The shear amounts of misinformation and, quite frankly, outright lies promulgated I’m sorry to say, by many religious organizations, about this day are utterly mindboggling. To try and address them all would require a post of several pages. To try and put it as condensed as possible…
Modern Halloween as we know it today is just that – a modernly invented ‘holiday’ combining elements of an earlier American tradition called “Hell Night” along with a healthy dose of good old “Hollywood” thrown in for good measure. There are some vestigial elements from pre-Christian religions in some of the customs (bobbing for apples for example), but the modern costumes, the blood, the gore, the reveling in death and destruction, the candy, even ‘trick or treat’ itself, dates no earlier than 1900’s America. In short, it’s a relatively new phenomenon and represents a mix of cultures, capitalism, and accommodation.
Samhain/Halloween is to some people a very spiritual and magickal time of the year; for some it’s a time of fun and candy, perhaps a way to celebrate Fall in general, still for others perhaps a time to contemplate their own mortality since the modern holiday mocks death; others perhaps are not quite sure what to make of it and prefer to steer clear of it, but however you wish to celebrate it….or not – the takeaway here is that Halloween is only ‘evil’ if one chooses to make it so.
