Reply #14: Yep, when I was in elementary school... [View All]

[moose65]

many moons ago, we had a "Halloween Carnival" every year, where we bobbed for apples and played games and there was a Haunted House. Now, my 10-year old niece has Fall Festival where they basically do the same thing... well, maybe minus the Haunted House. I don't get it.. Halloween is about the most secular holiday that we have! It has lost all of its religious overtones. I did a paper in college on the history of Halloween, and most people have no idea of its origins. Here it is in a nutshell: the church, in its infinite wisdom, tried to "marry" a popular pagan festival, the Celtic New Year, to a religious holiday, All Saints Day, in the hopes that the religious holiday would eventually erase the "pagan" holiday. Apparently this was standard operating procedure for the Catholic church in the early years - they would try to merge their own religious holidays with the ones of the people conquered by Rome. The same thing happened with Christmas/Saturnalia and Easter/Eastre (and other celebrations of spring). While Christmas and Easter have retained their religious significance, Halloween turned out just the opposite. The "pagan" holiday won, and the religious holiday lost (when's the last time you celebrated All Saints Day??) All of that "Satan worshipping" stuff is utter BS. The Celtic people had no concept of Satan until Christianity arrived.