Happy Halloween!
Alright, it's time for Miss M to get all edu-ma-cational and teacher-ish on your ass.
One of my pet peeves is ignorance. Honestly. It can drive me insane when people spout off nonsense without bothering to actually learn the truth, and when you DO tell them the truth they seem to get all pissy. Drives me batty. (Batty, get it? It's Halloween!)
Speaking about Halloween...
My friend teaches Kindergarten. She has this kid she who doesn't celebrate Halloween. That's fine, I respect people's religious beliefs, as long as they don't try to force them on me or anything. The thing that kills me though is that he apparently yells at everyone else that he doesn't celebrate Halloween because it's the Devil's birthday! Gee, I wonder where he got that load of crap from? It puts the teacher in a tough position, because you can't really tell them that's not true, because basically then you are saying that mom/dad are wrong, and you really just can't do that.
For what it's worth, I told her that she should dress up as a devil and don a party hat today. Then she could walk in and exclaim, "It's my Birthday!!!"
Yeah, I'm evil.
Anyway...
Halloween is NOT the Devil's birthday. It is not a holiday of evil, or demons, or dead things. Okay, well not dead things in a bad zombie night of the living dead kinda way, but rather the rememberance of the spirit of great grandma kinda way.
It dates back the the Celts, who celebrated Samhain, pronounced sow-en. They believed that they could communicate with loved ones on this day who had passed to the other side. Kinda like they still celebrate the Day of the Dead in Mexico now. Anyway, villagers would go house to house and offer to pray for the souls of the departed in exchange for these little cakes. If they were refused, then they would pull pranks sometimes. Sound familiar?
Anyway, when Christianity started to get big, they kinda melded that celebration in with the new religion and called it All Saints, or Hallows (like hallowed ground at a church? so clever!) Day. It was November 1st, so just like Christmas Day has Christmas Eve, All Hallows Day got All Hallows Eve. Since Eve is short for evening, All Hallows Evening eventually got shortened to Hallow's Evening then Hallow'een.
So why the costumes? Well, people started wearing masks to supposedly blend in with the souls that were visiting Earth to see their loved ones.
And those scary Jack-o-Lanterns? No flashlights back then, just a fun way to light the night.
Some people, hear the words "dead" and "souls coming back" and instead of translating it into something spiritual and loving, translate it literally, and think of zombies and evil. That's where all the ghoulish crap comes in.
It's a GOOD Holiday. It's fun, and has it's roots in a really spiritual place.
But the Devil's birthday? No way.
One of my pet peeves is ignorance. Honestly. It can drive me insane when people spout off nonsense without bothering to actually learn the truth, and when you DO tell them the truth they seem to get all pissy. Drives me batty. (Batty, get it? It's Halloween!)
Speaking about Halloween...
My friend teaches Kindergarten. She has this kid she who doesn't celebrate Halloween. That's fine, I respect people's religious beliefs, as long as they don't try to force them on me or anything. The thing that kills me though is that he apparently yells at everyone else that he doesn't celebrate Halloween because it's the Devil's birthday! Gee, I wonder where he got that load of crap from? It puts the teacher in a tough position, because you can't really tell them that's not true, because basically then you are saying that mom/dad are wrong, and you really just can't do that.
For what it's worth, I told her that she should dress up as a devil and don a party hat today. Then she could walk in and exclaim, "It's my Birthday!!!"
Yeah, I'm evil.
Anyway...
Halloween is NOT the Devil's birthday. It is not a holiday of evil, or demons, or dead things. Okay, well not dead things in a bad zombie night of the living dead kinda way, but rather the rememberance of the spirit of great grandma kinda way.
It dates back the the Celts, who celebrated Samhain, pronounced sow-en. They believed that they could communicate with loved ones on this day who had passed to the other side. Kinda like they still celebrate the Day of the Dead in Mexico now. Anyway, villagers would go house to house and offer to pray for the souls of the departed in exchange for these little cakes. If they were refused, then they would pull pranks sometimes. Sound familiar?
Anyway, when Christianity started to get big, they kinda melded that celebration in with the new religion and called it All Saints, or Hallows (like hallowed ground at a church? so clever!) Day. It was November 1st, so just like Christmas Day has Christmas Eve, All Hallows Day got All Hallows Eve. Since Eve is short for evening, All Hallows Evening eventually got shortened to Hallow's Evening then Hallow'een.
So why the costumes? Well, people started wearing masks to supposedly blend in with the souls that were visiting Earth to see their loved ones.
And those scary Jack-o-Lanterns? No flashlights back then, just a fun way to light the night.
Some people, hear the words "dead" and "souls coming back" and instead of translating it into something spiritual and loving, translate it literally, and think of zombies and evil. That's where all the ghoulish crap comes in.
It's a GOOD Holiday. It's fun, and has it's roots in a really spiritual place.
But the Devil's birthday? No way.
Miss M told you so @ 11:38 AM
3 Comments:
I don't see anything wrong with telling that kid that it's NOT the devils birthday...you're not saying his parents are wrong directly...you're just telling him it's no one's birthday!!! LOL Maybe I'm evil too!!!
Annoying. Annoying. Annoying.
Pretty neat; I didn't know anything about that. You're evil and edumacational!
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