Happy Halloween!

I write this as I sit here in a purple pimp costume, stuffing faar too much sugar down my throat.

Halloween is usually my favorite holiday of them all. For some reason I just feel like a kid again every year around this time. I carve a jack'o'lantern, try and fine SOME reason to put on a costume, and act like I'm seven for awhile. I think Halloween is what I miss most about being a kid.

This year the decorations were a little more annoying to put up, the planning was done half-arsed and at the last minute, and it seemed like a bit of a headache. I didn't catch the spirit until about four days ago when I had a discussion with my wife on the nature of Halloween.

When I get kids I would like to have the knowhow and time to work with them to build a true haunted house, putting up smoke machines and animated spooks and paper mache ghosts and skeletons. My wife is not thrilled about this idea. She said we shouldn't bother with that much fuss and expense over a holiday based upon the devil. I thought she was joking to begin with, but she was dead serious. Since that time, I have heard at least three other people mention that Halloween was a Satanic holiday, and so I decided to dust off my soapbox once again.

Friends, this is just not true. I certainly don't know all there is to know about Halloween, but allow me to elaborate on what I do know.

Open your history books to page....*ahem*....anyway....

About 2,000 years ago, the Celts (not the Celtics...they are from Boston) had a holiday called Samhain (pronounced Sa-win). Named after the Celt god of death, Samhain fell on October 31 to mark the end of the autumn season and the beginning of winter. It was known as the Day of the Dead (again, not Dawn of the Dead). People would light fires, carve scary faces on turnips and gourds and dress in costume in order to scare away the ghosts and goblins running about. When the Romans first conquered the Celts in the first century A.D., they added parts of two of their own festivals: Feralia, a festival held to honour the dead, and Poloma, named after the Roman Goddess of fruit and trees.

Now, the Catholic Church, angered by these pagan practices, wanted to eliminate Samhain. Pope Gregory declared a new religious festival called All Saint's Day, designed to honor all the Saints who did not have their own holiday. As part of the custom of All Saints Day, people would dress up in a costume that represented a saint, and young men would go door-to-door begging for food to feed the town's poor. A few hundred years later, the date was changed so that it would fall on November 1st.

As time passed, the customs of Samhain and All Saint's Day began to merge. The mass said on All Saint's Day was known as Allhallowmass and the day became known as All Hallow's Day, and the 31st was known as All Hallow's Eve.

The Irish population that immigrated to America brought with them the customs of All Hallow's Day, and these customs themselves combined with an American harvest festival called Autum's Play. All Hallow's Eve became more of a time to play than a religious holiday, and the name was eventually shortened to Halloween.

Halloween is a time to be scared, both to remember that we don't always know what is going on in the world, as well as a time to play, to be a kid, to scare others and laugh in excitement and fright. It's a time to eat too much candy and stay up too late, and have one last bash before winter comes. It's also a time to remember the traditions of those who came before us, be they Christian, Celt, Roman or Colonial American.

I am a confirmed Lutheran, and though my faith sometimes waivers, I consider myself to believe in God, and I also firmly believe this holiday has as much to do with the Devil as my netherregions have to do with a donkey (get it? because they're both called a....*ahem*. sorry kids).

I hope anyone who reads this finds it enlightening. I don't get up on the soapbox just to whine, I try and educate and have an actual point before I write anything down here. Any additional comments or knowledge about Halloween or the festivals behind it are welcome in the comment section. Any views of "Halloween is the Devil's Night!!" are also welcome. That's when I can just get insulting. Belive me, getting insulted by a man in purple pajamas is a unique experience.

Later.