Do you observe Halloween? I know I'm going to get grief for this, but we don't. We're not one of the hardcore anti-Halloween families, but we're just not comfortable with it. It makes me uneasy (I guess that's what Halloween is supposed to do), and the fact that my friend, the Louisiana exorcist, strongly warned against it (and told pretty scary personal stories to explain his point) was enough to put me off of it.
No, we're not anti-"Harry Potter" people, and we don't crusade against Halloween. We just don't participate.
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Franklin, I don't believe that I disputed your claim that the Christians wrote the histories.
You would probably grant that, in fact, pagans today owe Christians a lot for writing down things that had circulated in oral cultures. I can't speak for pagan oral literatures in general, but I have the strong sense that a great deal of our picture of Northern European pagan myths and ways comes to us by way of the Icelandic sagas and other works that were written after the establishment of Christianity.
So we can say "the Christians wrote the histories," but we can also be slow to assume (as some - - I don't think, you, do) that because of this, all we have is a grossly distorted picture of pagan life.
Agreed? I'm pretty sure, Franklin, that you have done a lot more reading related to this matter than I have.>
That is, its silly to say that God (or Satan or any other spiritual being) cares whether you spend your leisure time celebrating Halloween or doing something something else to pass the time
Yet, this is entirely against the Christian concept of what a feast is. I wager it is even against the pagan concept of a feast. It's also against the Christian concept of time in general- as though there is "leisure time" that is none of God's affair.
I fall much like Rod on the subject of Halloween. It's not my holiday, so while I mind my own business as to what others do, I feel no compulsion to join in. It's much how I felt towards Ramadan when I lived in a Muslim country. You can't help but notice it's going on, but it means nothing to me. When I have kids, I'll try to get them to ignore it as much as possible, too (wish me luck, LOL).
Maybe I'm an all-around Grinch, but commercial holidays rarely seem fun. This includes weddings, another feast that has been taken over by the bloat of commercial expectations. It takes determination, but if you ignore a lot of the hoopla, you might actually have fun at holidays rather than just stress and expense.>
Major, I just felt the need to clarify my earlier statement; it was not intended as a direct response to anything you wrote.
The institutions of Christianity -- churches, monasteries, colleges and the like -- are responsible for Civilization As We Know It. ;) This is a very complex subject, as I'm sure you already know, just as I'm sure that there are many modern pagans who have not done any scholarly reading and are prey to conclusion jumping based on what others say without attribution or citation of source.
I could have started my contributions on this combox by stating the obvious: only Christians ascribe anything sinister or nefarious to this holiday/observance, and American Christians in particular also fall prey to the same conclusion jumping I mention above. This is all true; it is also a long-dead beaten horse, and I make my humble attempts to educate people in the ideas and concepts that live behind the mythic assumptions and false conclusions.
One thing is true: we do have a grossly vague and by extension distorted view of pagan life from after the fall of Greek and Roman pagandoms. What is rarely discussed is why our view is so unclear, with most people latching onto one reason or another and failing to at least acknowledge the complexity of it all.
Anyway, that serves to explain my motivation for posting here. I'm very glad that you and I have exchanged ideas here.>
Thanks, Franklin. This'll be my last on this thread:
It seems to me that much of that which you lament (the loss of knowledge of the complexity of the past) points the finger at the decline in education in the humanities. External pressures have reduced humanistic education to training for careers. Within, the humanities have been ravaged by overspecialization, politics, pseudo-philosophy, etc.>
Diane Moi said, "harvey, I haven't exactly been Rod's biggest fan, but I think it's totally uncalled for to mock somebody just because he doesn't feel comfortable celebrating a particular holiday. Sheesh."
Diane, when Rod inferred the power of demons as a reason not to celebrate Halloween with his kids, well, that's like a man sharing that he wears panty hose for kicks over a campfire with the guys.
You might make such a statement, but gawd, not without expecting at least one smart remark.>
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