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DUBROOM
ARTICLE SECTION |
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| Halloween
traditions stem from spirited past |
| The
gnarled toothed witch, jack-o'-lanterns with
a menacing glare and trays of caramel apples
are all Halloween traditions, but many
people don't know the symbols of this fright
night began with religious intent.
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"Halloween is All Hallows Day, a holy day,
and people should notice that," said Father
Mark Inglot, a priest at St. John's Student
Parish, 327 M.A.C. Ave.
Halloween is based in the Celtic Pagan festival
Samhain, which marks the final harvest, the
darkening of days and commemorates the dead.
In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III adopted
Halloween to convert pagans and attempted to
replace the darker aspects with celebrations of
saints, said Jason Mankey, former member of Green
Spiral, a pagan group on campus.
Dawne Botke-Coe, co-owner of the Triple Goddess
Bookstore, 2142 Hamilton Road in Okemos, said the
rituals of Samhain have been overshadowed by the
modern symbols that came from them.
Originally, the witch was a goddess, mourning the
death of the Crown God at the end of the last
harvest. An important feature of this image is the
presence of the cauldron.
"She's like a Halloween witch, stirring her
cauldron, which was part of the Celtic belief that
the soul goes to the cauldron to wait for
reincarnation," said Botke-Coe, who
identifies as a neo-pagan goddess worshiper.
The idea of the goddess as a healer and holy
person was destroyed with witch burning and
Christianity, she said.
Household items such as brooms, chalices and
cauldrons were used by some Celts to continue
their religious rituals.
Today, however, these items are symbols of
darkness and are generally viewed as instruments
of evil.
"Some things that survived, that were really
used, have been vilified and are only hauled out
on Halloween, but it's simply history,"
Botke-Coe said.
The religious origins of the jack-o'-lantern are
harder to pinpoint.
Botke-Coe said Celts used to hollow-out gourds to
keep negative spirits away during the night when
the veil between the living and the dead world is
weak.
The pumpkin was introduced when the Irish
immigrated to the United States in the 1800s and
replaced the gourds with the larger vegetable.
But Mankey said the jack-o'-lantern is more of a
Christian tradition than pagan, representing a
soul trapped in purgatory.
Inglot agrees that the jack-o'-lantern could be
viewed as a Christian symbol, used to convey a
religious message.
The idea has been put forth, Inglot said, of the
emptied-out gourd as a metaphor of a human being.
The candle placed within is supposed to be the
soul placed by god, illuminating the vessel.
Celebrating the harvest is the main explanation
given for the presence of apples during Halloween
festivities.
"The Celts used to observe Samhain by
celebrating the harvest - all of the things we use
to decorate for Halloween are harvest
symbols," Mankey said.
"You're thanking the Earth for the abundance
given to us."
Apples were also used by the Celts for divination,
which was often done to predict a girl's future
spouse.
Botke-Coe said she prefers to use tarot cards to
communicate with her dead loved ones. During
Samhain she performs divination, which includes a
solitary reading to her ancestors.
There is also the idea that bobbing for apples was
a version of baptism for the Celts, placed in a
cauldron, which was viewed as a homely and holy
item, Botke-Coe said.
ORIGINAL
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