Has Halloween been defiled?

[Bad Management]

Never celebrated Halloween even once in my life.

[Twix]

Wish we could go back to the days where children went out for Halloween asking for money and food instead of candy.

[Jotaux]

I don't see any harm in it. Besides the non slutty costumes stand out more anyways.

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Wish we could go back to the days where children went out for Halloween asking for money and food instead of candy.

Then where would I get all this left over candy from?

[A dot Ham]

Clearly the internet has spoken.

For as long as I can remember Halloween has been about dressing up, having fun, and having a good time.

If you celebrate by sacrificing a cat and smearing blood all over yourself as you sit in the dark worshiping the dark lord... more power to you.

I don't get crazy about people not being thankful/grateful during thanksgiving.

I also don't care that people celebrate christmas and have no idea about Jesus... despite setting up a nativity every year.

Holidays are simply economic tools to keep you SPENDING MONEY. Have fun and don't take shit so seriously.

[Maletalana]

I think the real serious issue here is that there are folks out there that really believe that it has to be one way or the other.

ALL PEOPLE MUST BE EITHER CREEPY OR SLUTTY, PERIOD!

.........what? why?

That's like saying YOU ARENT ALLOWED TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS UNLESS YOU PUT POPCORN ON YOUR TREE.
(that really used to be a standard thing to do)

Like..... let people be, man.

Hypothetical:

You are living in an apartment building. Everyone in the building is relatively friendly, yet with vibrant, different personalities.

On the bulletin board in the lobby, you see 2 posters, one for a creepy, scary party, and one for a festive, fun, alcohol-filled party of awesome-ness!

Pick which of the two you want to attend, if not both, or either at all.

Is it wrong that opinions other than yours exist? Of course not, Donald Tru... I MEAN op.



TLDR Both ways of celebrating Halloween exist side by side. There is not a reason to condemn one or the other because you don't like it, if that's the case, don't do that way.

Edit: Should children be banned from trick-or-treating because that isn't spooky enough? What?

[Jetstream]

Halloween is a lot of things to a lot of people. To some pagans it's Samhain. To some christians it's the first day of Allhallowtide: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allhallowtide

And to everyone else it's a holiday that's just for fun. Either that fun is soooky or whimsical. That's your option and nobody is doing it wrong. Get over it, mate :P I dressed up as superheroes most of the time when I was a kid too, and that was over 20 years ago.

[Maletalana]

Never celebrated Halloween even once in my life.

My first thought was "omg that's so sad!"

But then I saw Norway. Must not be a tradition outside of US!

I have many fond memories of parties and dressing up as a kid

[Theodarzna]

Samhain is a festival of the Dead. Meaning "Summer's End" and is a relatively ancient holiday from which Halloween sprang fourth, and is only celebrated in the Anglo-Sphere because of the Irish and Scottish whose Gaelic culture kept the the Celtic holiday alive.

In America and today Samhain is not going to be an exact fit because almost none of us are farmers or directly involved in agriculture, so the holiday shifted its meaning.

[Deleted]

Aren't random costumes meant for NYE??

[vindicatorx]

I don't dress up at all so I find it amusing people give a shit when other people dress how they want to.

[Kalis]

As there is nobody around that still celebrates the ancient religions this was nicked from*, then feel free to do whatever you want on Halloween.



*No, you Wiccans, neo-Pagans and Druid revivalists are not ancient...unless you count the 1950s as ancient.

[Yunru]

Halloween defiled?

I think its time to:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Egp8nHY8XFs/maxresdefault.jpg

[Bad Management]

My first thought was "omg that's so sad!"

But then I saw Norway. Must not be a tradition outside of US!

I have many fond memories of parties and dressing up as a kid

Oh they do, must've started a couple of years ago.
It usually involves girls dressing like sluts and a lot of alcohol, more like a dress-up party I guess, dno, never been to one as I said.
Kids trick or treating must be more in the bigger cities though, never seen any of those.

[Deleted]

Only America dresses up like sluts on Halloween.

[Damajin]

Shit, we should go further back to the traditional Samhain dress then.

