Although consumers planned to cut back on spending for Halloween outfits, costume sales still brought in the most revenue -- $2.12 billion -– of the four sales categories that included candy, decorations and greeting cards (MCT Campus photo).Halloween is a good excuse to dress up in a costume. But, event marketing has made the darkest holiday of the year just another commercial tradition to keep shoppers spending until the Christmas shopping season begins. Thus, during a 10.2 percent jobless rate reported for October, more pressure was put upon people to spend money they most likely didn't have.
In stark contrast, the retail store owners were the ones who laughed all the way to the bank, because they gained the most from Halloween. Halloween sales were expected to break a record and top off at $6 billion in the U.S. This is a 4.2 percent increase from the $5.77 billion spent in 2008, according to Reuters News Service, Oct. 13.
While I've always respected that most people celebrate Halloween because it’s fun, I don’t participate specifically because of its dark past in pagan customs. This is why I took the road less traveled in this blog about Halloween costumes. If you'd like to know more about where Halloween comes from, please read Post #2 that follows this story.
When children and adults go out dressed as ghosts or witches to get a Halloween treat or play a mischievous trick, they innocently re-enact the sacred Celtic ceremony of Samhain, according to French historian, Jean Markale, in “The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween: Celebrating the Dark Half of the Year,” August 2001 (MCT Campus photo).
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ReplyDeleteTHE ROOTS OF HALLOWEEN –- All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day -- go back to the Celts in Britain and Ireland who celebrated the new year's beginning with rituals & sacrifices during their holiday, Samhain. Also called “Summer’s End,” Samhain was famous for its drunken revelries and indulgences in losing one’s inhibitions. Because the apples and hazelnuts supposedly came from “sacred” trees, the Celts used them to practice divination to find out the future regarding marriage, sickness and death. This festival also honored the Celtic’s god of light, Lug, rather than the Celtic’s god of death, Samhain.
ReplyDeleteLong before the Christian era, the Celts believed that on Oct. 31, the dead left the Other World and moved freely about the land of the living. As the days got shorter, the Celts built sacred bonfires to frighten away the evil spirits, since both good and evil roamed the earth.
After Britain became Christianized, the British church added a Christian celebration, All Saints Day, on the very same date to replace Samhain’s pagan customs. This attempt failed; because, unfortunately, the Celtic’s pagan celebration lives on today when people trick or treat and play the popular game of bobbing for apples, according to “The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween: Celebrating the Dark Half of the Year,” August 2001. The book by Halloween specialist, Jean Markale, sells at Barnes & Noble.
After Halloween was suppressed in Europe for centuries, Markale said it resurfaced when Irish immigrants brought Halloween’s customs to America after the potato famine in the 19th century. Only in the past few years has Halloween returned to Europe.
Since Halloween has close connections with the occult and spiritism, the bishop of Nice, Jean Bonfils, said it is “the most important festival of Satanists the world over.” In behalf of France’s Conference of Catholic Bishops, Stanislas Lalanne said that Halloween ‘distorts the meaning of life and death.’ Concerned that the French have abandoned Catholic traditions for such pagan festivals, the bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, Hippolyte Simon, said, “At Halloween the dead are imitated and their ‘ghosts’ come back to frighten us and threaten us with death.”
Another downside to the season is the bloodcurdling death screams that come from the skeletons, tombstones, witches and other evil looking creatures for sale at Kmart and Wal-Mart. Most people shy away from these displays in the stores, because they’re downright scary and unsettling. It's probable that Halloween frightens and causes psychological harm to young children who lack the coping skills to understand the differences between make believe and reality. In their impressionable minds, it’s all the same.
The reason I did all this research is because I couldn’t expect to make the best decision for myself if I didn’t have all the facts. Of course, with facts comes the freedom to choose. So, Halloween reminds me that it’s OK to be different because of the good reasons why I don’t celebrate it.
Perhaps a better way to explain is if people suddenly decided to start dressing up like the Nazis on the same anniversary date every year. Naturally, this would be offensive because of what the Nazis and their uniforms stand for. In contrast, I, too, find the principles offensive behind what the devil, evil spirits, ghosts and witches represent in Halloween. This is why I made a different choice based on my principles, rather than take the high road of what’s popular today.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES: “Holidays,” Reasoning from the Scriptures, pp. 176-182; “The Truth About Popular Celebrations” and “Popular Celebrations—Harmless Fun?” pp. 3-10, Awake magazine, Oct. 8, 2001.
Grade: 10/10
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