This weekend, I had more than my share of fun.
The remainder of this story, names will be changed and censored so as to protect the guilty.
On Friday night, I went up to a house in the San Gabriel Valley and bartended a party that was populated mostly be alums and current students of classified. I dressed as Mormon There was a lot of dancing as we had a DJ there, as well as a nice hookah in the pillow room. I reconnected with some old friends and made a bunch of new ones. One friend, classified, insisted that she hold back on the drinking but still managed to have a good time. I can never forget how classified took several shots and sang "Everyone's a Hero" from Dr. Horrible's sing-a-long blog.
On the dance floor, I met a few friends who got tipsy. The dancing was classified. I can't remember the last time that I felt that energized and had that much fun.
On Halloween eve proper, I spent some time with the other graduate students. It was much smaller and kick back, since I was already burnt out. I did however, see one student dressed like the Bee from Blind Melon's "no rain." I couple of us attempted to find a bar, but it was closed to what we can only assume was a fight of some sort.
I turned in earlier than expected Halloween night, but the fact that I came back into Playa Vista at 7:15am that very morning makes me feel like I had my fun.
Showing posts with label halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label halloween. Show all posts
The Hack Holiday of the Harvest Festival (and the better alternative)
This is part II of the Halloween blog.
I know that there are many Christians out there who believe that Halloween is evil and that Christians need to do something else or nothing. As per the previous blog, I think that these fears are silly, but even if we must celebrate an alternative to Halloween, I think that we can do better than a “Harvest Festival.” My point is fairly simple: rather than arbitrarily renaming the secular holiday, why not instead draw on Christian tradition for a historic Christian holy day?
Let’s start with weakness of the Harvest Festival solution. Holidays are not about what you name them, but that activities done on the day and the why behind them. When we compare the activities of the Harvest Festival and Halloween, it turns out there is little different. Both days people dress up in costumes. Both days people carve pumpkins. Both days people eat candy and generally party somehow. Now, it might be said that Harvest festivals don’t have the evil ghouly stuff or scary pumpkins and takes place at a church, but this all difference in degree, not substance.
So how about the why behind the activities? The very term Harvest Festival implies the celebration of a harvest. So what Harvest are Christians celebrating? In most cases, none. Such a celebration makes sense in an agrarian community which depends on a harvest of crop to sustain itself –and I am sure there remain such communities- but that is not what most Christians are doing. I live in Los Angeles, and most people here behave (and vote) as if they don’t know where food comes from. Years ago, I even celebrated a Harvest Festival in my home town, which is surrounded by farm communities, but even there a “harvest” was moot.
Thus I can only really conclude that the why behind the Harvest Festival is also the same as the why for secular Halloween: an excuse to dress up in costumes and have fun. Sorry fearful fundies, the Harvest Festival solution is little bit more than an arbitrary renaming of the same substantive holiday.
I propose that if we must do something different, then let’s participate in a historic Christian holy day instead. The historic Christian holy day(s) I am referring to is of course All Saint’s Day and the corresponding All Hallow’s Eve on October 31st. Briefly put, All Saint’s Day and All Hallow’s Eve were Christian rites that coincided with the pagan October revelries. All Saint’s day, was a day to remember the “cloud of witness” –those Christians who came before us- once a year. It was not a funeral procession, but rather a remembrance of the hope that Christians have beyond death. The Saints, in this case, are not merely the super Christians of history, but literally any Christian who had died was remembered. Such is exemplified by the tradition of Dia de los Muetros in Spain, Latin America, and Mexico.
This is clearly a different substance than the secular Halloween (which actually comes from “All Hallow’s Eve” a Christian overtone) and avoids the cheesy inadequacies of the Harvest Festival. Personally, I would love to have a Holy Day where I could come to church with a portrait of my deceased grandparents among other Christians, doing the same, to remember their lost loved ones. There need be no sense of grief on such an occasion, but rather a triumphant celebration of future resurrection of the dead. A pastor’s sermon could be an annual sermon that reminds Christians of the hope that have through Christ in this matter. Surely, this is a more spiritually substantive alternative than the Harvest Festival.
