Wednesday, December 25, 2002

Holiday history

By GREGORY K. MOFFATT, PH. D
Child's Play

In recent years I've received many questions from parents about Halloween. Is it bad for kids or not? The question has a host of religious implications and it may seem an odd topic for a Christmas column, but Halloween may share more history with Christmas than you might think.

Many religions express concern about Halloween because it has pagan roots. Indeed, it does. Halloween dates back more than 2,000 years to the Celtic festival of Samhain in Ireland, which marked the end of both the summer and the harvest season. Druids believed that on this night, souls of the dead were allowed to cross over to the living world and potentially inhabit the bodies of the living. In order to scare them away, Celts wore costumes, extinguished their house fires, and they also sacrificed crops and living animals.

Around A.D. 800, Pope Boniface IV designated Nov. 1 as All Saints Day, or All Souls Day - a time to honor both martyrs and saints. His purpose was to replace the pagan holiday of Samhain with a holy day. The day was called All Hallows. Oct. 31 then became known as All Hallows Eve and eventually Halloween.

During the Medieval period, Christians would walk from house-to-house begging for food in exchange for prayers for the deceased loved ones of the residents. Therefore, Halloween has its deepest roots in pagan ideology, but also Christian traditions. Halloween isn't the only such holiday, however, with such a history.

Christmas has its history in pagan traditions dating back more than 4,000 years when ancient Mesopotamians celebrated the new year by honoring their god Marduk. This festival lasted 12 days; hence, 12 days of Christmas. The ancient Greeks had a similar festival to their god Kronos.

In Scandinavia, the light of the sun would be gone for many weeks. To celebrate its return around the winter solstice, they celebrated "Yuletide" where they burned the Yule log and they tied fruit to trees to represent the coming spring.

The Romans and Persians honored Mithras, the god of light, and the god Saturn in a festival called Saturnalia in which they gave away presents for good luck, decorated their homes with branches, and decorated trees with candles. It wasn't until A.D. 350, that Bishop Julius I of Rome designated Dec. 25 the official day to mark the birth of Jesus.

Around A.D. 1100, the concept of Saint Nicholas was known throughout Europe, but in the 1600s, the Christians of the Reformation Movement outlawed Christmas celebrations because of its pagan history - much as we hear today from Christians about Halloween. By the 1800s, Christmas was widely practiced by pagans and the religious alike by decorating trees and giving of gifts.

Easter also has pagan roots that can be traced back many centuries. It was originally an Anglo-Saxon festival celebrated at the vernal equinox in honor of Eastre, the goddess of the spring, who was symbolized by a rabbit; hence, the Easter Bunny. Eggs have been widely used in cultures world-wide to represent fertility gods; hence, Easter eggs. Jews who had converted to Christianity not long after the death of Jesus may well have used their Jewish holiday of Passover (Pesach or Pasch) that paralleled the time of the resurrection of Jesus to create what became our Easter tradition.

Despite the early Christian celebration of Easter, many pagan cultures still celebrated Eastre for its pagan history. Therefore, early Christian missionaries who wanted to gently convert pagans, shifted the meaning of the pagan holiday, carrying with it the traditions of the pagan holiday, to its current form. Multi-colored eggs symbolized the sunlight of spring and the egg itself came to represent the tomb and eventual rebirth of Jesus.

In A.D. 325, Constantine called the Council of Nicaea to determine an exact date for Easter, but it was not until after the Civil War that Easter was widely celebrated in the U.S. Easter is still based on the vernal equinox and the "ecclesiastical moon, causing it always to fall between March 21 and April 25.

Perhaps most surprising to many is that the most important pagan holiday according to the Satanic Bible is one's own birthday. Anton LaVey, the self-proclaimed hedonist and author of the Satanic Bible, declared that if the church of Satan was to be based on hedonism, the highest holiday would be the celebration of one's own birth.

Therefore, if religious teachers tell us that we shouldn't celebrate Halloween because of its pagan roots, applying the same rules means we shouldn't celebrate Christmas, Easter, or our own birthdays - all common holidays celebrated in many religious homes, cathedrals, and other places of worship.

Psychologically, there is nothing damaging about Halloween and children love the opportunity to celebrate, dress up in a costume, and, of course, get candy. If your religious beliefs prohibit you from celebrating this holiday, I have provided you with the information needed to make decisions about all holidays. If not, then enjoy celebrating all of our holidays with your children.