To be annoyed with the Church this time of Year?

[Emprexia]

Halloween is nothing to do with Christianity and it REALLY bugs me that every year without fail you get some bishop or other moaning about people celebrating it.. and how its leading our children astray, or the extremists banging on about it being satanic and encouraging children away from the christian faith!

Hello!!!

Its Halloween, which is infact AKA Samhain to the Pagan population of the country. ITs not evil, its nothing to do with the devil or satan... its Pagan New Year!!!

It is a perfectly reasonable thing for the church to preach on.

What is the message of today's halloween?

Demand, and threaten harm if you don't get your way - what message does that teach young children?

Have some 'harmless' fun, such as breaking windows, egging houses and cars, terrorising old ladies from behind masks. - what is so great about that? Of course it is wrong and it is up to the church to take a stand against it.

The church teaches people to walk in the light, not in the darkness - to spread love, not fear - to give, not take.

The Christian church obviously feels threatened by it. It's going to speak out against anything which allegedly undermines its position of power in this country. Religion is essentially politics - controlling the populace while giving them the illusion of a stake in that control - so it's no great surprise.

I havge my own quibbles wth Hallowe'en but they are unrelated to anything religious.

The church isn't threated by Halloween - but people are, quite literally. It is up to the church to look after the vulnerable in our communities - no one else does!

Did they say, 'trick or treat', MMAM? (ie gimme or else).

I had my house decorated with skeletons, pumpkins and cobwebs, witch's, ghost the lot and one of the chap who delivered my copy of the church newsletter (from the church I attend) thought it looked great.

I don't think many people take it as anything other then a time to dress silly, carve a pumpkin and eat sweets [hgrin].
It is something to do on a dank autumn evening, nothing more.

IMO hallowe'en does not equal trick or treating.
And Hallowe'en is not american - has been celebrated in many ways over here without trick or treating for many years.
Not keen on trick or treating - was not part of hallowe'en when I grew up. My mother was incredibly anti the begging aspect of it. And I rather agree.

We lived in the US a few years ago and DH was reluctant to participate in halloween (the housing community we lived in distributed paper pumpkin plates to stick on the door if you wanted to do it). But I persuaded him, and the first caller was a very small cute child who said

Twick or Tweat.

He got it then. Its just a bit of fun for kids.

Its unfortunate if in some areas kids use it as an excuse to misbehave. Round here it is a chance to meet neighbours and have delightfully polite children come calling. DD likes handing out the goodies to callers as much as she likes the getting.

It has nothing to do with imaginary dark forces.

I spent last night with all the lights turned off and was just incredibly relieved that no one rang our bell. Anything that encourages threats and demands is a bad thing in my book, and I'm perfectly happy for the chuurch or anyone else for that matter to discourage it. I grew up as a Catholic with All Saints (today, for good people) and All Souls (tomorrow, for not so good people languishing in purgatory). I'm no longer a Catholic btw! Halloween was a pretty marginal activity then which seems to have grown in fits and starts over the last few years. I am aware that there are much older traditions in some parts of the country, which according to Wikidaedia are derived from the Irish and Scotish Samhain harvest festival type events. Either way Halloween as currently "celebrated" is niether Christian nor Pagan, but I guess a tradition in it's own right.

Trick or Treat is very different in the US. Where we lived, there were strict hours - 6 - 7.30pm - and it was heavily policed.

Because of the limited hours, then everyone could participate for the short time, and it was a time to meet your neighbours and build friendships. Costumes are rarely ghoulish, btw. In fact, I don't recall anyone in our neighbourhood dressed as a witch or ghost. We had neighbours who created a spook house in their garage, and this was something they were freely giving to neighbourhood kids, nor because they were forced to by threats of eggs.

We have imported this T or T tradition into England in the worst possible way.

All I can say is I'm glad we imported the pumpkin thing because carving a turnip was torture!

Explosive, I am with you on the ludicrousness of T or T, but totally disagree with what you say about the Church. It's quite patronising to assume that the secular majority can somehow be policed by a minority who share a belief in one particular imaginary friend.

I don't really like T&T, Halloween is a Christian festival in the churches that have a liturgical calendar, Samhain is a Pagan festival, and some Christians don't celebrate Halloween because they disagree with syncretism. I haven't seen any news about a random bishop complaining about his own church calendar, and you get extremists complaining all year long.

I had to look up 'syncretism' - to save other ignoramuses the bother:

"the combination of different forms of belief or practice "

Anyhow OP... I somewhat think YABU - theres lots more serious things you could be getting annoyed with the Churches for all year round

I don't listen to them anyway so they don't bother me.

I was brought up by a strict religous mother and i wasn't allowed to celebrate Halloween - so i now make sure that my kids celebrate it in style every year and they don't miss out on all the fun stuff that i did.

I think it's really hard on the kids when they are made to feel like they are freaks.

I think as usual the harmless majority are being tarred by the brush of a not so harmless minority. We had loads of lovely little witches and ghosts on our door last night all faultlessly polite my ds had friends home from school and we played bobbing apples etc
it was harmless fun
I agree with UQD why should the secular amongst us be dictated to by those who choose to believe soemthing different

I can remember Hallowe'en long before Trick or Treat became widespread in this country.

Who is "dictating" to anyone?!

So someone in a position where they are able to have a media platform says something you disagree with... meh, that's life. Quite a lot of people out there say things I disagree with, some of them are in government and can actually make laws about them... which is infinitely more disturbing.

Why must some people try to turn themselves into a victim who's being persecuted?!?

DH found a really good site yesterday that explained everything - from 'pagan' (ahem) Celts, through the Roman occupation to Christian "supplanting" (direct quote).

www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/halloween.shtml

Think this is it?

its commercial nonsense.the only one who is making profit is Woolys and Asda.

My local shopping centre was having a fancy dress competition at weekend for little ones and a woman started talking to me about them all being witches and they should be burned cos they dance naked on Pendle Hill.

I asked her why the fark anyone would dance naked on Pendle Hill at the end of October - it's fecking FREEZING!

She told me "that's what my priest said so it's true"

I think, perhaps the lady was confused.