Should Halloween be celebrated on the last Saturday of October?

Halloween has it's provenance in Samhain, the celtic new year. It was usurped by the catholic church and became the dual feast days of All Souls and All Saints, the later being celebrated on Nov. 1.
Accordingly, All Souls was celebrated the night before. Costumes were used to scare the souls of the newly departed up to heaven and turnips were carved as lanterns. The Irish brought these traditions round the world.
The eastern christian orthodox churches follow the lunar calendar and thusly follow the schedule you've mentioned.

You're absolutely right, of course, Set, about All Soul's Day and All Hallows Eve, followed by the Feast of All Hallows (i.e. Saints). But don't forget that this was the Celtic New Year's eve, Samhain, long before St. Patrick stuck his British nose into the matter and 'updated' the celebration.

The tradition of a beggar's night, with kids dressing up as ghosts, ghouls, zombies and other weirdies is quite common in a number of European cultures, not all of them Celtic. And they all take place in late Fall (not necessarily October). In the land of my birth, Latvia, for example, the 'trick-or-treat' tradition was usually practiced on Martinmass (the Feast of St. Martin, Nov. 11), or so I undertsand.

It's actually an old 'Catholic' tradition. ('All Souls Day' is the day following 'All Saints Day', November 2nd.)

Because the Lutherans here didn't have a special day of remembering the deaths in the church year, the 'Feast of Christ the King' became their day of remembering the deaths since 18th century, then called "Sunday of the Dead" officially, in churches 'Eternity Sunday'.

Edit: In 1816 King Frederick William III of Prussia made his cabinet pass a decree that stated all Lutheran churches in the areas under Prussian rule had to observe the last Sunday before Advent as a "general celebration in memorial of the deceased". (Other Lutheran and Protestant churches outside of Prussia followed.)

We have two different All Saints´day in Sweden.
Allhelgonadagen- AllSaintsDay is always on 1st of November, followed by All Souls´s Day on the 2nd of November
Alla Helgons Dag All Saints´Day is celebrated as a holiday on a Saturday between the 31st of October until 6th of November.
Alla Helgons Day - All Saint´s Day lost its status as holiday at the holidayreform 1772. Instead All Saint´s Day was celebrated the first Sunday in November.

The Lutheran Church in Sweden is often more Catholic than the Lutheran Church in Germany.

Yes, Halloween is a celebration for kids, excepting those folks that celebrate it as a religious event, so it should be observed at a time that is convenient for kids, and their parents. The advantages of a Saturday Halloween are quite obvious every 7 or 8 years. Schools will have a Friday Halloween costume day, then Saturday means the little ones can start and finish earlier. After the kids return it's the adults turn. No school the next day, a day off work to "recover", seems like pretty much a win win thing. By the way, if you wanna dance naked in the graveyard on Weeknight the 31st, there should be fewer kids around to bother you. Comparisons to moving Christmas or the 4th of July are simply foolish. Christ was not born on December 25th, Christian religions moved it to the 25th to piggy back it on established pagan celebrations. I think moving the 4th of July is a great idea! Move it to February, too damn cold then. The July temperatures moved into the coldest month of the year will help warm the month up! Who will miss 1 hot day in July? Let's use some common sense here and think of why Halloween has become so large in the last 15 years. Kids, and adults that still wanna be kids.
That's also why we have Saturdays. It's a good idea, count on my support.

I remember Beggars Night from growing up in Akron. I agree it was a great idea.

Wasn't Halloween originally Samhain, the NYE of the Celtic calendar? And wasn't the skeleton in the window a tradition to honor Celtic dead relatives? If Halloween is a religious holiday then I'm a conservative republican. That bullshit is just another tool for the pedantic, religious assholes to scare the **** out of the proles with, keep the tithes coming, and buy pointy hats and leisure
suits, depending on whether you're the pope or a televangelist.

Sorry Ceili, didn't see your post mentioning Samhain before I posted. While we're moving holidays around, how about moving Christmas to the spring when Jesus was actually born?

