Hollidays 101: Halloween.

OK so its Thanksgiving. And i was planing on doing a little section of my blog about the holidays.
So of coarse on this fine Thanksgiving we are going to go over.... Halloween.

Why Halloween? Two Reasons.
1: I wanted to do them in chronological order and Halloween comes first.
2: It's pretty much the only holiday i like in the season.
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So i have already done a collection of reasons that the holidays chafe me. So i will just re-cap the ones that apply to this one.

#1. Kids showing there asses.
#2. Adults not knowing what the crap they are doing.
#3. Religion people.

Now to be fair the 3rd one is kind of split here for me, because about 10% of Religions folks piss me off. 10% of them actually know what they are doing. And the Rest have enough sense to... well just have fun with this holiday.
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So we will look at each of these groups.
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1: OK so first is the group that is the loudest.
There is a group of people who think that Halloween is evil.
And that it is incompatible with Christians values. Now really this dose not bother me.
But the thing is they try to explain there complaints in Sudo-Christian Mumbo-Jumbo. And try to cram it down every one Else's thought. Pretty much ignoring the fact that the Pagan holidays that they are saying the holiday is based off of. (Which they kind of are) Are in fact older then Christianity.
Some of them being older then the six thousand year old world view these people's hold.

If you want to see what i mean by CRAZY people in the Christian camp.
Please see the work of. Jack T. Chick
This guys work is so weird that most people think it is some kind of joke or is making fun of other people that are like this.... Well no. This guy is 110% Serious. And he is that far out there... And it's not just him. There are more.
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2: Most people in the Christian camp simply don't care and look at this as a Secular holiday, that has no positive or negative connotation.
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3: Surprisingly a good number of roman Catholics celebrate Halloween as well. As a Religious holiday. In two forms. The first being All Saints Day, That is a celebration of the Catholics saints. Now this one has no connection to the holiday of old. For that you get the catholic holiday of All Souls Day.

This runs off the idle that. When a person dies they are not abstained from sins that they have done sense there last confession. So they must spend time in Purgatory until they can be cleansed of these sins. Because no sin can enter Heaven. And all souls day is the day that they leave purgatory and go to heaven.

This is a throw game to the Roman Holiday that Halloween borrows it's date from. The Roman Feast of Pomona. Which is really just a celebration having to do with the late harvest.
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There are also a number of holidays that go along with Halloween, and the thing we have today seams to have borrowed from all of them.

There is.

Roman Feast of Pomona.
Festival of the dead: Parentalia.
Celtic festival of Samhain.
welsh as Calen Gaeaf.
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The Modern version started to shape up in the middle ages. around 1560's or so.
All hallows day.
All hallows Even.
This is were they all seam to get the name.
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Trick or treating is pretty old as well. Having coming out in the middle ages. And seamed to have some connection to the Christian Custom of Chrismas Wassailing. (Something we should still do)
Shakespear actually mentions it in Two men in Verona. Calling it: Hallowmass.

Dressing up seamed to have started in the early 19th century. (That's 1801-1840) For people who don't get the century thing down.

Combining Dressing up and Trick Or Treating started to shape up in the 1930's in the united states. Thus following into the 'Not as old as you might think' area of holidays.

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One of the reasons i like this holiday is that is has some of the best food.
Pumpkin pie!
Allot of it is very old and odd in comparison to allot of other foods we eat today.