Of course, it’s not much a of a holiday amongst my orthodox Jewish neighbors either, but really?
UPDATE:
Just got back from trick or treating. My daughter hauled in a load of candy, that she’ll typically forget about in a week or two. As usual, I put on my gorilla suit and went as Tim Eyman hawking I-807. Scary.
It’s ironic that Robertson even has his history of the origin of “All hallows E’n” completely wrong.
I wonder whether he’s going to condemn all Mexicans when they celebrate “The Day Of The Dead” on Friday.
More scary stuff….as the price of oil passed $95 a barrel today, it was revealed that US petroleum reserves are being reduced as we approach the winter heating season. The justification given by a respected industry journal is that “Given the economics of what it takes to store oil, it makes no sense to hold on to inventory right now.”
No big deal. There are plenty of Christians who think it’s wrong to celebrate Christmas, too. There are plenty of articles to be found on the web about that one.
@ 3
I bet there are pagans who refuse to celebrate Halloween until we put the “Saturn” back in Saturnalia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia
Breaking News — A federal jury has awarded $11 million to a father whose son’s military funeral was disrupted by anti-gay protesters.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/.....index.html
@3 Who is Harry Bethel? I never heard of him. Even though he claims to have written “more than 100 articles and booklets” on his website, Amazon.com has nothing by this author, so he must be referring to mimeographed or self-published stuff. He was “wingnut” and “just plain nut” written all over him. I wouldn’t equate this guy to “plenty of Christians,” although I will concede there probably are some other self-described “Christians” who share is wacky views. Certainly his views are not representative of any established Christian denomination. All the major Christian denominations observe Christmas as a celebration of Christ’s birth.
The trick or treating is done. The kids got a good haul this year – a little bit better than last year. Still don’t have enough gas in the tank to visit the neighborhood across the closes n/s arterial.
So many grumps turn out all the lights. What are they doing in those houses? Listening to their ipods in the dark?
Now we clean up the yard and get it spic and span for Thanksgiving and the “Winter Celebrations”.
Happy Holidays!!!
Our house is so far back from the street that we don’t get trick-or-treaters. It’s kind of sad in a way, because Halloween would be more my type of holiday than most others, though I do appreciate some of the pagan predecessors/overtones of some of the Xtian holidays…..oh well. I hope to move in a couple of years, maybe it will be to a neighborhood where we would get kids not afraid to come to the door. On the years we didn’t feel like playing Boris and Natasha, we could be Gomez and Morticia!
I get kids DESPITE the homicidal basset hounds.
Homicidal Basset is an oxymoron, BTW. Like good Republican.
@7 “So many grumps turn out all the lights. What are they doing in those houses? Listening to their ipods in the dark?”
Have you priced candy lately?
@9 Homicidal bassett hounds? Weeeeheeeeeheeee, even to a rabbit THAT’S funny!!!
http://www.wetasschronicles.co.....ndEars.jpg
To quote Gary Larson, “Does this look like the face of a cat killer?”
Heeeeeeeehoooooooooohaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaharharhar har har
Halloween treat from the NoRTID folks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5YdJq1dQq8
http://www.nortid.org
I donned my kilt, wore a Jacobite shirt and potaine, sported a glengarry with a clan chieften cockade, and strapped a two-handed claymore sword on my back and went to my church where we do Trunk or Treat for the neighborhood. Scores of cars with open trunks decorated with all kinds of stuff and loaded with candy for kids.
Inside our multipurpose facility, we had tons of games and activities including a bounce house and huge inflated slide. Ever the kid I am, I operated at varying times, both attractions.
No question…I had more fun than the kids.
Our coffee bar was open serving Aztec hot chocolate (laced with a splash red pepper and cinnamon), and several cars had tail-gate party set-ups with grills serving hot dogs.
Just a great time…Hundreds of kids, scores of parents, and everybody enjoying themselves. Beautiful evening for it; perfect Halloween weather, crisp enough to dress warm, but dry.
A kilt is the perfect garment to wear no matter the temp. Warm when it’s cold and cool when it’s hot. And no one ever messes with someone in a kilt.
It’s fun to be a kid…even if the kid is trapped in a 57-year old body.
Of course, my newly blackened eye only added to the ambiance. As long as I’m sporting a shiner, might as well put it to use.
The Piper
Breaking News — A federal jury has awarded $11 million to a father whose son’s military funeral was disrupted by anti-gay protesters.
Big deal. The people that they should really go after are the war protesters who use a soldier’s name without the family’s permision in their stupid protests. Of course most commies probably dont have eleven dollars let alone eleven million dollars. It would be a good gesture though.
Hey, today marks the 55 day mark until CHRISTMAS which is a HOLIDAY. Cool… roof roof.
