Ahhh ... Father seems to have hurt the pagans' feelings ...
Sheesh, Mmark, don't tell the fundamentalists that. Pagan origins is bad enough. D'you want Alabama to ban Halloween by law?
Happy Celtic new Year!
(Cherished beliefs die hard. 
)
Check out what Archbishop Levada had to say about Halloween yesterday.
He's wrong that Guy Fawkes Day was mostly forgotten in early America. George Washington tried to suppress the day's more anti-Catholic elements, lest it upset the colonials' Catholic European allies. It seems he largely succeeded.
Anybody know when Samhain became a mildly popular co-holiday here? I only first heard of it a few years back among the types of people who get their religion at Rennaisance fairs.
I still think the CUF Faith Fact gives more thorough information on Halloween's historical roots.
Pagan origins is bad enough. D'you want Alabama to ban Halloween by law?
Hee hee hee
I've been hearing about Samhain since the mid to late 80s, ever since the western US got lousy with Wiccans.
Samhain became popular among the neopagans post-'60s. But it's only really become widespread in the past 20 years.
Anyone who says they are following the ancient traditions of the druids is just mislead. They've read MISTS OF AVALON one too many times. (And once is too much.) 
The CUF piece is good!
"Anybody know when Samhain became a mildly popular co-holiday here? I only first heard of it a few years back among the types of people who get their religion at Rennaisance fairs."
Gregg's right. It's a very, very new thing to associate Samhain with Halloween. There is, BTW, no historical evidence at that Samhain was ever a god that druids (or anyone else, for that matter) worshipped. So says Dr Kevin Orlin Johnson, who was just on Al Kresta's show on 10/21. He's writing what he says will be a 1500 page book on the history of Western holidays - he said there's been nothing written about them from a historical POV & it been like doing college-level dissertations for each chapter! He said there is virtually no historical evidence of any sort of connection between Halloween & druids, etc. Apparently, the whole Samhain thing was made up out of wholecloth by a guy in the 14th or 15th century, if I recall correctly (there was a TON of info given out on that show, too much to catch with one listening). Apparently, that book became the basis for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they just switched the names!
Can't wait for that book!
This Dr. Kevin Orlin Johnson sounds a little out of it. Has he never read Ron Hutton's Stations of the Sun? And of course Samhain is connected with Halloween - Samhain is the Irish word for the month of November and the name of the holiday that starts it.
What's disputed is if there was a pagan holiday to which modern Halloween/Samhain (and its other names) is genuinely connected (and if so, to what extent).
Such a connection was suggested at least as far back as the 19th century, by Sir John Rhys, so it isn't "very, very new", only a bit new.
And any connection with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion also sounds strange - I thought the original sources for that were 19th century stuff fulminating about Napoleon.
Gene,
Samhain was not a Celtic god. It was the name of the harvest festival/night of the dead an end of the year. It was very much a facet of ancient Celtic culture, along with other festivals like Beltain, Imbolc, Lughnasa, etc. That they really were Celtic festivals is not really an issue. That's fact.
But the notion that Halloween comes directly from Samhain is bunk. There is absolutely NO historical or archaeological evidence to support such a claim. It's wishful thinking on the part of neo-pagans maybe, but it ain't true.
The model for the PROTOCOLS OF ZION was a 19th C satire against Napoleon III. It has nothing to do with Paganism paleo or neo.
Again I recommend Ronald Hutton's books, although I should point out that he's quite friendly toward Neo-Paganism despite knowing its phony origins.
Ron Hutton is a neo-pagan.
I don't agree with everything he says, since he's not a Celtic scholar and seems sometimes to think that lack of historical documentation means things can't have existed (even peasant stuff in periods with relatively few historical sources at all) - but his books are a wonderful antidote to all the nonsense out there.
Q. Why don't fundamentalists like pagan rituals?
A. Because they might be Catholic in origin...
Look, I'm Lutheran, I cop this stuff too.
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