Talk:Halloween/Archive 1

message: This entry is gaining in accuracy and depth. I have re-edited passages that were blurred by 'Dogface,' viz:
:Although modern Halloween is a secular holiday, it is claimed to have from the pagan Celtic season of Samhain, which has been claimed was Christianized as the feast of All Saints, although more recent research casts severe doubt upon this, especially since the autumnal date for All Saints in the West began in Germany and not any "Celtic" country. Likewise, the celebration of All Saints actually began in Antioch, rather far from any "Celtic" land. ('More recent research' is a smokescreen.)
::(I substituted) Although modern Halloween is a secular holiday, cultural historians recognize its connections with the pagan Celtic season of Samhain. Like other feasts in the Christian year, the earlier observations were  Christianized as the feast of All Saints. Roman Catholics object. They localize the revised autumnal date for All Saints in Germany, and  identify the celebration of All Saints with feasts of groups of martyrs, in disant centers such as Antioch.
:For many Christians, this was the most evil time of the year. Suppressed by 'Dogface.' Is this information actually incorrect? What other season is preceived as evil? I have not reinstated the sentence, however.
:'Dogface' also suppressed the history of Catholic observation of All Saint's Day, largely drawn from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which was full of inconvenient but accurate factual detail. Dogface also made some useful corrections. Wetman 20:02, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Blurred by Dogface

message: Revisions (italicized) from User:Dogface, May 16, 2004:
"All Soul's Day was accepted and Christianized by Odilo (died 1048) in the Cluniac monasteries, and its observance spread through the Celtic north before it was introduced into Italy. This claim is utter rubbish, of course, since All Saint's Day was celebrated throughout Christianity centuries before, very often in the spring."
Suppressed text: "It should also be noted that Christians often denigrate suggestions of any mythic or pre-Christian content in Christian observances." (a reference to the very practice exhibited here by Dogface, thus demonstrated as true)
Suppressed text: "Although modern Halloween is a secular holiday, cultural historians recognize its connections with the pagan Celtic season of Samhain. Like other feasts in the Christian year, the earlier observations were Christianized as the feast of All Saints. Roman Catholics object. They localize the revised autumnal date for All Saints in Germany, and  identify the celebration of All Saints with feasts of groups of martyrs, in disant centers such as Antioch." (This text Dogface replaced by several paragraphs of the following text dump of unknown provenience, denigrating unidentified writing of Frazer and of Rhys)
"At the end of the nineteenth century , two distinguished academ-
ics, one at Oxford and the other at Cambridge, made enduring con-
tributions to the popular conception of Samhain. The former was
the philologist Sir John Rhys, who suggested that it had been the
'Celtic' New Year.... Rhys's theory was further popularized by
the Cambridge scholar, Sir James Frazer. At times the latter did
admit that the evidence for it was inconclusive, but at others he
threw this caution overboard and employed it to support an idea
of his own: that Samhain had been the pagan Celtic feast of the
dead. He reached this belief by the simple process of arguing
back from a fact, that 1 and 2 November had been dedicated to
that purpose by the medieval Christian Church, from which it
could be surmised that this was been a Christianization of a pre-
existing festival. He admitted, by implication, that there was in
fact no actual record of such a festival, but inferred the former
existence of one from a number of different propositions: that
the Church had taken over other pagan holy days, that 'many' cul-
tures have annual ceremonies to honour their dead, 'commonly' at
the opening of the year, and that (of course) 1 November had been
the Celtic New Year. He pointed out that although the feast of
All Saints or All Hallows had been formally instituted across
most of north-west Europe by the emperor Louis the Pius in 835,
on the prompting of Pope Gregory IV, it had already existed, on
its later date of 1 November, in England at the time of Bede. He
suggested that the pope and emperor had, therefore, merely
ratified an existing religious practice based upon that of the
ancient Celts.
"The story is, in fact, more complicated. By the mid-fourth
century Christians in the Mediterranean world were keeping a
feast in honour of all those who had been martyred under the
pagan emperors; it is mentioned in the _Carmina Nisibena_ of St
Ephraem, who died in about 373, as being held on 13 May. During
the fifth century divergent practices sprang up, the Syrian chur-
ches holding the festival in Easter Week, and those of the Greek
world preferring the Sunday after Pentecost. That of Rome, how-
ever, preferred to keep the May date, and Pope Boniface IV
formally endorsed it in the year 609. By 800 churches in England
and Germany, which were in touch with each other, were celebrat-
ing a festival dedicated to all saints upon 1 November instead.
The oldest text of Bede's Martyrology, from the eighth century,
does not include it, but the recensions at the end of the century
do. Charlemagne's favourite churchman Alcuin was keeping it by
then, as were also his friend Arno, bishop of Salzburg, and a
church in Bavaria. Pope Gregory, therefore, was endorsing and
adopting a practice which had begun in northern Europe. It had
not, however, started in Ireland, where the _Felire_ of Oengus
and the _Martyrology of Tallaght_ prove that the early medieval
churches celebrated the feast of All Saints upon 20 April. This
makes nonsense of Frazer's notion that the November date was
chosen because of 'Celtic' influence: rather, both 'Celtic'
Europe and Rome followed a Germanic idea...."
Dogface 15:29, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: However, this still cannot explain away the celebration of the festival of All Saints as a mere "Christianization" of a pagan festival, since the holiday was celebrated in the spring previous to this deate by Eastern Christians who were not subject to the Pope and who did not celebrate Latin festivals.
This is not discussion. This is not an informed contribution to Halloween. I propose we delete Dogface's entries and ask him to begin again. Look at this user's contributions: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Dogface Can we expect anything?  Wetman 23:32, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

