Religious Conviction or Cultural Paranoia?

Now then, in answer to the original question.....
Cultural paranoia, that some interpret as being from religious conviction. To the best of my knowledge, most Jehovah's Witnesses, many Baptists, and Seventh Day Adventists do not allow their children to participate in Halloween because they claim it is Satan's Holiday.
I say, "Horse Hockey". Halloween has always been my very favorite holiday, even moreso than Christmas.
If that makes me a pagan, so be it.

Unfortunately, I will not be playing this year. TheBoy is 15 now and claims he is not "going out". He intends to stay home and pass out the goodies this year. I agreed to work so someone with young ones can take them out. Sigh.
I'll miss the fun but it's more important for that younger Mom to be with her little ones.

Hi, JG. Jehovah's Witnesses don't count. They don't celebrate Christmas or Thanksgiving either. Claim both are pagan. They're right, of course. Every holiday in the church calendar has its roots firmly planted in Pagan tradition. Just dig deep enough. Every Saint's day was originally a Pagan feast. And some of those Saint's days later on got further corrupted, following the Reformation.

Take Halloween. Baltaine was a high holy day for the Celtic Druids. The Church renamed it All Hallows (or All Saints) Day and the preceding evening, of course, was thus All Hallow's Eve which got contracted into Halloween. Folks went to Mass on that day but many still frolicked in their ancient ways on the preceding eve. Then, little by little, the whole thing got corrupted to where only little kiddies were doing the frolicking and the occasion lost all meaning, Pagan or Christian.

The most vivid example of how to corrupt a religious celebration is Ground Hog Day. Don't get me started.

Andrew, yes. LOL!

I think you've got it mixed up, my friends. Beltane is a late spring celebration... Samhain marks the beginning of winter.



See, for example this Irish Calendar.

Merry,

Groundhog's Day? Please tell me that wasn't a joke. And then, please tell me where it comes from.


I had heard Thanksgiving was loosely based on Succot, which itself is a harvest festival. Does it have other origins?

Dauer

Piffka -- did I say Beltane? Chalk that up to a senior moment. Of course I meant Samhain. Beltane is Mayday.

dauer -- no, I wasn't kidding about Ground Hog Day. The begining of the month of Februrary was traditionally a Celtic celebration dedicated to the demi-goddess Bridde. Rites and ceremonies included prognostications on the weather. Wth the coming of Christianity, May 1st was designated the feast day of St. Brigid, an obscure Scandinavian saint. February 2nd is Candlemass. (I hope I have the dates right; I don't have a church calendar in front of me. Maybe Piffka can help.) But the American colonists were, by and large, anti-Catholic (except in Maryland). They continued the tradition of weather forecasting on that date but excluded saint and/or goddess in favor of the lowly Groundhog. Total corruption of a spiritual sentiment in favor of childish p.r. for an obscure village in Pannsylvania.

Thanksgiving based on Succoth? That's the first I've ever heard of that connection. Doesn't seem likely as none of the Pilgrims were Jewish.

Hey Merry, *I* knew what you meant! Since you say you don't have a calendar close, you might want to check out the cool Irish Calendar I linked to earlier as it has some interesting stuff in it. Beltaine, Samhain, Imbolc are related (along with Lughnasad) as "cross-quarter days, meaning halfway between the solstices & the equinoxes.

Re: Thanksgiving -- Interesting thought about Succoth but other than the possibility of succotash, I think not. (Though some might say that any religious thanksgiving by Christians would have some basis in Jewish tradition.) Of course, there are some who say that the first Thanksgiving was by the Conquistadors with some Pueblo-type Native Americans in what is now New Mexico and held in late Spring... around 1600! Check out the link: First Thanksgiving on the N. American Continent

St. Brigid was obscure? I read a bunch about her re a church in Rome. Now where is that book... (Something like A Virago's Tour of Rome, quite a feisty book).

Aggh, I am maybe mixing up Birgitta and Brigid..
and it's not in that book anyway.
N'er mind.

Hi Osso! The book sounds interesting -- Virago and all. According to that Irish Calendar:

St. Brigid is the Secondary Patron Saint of Ireland

Yeh, I remembered right, her church is in Piazza Farnese. She is mentioned in papal history..

http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/ukraine/324/hemming.html

still not sure if Birgitta is Bridget..

