"All Hallow's Eve"

This is my first posting of a topic and I hope to get some informative, and maybe entertaining responses to my questions. We are approaching the time of year when "things go bump in the night", and many people intentionally seek out an opportunity to scare the bejezuz out of themselves and others. And so I ask:
1. Where and how on earth did the idea of "All Hallow's Eve", or Halloween get started?
2. Why do some people at this time of the year celebrate Halloween?
3. What was your scariest Halloween experience?
4. Why do people of some religious traditions shun Halloween?

1) What I've typically read is that it was a replacement festival for the Celtic new year. It was the time when the door between our world and the spirit world was seen as weakest; people wore masks and costumes to frighten away these spirits. The jack-o-lantern is a long story, related to someone who was condemned to wander carrying a candle/coal inside a turnip as a lantern (pumpkins are a later addition, as they are new world fruits).2) Tradition. 3) I once went to a party dressed as the most horrific creature known to all of humankind: a Morning Person. I wore a bathrobe, with a toothbrush and comb, and was constantly bright and cheery to everyone.4) See #1.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

That'll probably be this year when I don't get to take Halloween off. (I work nights.) Having to work instead of partying - scary!

Halloween is the old festival of Samhain (Sow-in). It's the Last Harvest and a time of reflection. This is a date to honor the Ancients and to practice divination. It's the end of the Wheel of the Year and the death of the God who is reborn at Yule (winter solstice).Halloween is shunned by many religious folks due to the fear of Paganism. Just as Xmas and Easter were taken from prior pagan festivals, Samhain was co-opted as All Hallow's E'en, the evening before All Saints Day.Scariest Halloween experience? That would have to be when I put green food coloring in cold cream to make myself into a green skinned witch. The scary part was later that night when I realized that the green cast to my skin was NOT going to wash off no matter what I used.------------------
Asgara
"An unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates via Plato

This isn't quite scary... but now that i think about it it sounds made up. Anyway, I was having a Halloween party at my house one year, and in California it's warm enough to be outside in October, so the back door was left open, and people could wander outside, or wander back in whenever they wanted.So just totally randomly this completely black cat decided to show up (we had 3 cats at the time, but none of them were that black, or that young, and none of them decided to make an appearance at the party), and despite all the people and loud music it just wandered into the house. When it was brought to my attention i put it outside because i didn't really want a stranger's cat getting use to the inside of our house... but after a little while it came back in (this repeated a few times over the course of the night).Anyway... nothing terribly horrifying happened with regards to the cat... but the next day the cat was nowhere to be seen. i'm pretty sure i haven't seen the cat again since that night.

I find your story about the black cat repeatedly showing up at the loud holloween party quite eerie. I hope you don't mind me elaborating a little. What if that cat had gotten meaner each time you put it outside? Louder meows & screams drowning out the loud music. Heavier clawing & scratching at the doors & windows. Wierder shadows. Walking noises on the roof. The lights repeatedly dimming & going out. All that and getting worse throughout the night. But everytime you investigate, nothing seems to be wrong...except for that BLACK CAT staring at you. Everyone's fine until morning. The cat is gone, and the friends have gone home... You've just recieved your FIRST phone-call from the hospital and your guests of the previous evening are showing up at the emergency room with deep claw marks all over their bodies!![This message has been edited by Prozacman, 10-21-2003]

Thanks for your insightful info. about Halloween. I can imagine why it might be scary. At the last harvest of the year, if the ancient peoples DIDN'T bring enough food into the barn to last them through winter, some of them would have died. But why and how the practice of divination? And how might their God who dies and is reborn in spring be adapted to x-ian beliefs? Also, please tell me that you are no longer green-in-the-face!

haha... ok well if you want to tell that story and precede it with "so this friend of mine was having a Halloween party..." that’s fine. But this story actually happened to me, so i think that shoots its coolness factor up way more than a super freaky made up story ever could.

I suppose I should be a little more specific with my ? #4.Why do modern fundamentalist-xians have such a hissy-fit at the mention of Halloween? I used to believe in the Devil, witches, ghosts, etc., but a good holloween party or visit to a church sponsored haunted-house never got me angry. Are there any strict x-ians on this forum who can reply?

Your story IS way cool because it is real! Just for fun tho', I let my imagination take over occasionally. I have a conservative x-ian friend who would unfortunately take me too seriously, and accuse me of being possessed by a 'demon-of-imagination' as he calls it!

Some people think that, because of it's occult past, and adoption by wiccan groups (in addition to "satanist groups" - many xians see them as the same) it is a stepping stone into the occult.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

My experience as a former fundee x-ian was around the type of people you just described. Scared that they might incure the wrath of God or get drawn into "the pit" by the Devil(What's the Diff.?!), they stay away from anything that smells "evil", and they mercilessly attack with venimous retoric any little gobblin just trying to get some candy. Stepping Stone?! Yeah , like a fallacy of logic: if it seems bad, it is bad, then it can only get worse.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 10-24-2003]

Well if you have to work that night, I say make the best of it. That's when all the spooks come out!

We had just moved out into the country away from the city and built a house on 5 acres. There was a run down old country house with a barn ready to fall over on the next field and I was meaning to go over there just to check it out. Turns out that a genuine redneck country hick family lived there. These folk were very poor and equally backward. They had a sheep pen for the front yard complete with 20 - 30 sheep. The guy's first name was Jimmy but he was known throughout the county as Sheepdog because of his sheep pens and 50 odd animals. He also looked like Dan Hagarty on crack, with the spooky long beard and all. They had a pony also (named Rainbow - dumb name for a horse) who was always getting out of his stall and coming over to our yard to eat my Premiun Kentucky Bluegrass. One time we had 14 county sheriffs and deputies parked at our house trying to catch the damn thing before it ran out onto the 2 lane higway and caused and accident. It was after a full rain and 14 deputies had to be sent home to put on clean uniforms afterwards - but that's another Sheepdog story.Anyhow, on Halloween night they decided to take their kids out for some tricks and treats and they came over to our place. They were standing on the porch and when I opened the front door I got my first look at this family. Well I take in the site and I figure it's all just a costume gig so when they all smiled and said "Trick or Treat" I laughed and complemented them on their costumes and I looked at Sheepdog and said "Those are some cool fake teeth, where'd you get them?". Turns out they wern't fake teeth but the real deal and they weren't wearing costumed street bum cloths.For a couple seconds I thought I was going to have a bad kinda night but being simple people they must not have contemplated exactly what I said and they just replied "these ain't costumes silly" and continued to grin and wait for the goodies. Sheepdog preceeded to ask me if his beagles were keeping us up at night and I asked how he managed to take care of so many of them, and the event ended without incident.Later on I started to wonder how many more families like that lived in our school system and if I had really screwed us by building a house there. Sheepdog's family was the last of a legacy as far as old world livin' and sorrowfully Sheepdog himself died before the next halloween due to liver problems. He told me before he died that he had been exposed to Agent Orange in Nam, but I think it was over exposure to Canadian Mist that really got him. He was one of those people that make your life just a little more colorful by knowing them by giving some perspective as to why to not take it all too seriously.

There are alot of people like that around where I live, although I would say that while the rednecks & hillbillies look equally scary(funny is more like it), they are really different groups. The hillbillies are mostly poorer than the rednecks, while the rednecks are more criminally insane. Get back to you!