ITT: the new Puritans, same as the old Puritans.

[Bathory]

Halloween is what you want it to be. Can be scary, can be sexy. Either one is ok.

[Thagrynor]

I don't have a problem with that. Big red men brakes into your house to give you presents, with Jesus somehow inserted somewhere in there never really made any sense to me.

As for how many Pagans I know? Uh. About 4. Converts of course. I thought it'd just be a phase, but they're surprisingly dedicated.

Actually you know a lot more Pagans, since literally every single person in this thread cannot use the term pagan correctly. Since you all want to act all sanctimonious about this ridiculous question posed, at least use the terminology correctly.

A pagan (from the latin pagus or later paganus) is simply a rural villager, consider less "sophisticated", which much later came to mean anyone who didn't believe in Christianity. That means Jews, Muslim, Buddhists, Taoists, Shintoists, Hindus, etc are all technically pagans. And yet, you all want to use it to refer to a single religious belief system, which it is not. The fact that you refer to the "pagan roots" of Halloween as Samhain (which is actually a Druidic/Celtic festive of the dead celebrated at the end of the harvest season, and to the "pagan roots" of Christmas being Saturnalia (a Roman celebration of the god Saturn, which did take place at the end of the year) shows that you have no historical basis for what you are even talking about. So please, tell me how many converted to "not-Christianity" and how dedicated they are in their practice of "not Christianity".

The fact is, Halloween is a modern holiday loosely based on a number of celebrations/customs that were used in an effort to assimilate smaller "pagan" (ie, rurally cultural) religions into Christianity when the Holy Roman empire started to conquer the world (or what they knew of it at the time) under Charlemagne. There is no way to "defile" a created holiday that is nothing more than a mishmash of both religious and non-religious celebrations of mixed religions and cultures. So the question, on its face, is ludicrous.

[Skulltaker]

LOL, well considering that Christmas was originally about food and presents, and easter was originally about spring time and new life, people focusing on that is more inline with the original holiday than the jesus related theme that christians applied to it when they appropriated the holidays in an attempt to integrate the pagans...but lets ignore that.

Christians didn't apropriate anything. They deliberatly put their most sacred holiday, which celebrates the birth of their messiah, to a date where it would conflict with several pagan holidays, to destroy them/ease the assimilation. So, Christmas is about celebrating the birth of christ, in a way you see fit. Off late, though, people just celebrate the commercial part of it. Which is fine. They can do whatever they want.

[Serpha]

Actually you know a lot more Pagans, since literally every single person in this thread cannot use the term pagan correctly. Since you all want to act all sanctimonious about this ridiculous question posed, at least use the terminology correctly.

A pagan (from the latin pagus or later paganus) is simply a rural villager, consider less "sophisticated", which much later came to mean anyone who didn't believe in Christianity. That means Jews, Muslim, Buddhists, Taoists, Shintoists, Hindus, etc are all technically pagans. And yet, you all want to use it to refer to a single religious belief system, which it is not. The fact that you refer to the "pagan roots" of Halloween as Samhain (which is actually a Druidic/Celtic festive of the dead celebrated at the end of the harvest season, and to the "pagan roots" of Christmas being Saturnalia (a Roman celebration of the god Saturn, which did take place at the end of the year) shows that you have no historical basis for what you are even talking about. So please, tell me how many converted to "not-Christianity" and how dedicated they are in their practice of "not Christianity".

The fact is, Halloween is a modern holiday loosely based on a number of celebrations/customs that were used in an effort to assimilate smaller "pagan" (ie, rurally cultural) religions into Christianity when the Holy Roman empire started to conquer the world (or what they knew of it at the time) under Charlemagne. There is no way to "defile" a created holiday that is nothing more than a mishmash of both religious and non-religious celebrations of mixed religions and cultures. So the question, on its face, is ludicrous.

The same can be said about every christian celebration, they all are based on other religions for the reasons you state.

[Trassk]

christmas came from saturnalia, before christianity highjacked it, where romans would celebrate with a big orgy or food, sex, and sometimes sacrifice to the gods.

perhaps its sacrilege not to do these things.