There is no mentioning of when Jesus was born.
The only thing said in the bible is that the shephards were sleeping outside.
From that you can imagen it was in a warmer time of the year, spring, summer or fall, but not during the winter.

Two thousand years ago, the climate was much warmer. Even today, in Palestine, it's not necessarily going to be significantly cold out of doors in the winter, and that would have been much more likely to be the case 2000 years ago.

It can't be said with any certainty that the so-called Jesus ever existed at all. If he did, that would certainly not be a basis for establishing the time of year when he was born.

we hqave a sizeable hipanic population in many of the rust belt citis of PA so the "Dios de los Muertos" is a big holiday with everyone selling these sugar candy skulls. DELICIOUS

Fyi, it's been traditional in Hebrew culture not to night-herd flocks from Yom Kippur to Peissach (Passover) since roughly Mosaic times.

My knee jerk reaction is - I think it is a great idea. But we are not religious at all about the holiday. It means nothing more to us than candy and getting to dress up and hang out with friends. And do some groovy decorating to the house.

Getting to do it on a Saturday night every year would be awesome since it's not a school night. Practical.

Never heard of "Beggars Night" - but I guess that would be fine....though I must admit something being a little off about not doing it on actual Halloween.

I felt that way too when we first moved here -- what? Halloween is on Halloween, obviously!! -- but I got used to it within a couple of years and now I like it.

It was during the time of the census. That IS mentioned in the bible and that was spring. It's just history is all I'm sayin'

Snow is common for two or three days in Jerusalem and
nearby Bethlehem in December and January. These were the
winter months of increased precipitation in Christ's time,
when the roads became practically unusable and people
stayed mostly indoors. A common practice of shepherds
was keeping their flocks in the field from April to
October, but in the cold and rainy winter months they took
their flocks back home and sheltered them.
According to metrologians the temprature has not changed very much since 2000 years ago.

According to what meteorologists? Have you got a citation for that? The climate was sufficiently different that the North African littoral was the granary for Rome, something which you couldn't do today. I'm think you're making things up. The conditions of the roads would have no effect on the behavior of shepherds.



You're saying it snows a few days a year, this source, at Answers-dot-com, is saying it snows every few years. Quite apart from that, you're relying on the scriptural story about Bethlehem, which is by no means historically reliable. If one were to hew to historical reliability, we don't even know the boy existed.

Now, if you have simply pointed out that December 25th coincides with a few very popular so-called "pagan" holidays and was co-opted by the christians, i'd not have had a reason to comment. But you're trying to treat this whole thing as though we're dealing in historical certainties, and that's very far from the truth.

On the subject of Bethlehem, and Joseph returning there because a census required it, there are two very serious objections to that story (not history, story). The first is that a Roman lustrum (not census) did not require anyone to return to the place of their birth, nor was any attempt made to count non-citizens. There is not only no good reason to think that Joseph would have been a citizen, but very good reason to assume that a Judean carpenter was not a citizen. The biggest objecction, though, is that there is a record of every lustrum which Caesar Augustus ordered, and none of them fit the fairy tale retailed in Luke. So any claims regarding Bethlehem on that basis are suspect.

Just go into google and read about the tempratures around Bethlehem and you will find a lot of information about weather.
this is just one of several links

http://christmasxmas.xanga.com/395124709/item

I am in no way trying to treat the birth of Jesus as a historical event.
I know very well that we don´t know neither the year no the date nor the time of the day.
But you have a chip on your shoulder any time that the Bible is mentioned and you deney everything as a fairytale including the few facts that are in the Bible.

I don't have a chip on my shoulder, i just don't accept that there are any "few facts that are in the Bible." This cock and bull story about a census is a prime example. A monumental inscription was found near Ankara in Turkey which lists The Deeds of the Divine Augustus, and that includes the lustra carried out by him, and by him in conjunction with Tiberius. None of the dates work for the biblical narrative. Further complicating the issue is that it is described in the bible as the census of Quirinus, and he did not take office in Syria until 6 CE--once again, this does not coincide with the biblical narrative.

So i don't have any "chip on [my] shoulder." I have a preference of reliable records.