Roger Rabbit @6:
I have no clue. I just Live Searched (we don’t Google at my house) for “should Christians celebrate Christmas” and linked the first rant on the list. There were 746 hits on that exact phrase; I can post more if you like. Or, being a bunny, maybe you would prefer a search for “should Christians celebrate Easter”? Only 193 of those…
I read on AOL that a witches’ group in New York that called the 2004 election correctly is predicting a Hillary Clinton/Wesley Clark vs. Rudy Guiliani/Mike Huckabee matchup in 2008.
Of course, the fact Clinton and Guiliani are from their state might bias their picks a bit.
However, I find the suggestion of a Clinton/Clark ticket intriguing, and the suggestion of a Guiliani/Huckabee ticket plausible.
As we all know, many candidates of both parties have no chance of winning the presidential nomination and threw their hats in the ring to become contenders for their respective parties’ vice presidential nominations. Interestingly, Clark isn’t running for anything, but if Hillary wins her party’s grand prize he might be more attractive to her than either of the other contenders or even the second or third tier candidates. I think it’s possible, but less likely than a Clinton-Richardson ticket.
@13 Exactly the kind of comment you expect from a stupid dog.
@14 Today is the beginning of the Hallothanksmas shopping season.
@15 “should Christians celebrate Easter”
Geez, religion in this country is in even worse shape than I thought.
Christianity has pagan DNA. Just about every holiday in the Christian world is, in one way or another, borrowed from pre-Christian rituals. Of course, this is nothing new. The Romans basically borrowed the entire Greek pantheon (whose own roots lie in the earlier Cretan civilization) for their faith, with a little (presumably) Etruscan thrown in around the edges. The names may change, but the roles stay the same. For example, a Cretan deity named Da became the Greek goddess Demeter (Roman name: Ceres), then was evolved (sorry, only good way of describing it) by the architects of the Bible into St. Demetrius.
Faith is flexible. If only the same were true of its practitioners………
@20 Fundamentalists ARE flexible.
YOU try stuffing YOUR head up your ass.
21 WADR
Christianty IS pagan ..
it has statues, celebrates human sacrifice, has a pantheon, etc.
Comparing Christianity to Judaism or Islam, true monotheisms, is as silly as worrying about how many deities there are,
So when the Sonics, Boeing, Renton River train, Millionaire’s with mansions, all pack up and shut down or leave this town do to your massive continual regressive taxation, where will you get your revenues from?
Just assssskin!
Broadway Joe @ 21,
Excellent points about Christianity. Sure, pagan hoildays were incorporated into the early Christian church to “sell” the new religion to the European tribes.
seattlejew,
Is monotheism any better or worse than Wicca or Asatru? What is religion, anyway? I lean towards the Neo-Pagan faiths rather than those “imported” from the Middle East. Those pre-Christian religions are the ones tied to us decendants of Germanic and Celtic tribes. Christianity was forced onto those peoples, and it’s time to throw it out and return to the old religions.
Great costume that Pat found. He sure looks ghoulish. Or Zombie-like.
@21, 23 and 25 …. what you all know about religion and history scares me … I hope none of you are teachers. Before you start spouting out bs about Christianity being pagan, actually read some history (and that would be found in books, not anti-christian blogs).
#4 and #27………it would be samhain not saturnalia….and #27 if you really think that all the christian holidays aren’t based on the much older [try 9000 years] pagan religion that preceded it…you are really clueless.
the christians…or as they were called back in the day “the new kids on the block” had a nasty habit of trying to force their new shiny religion of “peace” down the celts throats. it didn’t exactly work out that well and they had to go under the radar to try to placate the peeps into joining their new club. they did it by putting the new and shiny christian holy days right smack on top of the older and wiser pagan holy days. and if you didn’t go along with it? well…then you could just go to hell. and they were more than willing to help you do just that. with fire, drowning and other forms of good ‘christian’ things.
at least things have gotten somewhat better,…now they just call you an infidel and ‘pray’ for you.
so they finally grew up…some.
say what you want about the pagan religions. how many wars did they start? how many people were killed because they would not submit to the pagan religion? i believe the answer to both questions is ZERO.
and guess what? there are an awful lot of people that still have not given in the the ‘new kids on the block’….they never did. check out wales…….
and i forgot to add…i got to spend halloween blinded by halogen lights. yup the uber tolerant church of morons across the street from me just despises halloween. according to them it’s satan’s day. that would actually be a neat trick since they didn’t make up satan till about 2000 years ago.so since this “good christian church” doesn’t approve of halloween what do they do? why they hold a “harvest festival” natch…[talk about pagan…the morons] and my house was lit up by all those blinding halogen lights.
oh yeah….good times.
so people…the next time someone wants you to get rid of the christmas trees at the capitol…say ‘no thanks’
they are a pagan symbol and ‘good christians’ just hate them.
keep that in mind.