Barbara's Bakin' N bits

My friend Becky at http://considerhimhebrews12.blogspot.com/ posted this
I really agree and wanted you to see it too, making it easy for you. 

I wanted to repost this article because it is really good and it says just what I believe about Halloween.  Christians need to consider what we do and why we do it and if it is pleasing to the Lord Jesus.  Happiness should not be our goal.  Our goal should be holiness.  So, if you can celebrate the holiday and please the Lord, by all means do it.  I cannot, but I'm not condemning those who can.  Halloween is quickly approaching and I wanted to share this article with you from my favorite preacher.  I did not write this.  Pastor Knox has given me permission to post this on my blog.  I hope you enjoy!

What About Halloween?

This is taken from the largest web site by and for PAGANS. Note carefully how they view Christians who do not follow the word of God. Their concluding remarks are especially telling. 
There appear to have been four major holy days celebrated by the Pagan Druids, possibly throughout the Celtic territories: Samhain, Oimelc, Beltane & Lughnasadh (in one set of Irish-based modern spellings) on the eves of November 1st, February 1st, May 1st and August 1st, respectively. Since we have conflicting evidence on how the Paleopagan Druids calculated these dates, modern Neo-pagans just use whichever method is most convenient. This means, of course, that we aren’t all doing anything uniformly on any given night, which fits perfectly with the Neo-pagan saying that, “organizing Pagans is like herding cats.” It doesn’t match the Evil Conspiracy theories — which have us all marching to a strict drumbeat in perfect Satanic unison — at all.
These four major holy days have been referred to as “fire festivals” for at least the last hundred years or so, because (1) to the ancient Celts, as with all the Indo-European Paleopagans, fire was a physical symbol of divinity, holiness, truth, and beauty; (2) fires play important roles in the traditional customs associated with these festivals; and (3) several early Celtic scholars called them that. Whether in Ireland or India, among the Germans or the Hittites, sacred fires were apparently kindled by the Indo-European Paleo-pagans on every important religious occasion. To this very day, among Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholics, you can’t have a satisfying ritual without a few candles being lit — of course, the Fundamentalists consider them Heathen too!
Samhain is often said to have been the most important of the fire festivals, because it may have marked the Celtic New Year. Samhain was the original festival that the Western Christian calendar moved its “All Saints’ Day” to (Eastern Christians continue to celebrate All Saints’ Day in the spring, as the Roman Christians had originally). Since the Celts, like many cultures, started every day at sunset of the night before, Samhain became the “evening” of “All Hallows” (“hallowed” = “holy” = “saint”) which was eventually contracted into “Hallow-e’en” or the modern “Halloween.” Being “between” seasons or years, Samhain was (and is) considered a very magical time, when the dead walk among the living and the veils between past, present and future may be lifted in prophecy and divination.
At this time people did crazy things, men dressed as women and women as men. Farmers’ gates were unhinged and left in ditches, peoples’ horses were moved to different fields, and children would knock on neighbors’ doors for food and treats in a way that we still find today, in a watered-down way, in the custom of trick-or-treating on Hallowe’en.
But behind this apparent lunacy, lay a deeper meaning. The Druids knew that these three days had a special quality about them. The veil between this world and the World of the Ancestors was drawn aside on these nights, and for those who were prepared, journeys could be made in safety to the ’other side’. The Druid rites, therefore, were concerned with making contact with the spirits of the departed, who were seen as sources of guidance and inspiration rather than as sources of dread. The dark moon, the time when no moon can be seen in the sky, was the phase of the moon which ruled this time, because it represents a time in which our mortal sight needs to be obscured in order for us to see into the other worlds. The dead are honoured and feasted, not as the dead, but as the living spirits of loved ones and of guardians who hold the root-wisdom of the tribe.
With the coming of Christianity, this festival was turned into Hallowe’en (31 October), All Hallows [All Saints Day] (1 November), and All Souls Day (2 November). Here we can see most clearly the way in which Christianity built on the Pagan foundations it found rooted in these isles. Not only does the purpose of the festival match with the earlier one, but even the unusual length of the festival is the same.
The Christian Church was unable to get the people to stop celebrating this holiday, so they simply sprinkled a little holy water on it and gave it new names, as they did with other Paleopagan holidays and customs. This was a form of calendrical imperialism, co-opting Paleopagan sacred times, as they had Paleopagan sacred places (most if not all of the great cathedrals of Europe were built on top of earlier Paleopagan shrines and sacred groves). So when Fundamentalists come to your local school board and try to get Halloween removed from the public schools because “it’s a Pagan holiday,” they are perfectly correct. Of course, Valentine’s Day/Lupercalia, Easter/Eostre, and Christmas/Yule also have many Paleopagan elements associated with their dating and/or symbols, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and others have pointed out for decades. So if we decide to rid the public schools of all holidays that have Pagan aspects to them, there won’t be many left for the kids to enjoy.
Jeremiah 10:2 
Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen