This is also a time for turning a new leaf, allowing our negative habits to die. When pagan holidays were taken over by the early Christian Church, many of the rituals were kept but assigned new meanings and names. Thus, Samhain became All Soul's Day. The rituals of burning candles inside hollowed-out gourds to welcome home the spirits of the ancestors, leaving bowls of treats for them from the harvest and dressing up in costume were incorporated into the Christian rites, then eventually demonized and demoted to a game for children. The word pagan was also demonized and is now used, by the church, to describe a person who is not Christian, and therefore must be a devil worshiper, a witch or child-eating monster.
Pagans are people who worship in conjunction with the cycles of the moon and sun and seasons.
Rather than providing dogmatic answers, paganism focuses on asking relevant questions and offering powerful techniques, such as ritual and meditation, through which people can search for their own answers. The term Neo-pagan describes a modern social and religious movement based on the reconstruction and adaptation of our ancestral polytheistic nature religions. The prefix 'neo' is used to distinguish modern Pagan practice from those of the ancestors, because many of the rites have changed and evolved along with our culture. A perfect match with our UU principles. Like Christianity, with its subdivisions of catholic and the many different Protestant denominations, neo-paganism comes in many different flavors and styles, and many groups are eclectic blends of several different traditions.