Happy Halloween... or Samhain

I’ve lived in Brisbane for 10 years, but tonight was the first I’d ever noticed Halloween celebrated. Up and

Me at the Zombie Walk - 2013

down my street there walked families, mostly mums and their small kids, dressed up like witches, ghosts, bats, bones and even cats. Far more people than I would have ever seen in Brisbane streets, except for the zombies walking a couple of years ago when I joined them. I wonder if any of today’s people know just what Halloween means.

31 October is the evening before the All Hallows Day, which is celebrated on 1 November. All Hallows Day, also known as All Saint’s Day or Feast of All Saints – amongst a few others – is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations. Catholicism holds their day in commemoration of all those who have reached beatific vision, the “ultimate direct self-communication of God to the individual person”. Other christian believers celebrate it in other ways, but still respond to the saints, even if “saints” for some Protestants are everyone! Good luck to all the christians. Saints, as Catholicism looks on them, don’t even exist for me.

So why do public people, many who we would never even believe are christian, go out and chase after lollies, presumably for their kids? And why do people in whichever house these grabbers have approached actually give lollies? Do any of the grafters know that Halloween was “influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, with possible pagan roots, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain”?

http://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/blogs/it-s-a-celtic-feast

Christianity, which I’d been dancing around as a young child, had absolutely no acceptability for Celtic or pagan beliefs, yet I really don’t think that any religious people have done any real history about the reality of Halloween – the evening before All Hallows Day. There are quite a few websites who talk about true history. Jack Santino for The American Folklore Centre wrote about the “ancient, pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead”. This started with the Samhain celebration, which wasn’t changed until 601AD by Pope Gregory the First who got his missionaries work to refine it to Catholicism. These dudes hated Samhain and called it “malicious”. Followers of this were labelled “witches”. Read his history.

The person who calls her/himself Spring Wolf has a website called ThePagan’s Path, and has written a long history of Samhain, Celts, pagans and Halloween. Very well written, but I guarantee that most Catholics, Protestants or any other religion who celebrates 1 November just won’t accept anything that doesn’t credit Halloween or All Hallows Day to their own god.

American pic - no different to what's here

Tonight I just took my dog into the house and shut the door. Perhaps my wee coloured wing-spinners might have put them off, or that my fence gates were shut, or that I wasn’t sitting outside to wait for them to come past my house. Good stuff, that! It got very loud up and down the street until about half an hour ago. I’m glad it’s over.

Oh, and did you know that Brisbane has a school called All HallowsSchool? Yes, it’s Catholic. It’s at 547 Ann Street, Brisbane QLD 4000, which I never knew about until tonight.

Well bite me.