the real halloween

thanks to doug, a physical therapist at work, who shared this with me today... i have edited this for length and content... some of the statements toward the end do not completely reflect my own views of the state of the present age, but i appreciate the main message of the following:

"on (november 1st) we will once again celebrate the feast of all saints. with this celebration we have the annual confusion from fundamentalists about halloween...it is indeed sad that these christians have been so poorly educated in church history...

in the ancient world, there was a general celebration of the fall harvest... in rome, the goddess pomona ws honored. in the british isle, the druids worshiped their pagan fertility gods... this was a period of darkness when evil spirits were able to have a great influence in the world.

with the establishment of christianity in the western world, these pagan fertility religions began to wane. as was the usual practice in christianity, the church would take major pagan feasts, which the people were familiar with, and change them into christian feasts. one example of this is the date we celebrate as christmas, december 25th; in the pagan world it was celebrated as the birthday of the sun god. in choosing to establish the feast of all saints on november the first, the church was countering the pagan belief that the world was under the power of evil. the church was making a clear statement that with the coming of christ, evil was ended and death was defeated. christ brought a new reality to the world; the world was new under the kingship of christ the lord..."

fr. ed. lofton