text: That statment is extremly typical narrow-minded, anti-Christian bigotry.  Since I'm a Christian, you assert that I am inherently untrustworthy.  Prove that Ireland controlled the entirety of Christianity.  Consult the Martyrologies I cited and explain away how Ireland celebrated All Saints' in APRIL and NOT November.Dogface 14:53, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Suppressed text: "It should also be noted that Christians often denigrate suggestions of any mythic or pre-Christian content in Christian observances." (a reference to the very practice exhibited here by Dogface, thus demonstrated as true)
I thought I would cordially mention a relevant term: Heortology (from the Catholic Encyclopedia) refers to the science of sacred festivals. Catholic theologians do indeed study the contents and evolution of festivals. 207.192.130.197 22:53, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Text dump from [[User:Dogface]]

message: It is a liminal or threshold occasion, when the distinctions between the daylight world of reason and the spectral nightworld are blurred. I removed this because it didn't make sense to me - I don't know what is meant by "the distinctions between the daylight world of reason and the spectral nightworld"; and Halloween blurs nothing; it's only a holiday. Maybe the sentence is trying to say that things seem more surreal or more supernatural on Halloween? Brian Kendig
:I can't help you with the connotations of "liminal" and the Celtic view of the Otherworld. Danny Ruck and Carl Staples give good comprehension of "liminal" and so does Joseph Campbell. But I make it a rule never to revert material I don't understand. Is it important to you that Halloween be without any deep meaning: "it's only a holiday" as you say? Anyway, try Googling some combinations like "liminal myth".Wetman 22:48, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I often edit material I don't understand - I edit boldly. I'm passing no judgment on the holiday in question; it's just that I felt this particular sentence was too vague and contributed nothing to the article. For example: I don't consider daytime particularly full of "reason" or nighttime particularly "spectral", and I don't know what "distinctions" between them are being "blurred." You seem to have a better understanding of how liminal applies to Halloween - would you edit the article and go into a bit more detail about the relationship? (Oh, and if you follow up to these comments, please follow up on Talk:Halloween - we may as well make these notes available to everyone!) - Brian Kendig
--I moved this here following this suggestion. Can anyone express the liminal quality of Halloween in a sufficiently pedestrian manner to satisfy this aggressively pugnacious troglodite, who often edits material he doesn't understand? Or so he claims. Wetman 01:50, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably not, but I'd be happy to see the sentence restored. And if you like, I'll donate to a fund to buy him a second-hand thesaurus. -- Jmabel 02:25, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)
Umm, hello? I'm right here... and I know the definition of the word "liminal." When I say I edit things I don't understand, I don't mean "duh, i can't figure this out, I think I'll change it" - I mean, "I can't discern what this has to do with the topic or what the person who wrote this sentence meant by it, so I'm going to make the article clearer." I still hold that the sentence in question makes no sense. In what sense is Halloween a "threshold occasion," in what way is daytime a "world of reason" and nighttime "spectral," what are the "distinctions" between these two, and in what way are they "blurred"? If there was a point to be made by the sentence in question, it's getting lost in the flowery prose. - Brian Kendig 04:18, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: Excellent; thank you. I'll work that into the article. - Brian Kendig 18:35, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Whether Halloween is "liminal" or not

message: I have removed "The Christian establishment allegedly co-opted the Samhain season (or so it is claimed, although this presumes a truly absurd amount of power and influence on the part of Ireland over the entirety of the Church at this time)" No one is making this claim, a straw man which obscures the interesting histories of Samhain, Halloween and All Saints Day, which are being carefully disentangled in the entry, as far as they relate direcvtly to Halloween. Two similar intrusive notes have been left untouched in the entry. Wetman 02:51, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: A straw man removed

message: Ronald Hutton's book The Wheel of the Year suggests ways to improve the article, I think.  Hutton makes the points that: 
# Nobody really knows what Samhain celebrated, other than the beginning of winter.  It is not known from the original sources that Samhain involved the dead.  
# The dead make their appearance with the Roman Catholic of All Saints and All Souls.  There is no grounds to believe that these days mark the Christianizing of a Celtic custom, other than allusion to a general habit of converting pagan festivals to Christian use.  They began far from Celtic territory. 
# All Saints and All Souls became major Christian folk festivals in western Europe, in both Celtic and non-Celtic areas.  In the British Isles, their religious aspects were sternly suppressed at the Reformation, largely because All Saints and All Souls made extensive use of the disapproved doctrine of Purgatory.  
# The folk cultural aspects survived, especially in Ireland, along with a vague association of the dead.  In England, many of the folk customs transferred to Guy Fawkes' Day.  The contemporary Hallowe'en was invented by Irish immigrants to the USA, where they found the pumpkin was far more accomodating than turnips to make jack-o-lantern's from.  Smerdis of Tlön 19:46, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: More on alleged Christianizing of Samhain

message: How can we say, "In 2004, an estimate[d] 2.15 million children in the United States dressed up as Spider-Man, the year's most popular costume," when Halloween 2004 hasn't yet even occurred? -- Jmabel|Talk 19:46, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
:I found the original reference and corrected the article (along with a link to the reference) - it's a projected figure. - Brian Kendig 22:16, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Spidie comes back from the future

message: Halloween in the Philippines is like that in the U.S. with a few major differences. Two differences a) food takes the place of candy and b) everyone, not just kids, go door-to-door sharing food. That's as much as my mother told me. Adraeus 11:30, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Halloween in the Philippines