Halloween is quickly approaching, and goths everywhere are getting ready for the one day a year we can go all out in public without getting scoffed at. With witches, ghosts, goblins and spiders abound, one day a year we fit right in! For decades the United States, a Christian Nation, has celebrated this pagan holliday with trick-or-treat, candy, halloween parties, and haunted houses, but few celebrate what All Hallow’s Eve is really about!
All Hallow’s Eve was the Druid’s New Year. It began in the 7th or 8th century after the spread of Christianity when saints were honored on All Saints’ Day. Highly superstitious, they believed in witches on broomsticks, ghosts, and other supernatural beings that would come out on this day and wreck havoc on the living.
The custom of celebrating Halloween was brought to the New World by Gaelic immigrants.The Jack-o-Lantern originated with an Irishman who loved to play pranks on the Devil. Legend is that he was made to wander the world carrying a lantern to show
him the way, going to neither heaven nor hell. Hollowed out pumpkins with candles lighted inside were supposed to scare evil
spirits away. “Trick-or-treating” was initiated by the Irish when farmers would go from house to house to collect food for the
village.(see Halloween)
Is it right for pop culture to belittle the beliefs of their culture? How many “norms” even know what it was all about to begin with? Do any of you celebrate the pagan holliday as it is? Share with us your Halloween traditions, traditional or not.