Different dates... I think not the same.

Here's the a2k amazon link to Belford's book. She is quite a pithy writer.
Would you mind checking if my name shows at the end of the link? If so, I suppose I ought to not give amazon links as they track me...

The Virago Women's Travel Guide to Rome

I know I've read about her several places. One might be in a good book about Rome by Christopher Hibbert, not at hand right now.

No... it's just a set of numbers (which probably point to you).

You could be the first person to review that book!!!!

Haven't read it in a while but read it twice at the time. She is one of the writers on another series of pithy travel books, I forget the name of that.

I'm sure she's not the irish saint but she might be the one Merry Andrew was talking about. It's a few posts back and I'm well confused now.

I'm sorry, double post.

Aha, Brigid is Birgitta. Now whether this is the same woman, I dunno.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02782a.htm

Merry,

No, but they did read the bible. While I am suspicious of the theory, I do see some connection. Biblically, these are the things that make me think they may be related -- I'm using the Geneva translation, as apparently this was what they took with them:

23:39 Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the LORD seven days: on the first day [shall be] a sabbath, and on the eighth day [shall be] a sabbath.

23:43 That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in s booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I [am] the LORD your God.


So as a pilgrim, having left England (Egypt) to go on a perilous journey through the ocean(desert), forced to live in a boat(succah of the desert) during this time, and then finally having seen their first harvest, these bible folk may have turned to the bible for a way to celebrate their bounty and used Succot for inspiration. I may be stretching things and if I am please knock it down. I'm not suggesting Thanksgiving is Succot, just that the verses about Succot in the Geneva Bible were inspiration for Thanksgiving.

Dauer

edit: Those quotes are from Leviticus

Weeell...I think it's a bit of a stretch. Succoth is a late Summer festival. Thanksgiving is a Harvest festival. Harvest festivals of various kinds had also been popular in pagan Europe for centuries. The only thing that links Succoth and Thanksgiving is the attitude of gratitude in both cases. Whether or not the Pilgrim Fathers had Succoth in mind when they staged their first feast we'll never know (unless some long-lost diary of Gov. Bradford turns up unexpectedly in Plymouth).

Succot is a Harvest festival. During the festival we use the myrtle, palm, willow, and etrog to represent the four types of species that grow in Israel. This is also mentioned biblically. The time of Succot varies on our calendar but the past one was from September 29th to October 6th. Next year it will be from October 17th to the 24th.

However, I do not expect the Pilgrims to know what time of year it falls at because I doubt they would have known the Hebrew Calendar. I only expect them to know it as a harvest festival, which is exactly how it is mentioned outside of the example of the booths, which may very well have originally been what workers would stay in during the harvest. Considering they rejected so much of what they saw in England,

"To the Pilgrims, there were only two sacraments: baptism and the Lord's Supper.  The other sacraments (Confession, Penance, Confirmation, Ordination, Marriage, Confession, Last Rites) of the Catholic and Anglican churches were inventions of man and were therefore not Holy.  The Pilgrims opposed the mass, and considered marriage a civil affair (not a religious sacrament).  The legitimacy of the pope, the saints, and the church hierarchy was rejected, as was the veneration of relics.  Icons and religious symbols such as crosses, statues, stain-glass windows, fancy architecture, and other worldly manifestations of religion were rejected...

 The Pilgrims did not celebrate religious holidays--Christmas and Easter being the prime examples.  These holidays were invented by man to memorialize Jesus, and are not prescribed by the Bible and therefore cannot be Holy."

http://members.aol.com/mayflo1620/religion.html

I find it very unlikely they would hold onto a pagan festival, and much more likely they would take something from the bible that was such a large part of their religion and holy to them.

Dauer

I didn't expect to be actually arguing that this is what happened and was just looking for clarification, but now that I've looked at their religious position it seems much more likely. And just to clarify, I don't believe they learned about Succot from Jews, but just from the Bible. The Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and weren't allowed back until 1655. For timeline in England:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7221/jewishistory.htm


Edit: The biblical verse explaining the reason for the booths could be understood as something like, "This is the reason you dwell in temporary booths; because you dwelled in them in the desert. Not because you were working in the fields and needed a place for shade and rest." That is how it could be understood in a historical context, though it may be incorrect.