Should Halloween be viewed as simply a fall festival by Christians?

Its ancient origins are related to the Autumnal Equinox, Christianity notwithstanding.

One man's false beliefs are another man's absolute truth, just ask the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Why should Halloweén be trivialized?

Respecting and honouring the dead is important to many people. That should not be trivialized.

What the bible talks about is irrelevant to the matter.

Fall/harvest festivals are an entirely different matter. Think Erntedanktag and Thanksgiving. Solstice celebrations/acknowledge autumn.

In the church calendars of the Catholics, the Anglicans, I believe the Lutherans (not certain about that) and some other sects, All Hallows, meaning All Saints Day, November 1st, is an important holiday. October 31st is All Soul's Day, and as The Girl observed, it honors the dead. The day has been sufficiently important that it informed the legislation which assures that election day in the United States will be on one of the first eight days of November, but never on November 1st. That legislation, passed in 1845, sets the day for elections as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, thus assuring that election day never falls on November 1st (think about it).

The ancient Goidelic Keltic tradition--of the Irish, the Scots and the Manx--observed the night of October 31st to the sunset of November 1st as Samhain, the "Day of the Dead." With their usual penchant for appropriating the important festivals of the surrounding "pagans" the christians appropriated the Keltic Day of the Dead, and made it All Souls Day. Not content with that, they made the following day All Saints Day, or All Hallows Day in middle and early modern English. So October 31st, in addition to being All Souls Day, is also All Hallows Even(ing), which became Hallowe'en (the correct spelling for the fussy).

EDIT: The christian fall festival, by those sects which observe it, is Michaelmas, September 29th. Until the Protestant Reformation, people in Europe might not know the date, or even the day of the week, but they knew the christian feast days. Michaelmas was very important, as crops were harvested and stored by then, and the Michaelmas slaughter was the minor feast day. Peasants might eat precious little meat in a year's time, but they were assured of eating meat on September 29th. On that day, livestock which were not to be fed and sheltered over the winter would be slaughtered and the meat salted down, or made into fatty sausages to feed everyone until Lent.

As a child, only children celebrated Halloween. Today, adults, especially I believe non-married types, use it for a day to be gregareous. I don't think any religious meaning is felt by many. So, why rain on a parade, so to speak, if it brings people a little short lived fun? Sort of like telling children there is no Santa Claus; why spoil the fun?

Who told you it's a celebration based on false beliefs, exactly?

Cycloptichorn

It's Jehovah's Witnesses doctrine.

The name is Christian, Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows Eve, the day before All Saint's Day, 1st November.

The festival's real name is Samhain, it represents the end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark part of the year. The reason Samhain is associated with the dead is because it is the one day separate from the rest, the year is made up of 13 lunar months each of 28 days giving us 364 days in total. The Solar calendar is 365 days and Samhain falls on that day outside the lunar calendar.

Dunno what they did about leap years mind.

Lunar months are (approximately) 29 1/2 days, so twelve of them make 354 days. The people who built Stonehenge obviously included careful scholars of the apparent movement of celestial bodies. With a very ignorant and superstitious population, getting the days of the solstices and the equinoxes was very important, and gave priests a great deal of power. But the Druids were not priests of that variety, and the Kelts were sufficiently intelligent not to need anyone to tell them that "the sun will come back" in the springtime. Samhain and Beltane (roughly, May 1st) were festivals when the already lax social code was almost abandoned. Sexual license was popular, and a good many children were the product of those festivals. Keltic women went around armed, and were often expert in the use of weapons. Women past child-bearing age, or who did not intend to bear children usually instructed the children in the use of weapons. Setanta/Cu Chulainn (it means the Hound of Cullen), after he became the Hound, went off to what we call Scotland, where he was trained in the use of weapons by two women there. Women exercised a good deal of power in Keltic societies, and the great mythic cycle of the Irish, the Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle raid of Cooley) arose because Medb and her husband Ailil of Connacht, got into a dispute because the head of a household was the man or woman with the most wealth. Medb and Ailil had equal wealth, but for Madb's great stud bull, the White Bull of Leinster. The bull, however, was shamed by the thought that he would cause Ailil to lose status, so in the night, he stole off to join Ailil's herd. Madb then convinced Fergus, an exile from Ulster, to lead a cattle raid to capture Cooley's stud bull, the Brown Bull of Ulster. This would restore the balance, and Madb at least would not be dominated by her husband. With a curse om the men of Ulster, Cu Chulainn, the Hound of Cullen, was the only defense of Ulster--he'd been in Scotland when the curse was called down on Ulster. Although still just a teenager, Cu Chulain held off the men of Connacht until the curse on the men of Ulster wore off.

. . .

Queen Madb, and Cu Chulainn defending the ford.

What has all this to do with Samhain and Beltane? Many children were festival-got, and with women well-armed and skillful in the use of weapons, you didn't want to question them too much about who the father or fathers of her children were. In fact, the woman might not know. For this reason, men didn't know if a male child was their own son, so men lavished their attention and care on the on the sister's son--they knew he had the same blood as they did. Samhain was the big festival, before winter closed in. Nekkid dancing and slipping off into the shadows were simple and popular entertainments.

Christians are a dour, humorless and forbidding lot. The ancient Kelts, before they were infected with the disease of christianity, had a lot more fun, and a much richer culture and more egalitarian society. Christians screw everything up.

It's a festival. It's in the fall. How exactly does this trivialize it?



How do they show this?