Halloween or Samhain had its beginnings in an ancient, pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead. The Celtic peoples, who were once found all over Europe, divided the year by four major holidays. According to their calendar, the year began on a day corresponding to November 1st on our present calendar. The date marked the beginning of winter. Since they were pastoral people, it was a time when cattle and sheep had to be moved to closer pastures and all livestock had to be secured for the winter months. Crops were harvested and stored. The date marked both an ending and a beginning in an eternal cycle.
Samhain The festival observed at this time was called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween). It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year. The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain, more so than any other time of the year, the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living, because at Samhain the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the otherworld. People gathered to sacrifice animals, fruits, and vegetables. They also lit bonfires in honor of the dead, to aid them on their journey, and to keep them away from the living. On that day all manner of beings were abroad: ghosts, fairies, and demons--all part of the dark and dread.
How Samhain Became Halloween Samhain became the Halloween we are familiar with when Christian missionaries attempted to change the religious practices of the Celtic people. In the early centuries of the first millennium A.D., before missionaries such as St. Patrick and St. Columcille converted them to Christianity, the Celts practiced an elaborate religion through their priestly caste, the Druids, who were priests, poets, scientists and scholars all at once. As religious leaders, ritual specialists, and bearers of learning, the Druids were not unlike the very missionaries and monks who were to Christianize their people and brand them evil devil worshippers.
Samhain is a great holiday my religion has celebrated a long time. You may not like it, but those of us in faiths such as Wicca are not going away, and in fact are flourishing. When my group in the Wicca faith was started in Eugene in the early 1980s to help educate and focus my faith's power and vibrancy the early meeting had roughly thirty to fifty involved.
As a lay leader I can tell you we have thousands of subscribers and active members in the Willamette valley, and this is a very good thing; let the blessings be.
6 And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.
turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people
Good Bible quote, but the poor kid wasn't a wiccan with gold teef, so he's not going to hell. He didn't turn away from God, he just wasn't all that interested at his young age.
Anyway God gets to judge, not some guy named chick, who thinks that kids should be tortured with his cartoons in Sunday School.
Yeah, you're going to hell if you don't buy his cartoons! /s