Who Said You Could Have The Holiday?

I don't remember non-american citizens asking permission to celebrate the 4th of July either, but I'm still okay with it.

Modern Pagans celebrate Samhain as the third of three harvest festivals. Considered the Pagan New Year’s Day, Neo-Pagans also use this day to honor the ancestors. We often set food on our altars for loved ones who recently passed away. In the Wiccan year-long dance of the Goddess and God, Samhain celebrates the time when the God is in the underworld before His rebirth at Yule.

This festival originated as one of the four Celtic fire festivals; the other three being Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh – the four days we currently call Cross-Quarter days, Greater Sabbats or Greater High Days. In ancient Celtic times many local tribes gathered together in centralized locations, ritual centers (Jones and Pennick 90) or regional capitals for celebration, games, feasting (Rees 8) , markets, fairs and horse races.

Well then why are you asking if you know so much!?

Exactly! OMG FINALLY someone who understands the holiday!

Ok, not really. Look, things INCLUDING holidays and festivals evolve over time. Why do Christians now celebrate Christmas near Yule, Easter near Ostara, etc.? Because the holidays evolved to suit a different set of people. Little is known today about the actual original celebrations of any of the holidays observed by Pagans, so the information that was known was taken to use as a basis for recreating them to suit modern practitioners. And FYI, in case you didn't realize it, some of us DO follow the Celtic pantheon.

By the way, do you consider yourself a Pagan/Neo-Pagan/Heathen/whatever you want to call it?

I'm calling Troll. This question was obviously posted to start drama.

I live in Ireland and am Irish born and bred and we don't care that other people celebrate it. It's a holiday and the more people that celebrate it and are happy, the better. Also, it's been celebrated on the 31st October for ages. My grandmother and her mother and her mother all celebrated on this day. Irish emigrants brought it to America as being celebrated on the 31st of October so you see, it was Irish people that made it to be the 31st of October, not Americans.

Also, to the Annonie person, I don't think many other countries actually celebrate the 4th of July at all...

I, for one, want to experience how all people celebrate Halloween. Especially Dia de las Muertos.

A Celebration of Evil

Halloween is a religious day, but it is not Christian. Tom Sanguinet, a former high priest in Wicca has said: “The modern holiday that we call Halloween has its origins in the full moon closest to November 1, the witches’ new year. It is a time when the spirits (demons) are supposed to be at their peak power and revisiting planet earth… Halloween is purely and absolutely evil, and there is nothing we ever have, or will do, that would make it acceptable to the Lord Jesus.”

Day of Death

Halloween has strong roots in paganism and witchcraft. It began as the Druid festival of Samhain. The Celts considered November 1st the day of death, because, in the Northern hemisphere, this was the beginning of winter, the leaves were falling, it was getting darker earlier, and temperatures were dropping. They believed that their sun god was losing strength and Samhain, the lord of death, was overpowering the sun god. The druids also taught that on 31 October, on the eve of the feast, Samhain assembled the spirits of all who had died during the previous year to return to their former home to visit the living.

Human and Animal Sacrifices

On Halloween, for thousands of years, druid priests have conducted diabolical worship ceremonies in which cats, horses, sheep, oxen, human beings and other offerings were rounded up, stuffed into wicca cages and burned to death. These human and animal sacrifices were apparently required to appease Samhain and keep the spirits from harming them.

Trick or Treat

To obtain these sacrifices, druid priests would go from house to house asking for fatted calves, black sheep and human beings. Those who gave were promised prosperity, and those who refused to give were threatened and cursed. This is the origin of “trick or treat.”

Jack-O-Lantern

The Jack-O-Lantern has its origin in the candle-lit pumpkin or skull, which served as a signal to mark those farms and homes that supported the druids’ religion, and thus were seeking the “treat” when the terror of Halloween began. The World Book Encyclopedia says: “The apparently harmless lighted pumpkin face of the Jack-O-Lantern is an ancient symbol of a damned soul.”

Dance of Death

While people and animals were screaming in agony, being burnt to death, the druids and their followers would dress in costumes made of animal skins and heads. They would dance, chant and jump through the flames in the hope of warding off evil spirits.

House of Horrors

One of the popular heroes of Halloween, Count Dracula, was also a real person. Dracula lived from 1431 to 1476. During his six year reign, Count Dracula massacred over 100,000 men, women and children in the most hideous ways. He devised a plan to rid his country of the burden of beggars, the handicapped, the sick and the aged by inviting them to a feast at one of his palaces. He fed them well and got them drunk. Then he asked them: “Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in the world?” When his guests yelled: “Yes!” Dracula ordered the palace boarded up and set on fire. No one escaped this original “house of horror.”

The Word of God

“When you come into the land, which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations which you will dispossess, listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you the Lord your God has not appointed such for you.” Deuteronomy 18:9 – 14

heres the full page

http://www.remnantofgod.org/halloween.htm

Because we live in a free country and everyone doesn't have to do what you want them to do.

who said we couldn't?