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The Daily OrangeCommercialization rescues United States from sacrificial Halloween rituals
By Lauren Tosignant
Posted: 10/29/09, 2:42 AM EST Section: Opinion
Halloween is another classic American pastime. From running door to door collecting candy as children to creating revealing costumes as college students, Halloween provides fun for all ages. Between super-size candy bars, light-up "Beware" signs, overpriced costumes and pumpkin-flavored beer, America successfully commercialized another once religious holiday. Thank God.
While it may be hard to imagine, Halloween was not created by the likes of Hershey and Nestle chocolate as a greedy ploy to become richer and give America's children cavities. Halloween was created by the Celt's over 2,000 years ago. But candy corn, Jack-O-Lanterns and the "sexy cop" costume were unfortunately not a part of their sacred rituals.
The Celts (who occupied what is now Ireland, the UK and northern France) celebrated the New Year on Nov. 1, which marked the end of their summer harvest and the beginning of the winter. They believed that "New Year's Eve," Oct. 31, was the one time of the year where the boundary between the living and the dead blurred.
On this night, they celebrated Samhain, and claimed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth, damaging crops and causing trouble. The Celts believed that these spirits helped the Celtic priests, or Druids, make predictions for the future.
Instead of holding séances and reading tarot cards like modern day Halloween enthusiasts, the Druids honored these spirits by building sacred bonfires where the Celt's would sacrifice animals and crops to the Celtic deities. In an effort to make the ceremony creepier, the Celt's wore costumes that consisted of animal heads and skins, while attempting to tell each other's futures. Everyone was a fortune-teller in those days.
But the real question is: Should America be ashamed for taking a sacred holiday and creating it into a celebration of candy, booze and barely-there costumes? Absolutely not. If we still lived in a society where we danced around fires with animal heads, I would have relocated to a much more sane continent a long time ago.
While it may be hard to imagine, Halloween was not created by the likes of Hershey and Nestle chocolate as a greedy ploy to become richer and give America's children cavities. Halloween was created by the Celt's over 2,000 years ago. But candy corn, Jack-O-Lanterns and the "sexy cop" costume were unfortunately not a part of their sacred rituals.
The Celts (who occupied what is now Ireland, the UK and northern France) celebrated the New Year on Nov. 1, which marked the end of their summer harvest and the beginning of the winter. They believed that "New Year's Eve," Oct. 31, was the one time of the year where the boundary between the living and the dead blurred.
On this night, they celebrated Samhain, and claimed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth, damaging crops and causing trouble. The Celts believed that these spirits helped the Celtic priests, or Druids, make predictions for the future.
Instead of holding séances and reading tarot cards like modern day Halloween enthusiasts, the Druids honored these spirits by building sacred bonfires where the Celt's would sacrifice animals and crops to the Celtic deities. In an effort to make the ceremony creepier, the Celt's wore costumes that consisted of animal heads and skins, while attempting to tell each other's futures. Everyone was a fortune-teller in those days.
But the real question is: Should America be ashamed for taking a sacred holiday and creating it into a celebration of candy, booze and barely-there costumes? Absolutely not. If we still lived in a society where we danced around fires with animal heads, I would have relocated to a much more sane continent a long time ago.
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John
posted 10/29/09 @ 10:07 AM EST
The Book of Deuteronomy, having been written several centuries BC, makes absolutely no mention of Christians, at all.
The quality of this otherwise humourous and entertaining article is diminished by such factual errors. (Continued…)
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