. Thus, the claims of some of its fundamentalists that all of its teachings come directly from god are preposterous to say the least.

[thiefqueenriyo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a lot of Christianity's borrowing was simply to assimilate and appease, though. "If we make it close, then it won't be such a big change!" There were a lot of factors going into the spread of Christianity that it's kind of insane, though.
But, yes. I agree that those claims are rather silly.