But I imagine that such a thing would be hard sell around most Evangelical circles and would be loudly rejected by Fundamentalism. After all, it would probably look superstitious and decried as being extra-Biblical. Such objections could be overcome, but not easily. The resistance towards such a thing is indicative of larger problems in the North American Church, which is simply not a position to appreciate and understand holidays beyond minimal celebrations of Easter and Christmas.
Oh well. I will be having more than enough fun with the secular celebrations anyway.
Thanks for reading.
I know that there are many Christians out there who believe that Halloween is evil and that Christians need to do something else or nothing. As per the previous blog, I think that these fears are silly, but even if we must celebrate an alternative to Halloween, I think that we can do better than a “Harvest Festival.” My point is fairly simple: rather than arbitrarily renaming the secular holiday, why not instead draw on Christian tradition for a historic Christian holy day?
Let’s start with weakness of the Harvest Festival solution. Holidays are not about what you name them, but that activities done on the day and the why behind them. When we compare the activities of the Harvest Festival and Halloween, it turns out there is little different. Both days people dress up in costumes. Both days people carve pumpkins. Both days people eat candy and generally party somehow. Now, it might be said that Harvest festivals don’t have the evil ghouly stuff or scary pumpkins and takes place at a church, but this all difference in degree, not substance.
So how about the why behind the activities? The very term Harvest Festival implies the celebration of a harvest. So what Harvest are Christians celebrating? In most cases, none. Such a celebration makes sense in an agrarian community which depends on a harvest of crop to sustain itself –and I am sure there remain such communities- but that is not what most Christians are doing. I live in Los Angeles, and most people here behave (and vote) as if they don’t know where food comes from. Years ago, I even celebrated a Harvest Festival in my home town, which is surrounded by farm communities, but even there a “harvest” was moot.
Thus I can only really conclude that the why behind the Harvest Festival is also the same as the why for secular Halloween: an excuse to dress up in costumes and have fun. Sorry fearful fundies, the Harvest Festival solution is little bit more than an arbitrary renaming of the same substantive holiday.
I propose that if we must do something different, then let’s participate in a historic Christian holy day instead. The historic Christian holy day(s) I am referring to is of course All Saint’s Day and the corresponding All Hallow’s Eve on October 31st. Briefly put, All Saint’s Day and All Hallow’s Eve were Christian rites that coincided with the pagan October revelries. All Saint’s day, was a day to remember the “cloud of witness” –those Christians who came before us- once a year. It was not a funeral procession, but rather a remembrance of the hope that Christians have beyond death. The Saints, in this case, are not merely the super Christians of history, but literally any Christian who had died was remembered. Such is exemplified by the tradition of Dia de los Muetros in Spain, Latin America, and Mexico.
This is clearly a different substance than the secular Halloween (which actually comes from “All Hallow’s Eve” a Christian overtone) and avoids the cheesy inadequacies of the Harvest Festival. Personally, I would love to have a Holy Day where I could come to church with a portrait of my deceased grandparents among other Christians, doing the same, to remember their lost loved ones. There need be no sense of grief on such an occasion, but rather a triumphant celebration of future resurrection of the dead. A pastor’s sermon could be an annual sermon that reminds Christians of the hope that have through Christ in this matter. Surely, this is a more spiritually substantive alternative than the Harvest Festival.
But I imagine that such a thing would be hard sell around most Evangelical circles and would be loudly rejected by Fundamentalism. After all, it would probably look superstitious and decried as being extra-Biblical. Such objections could be overcome, but not easily. The resistance towards such a thing is indicative of larger problems in the North American Church, which is simply not a position to appreciate and understand holidays beyond minimal celebrations of Easter and Christmas.
Oh well. I will be having more than enough fun with the secular celebrations anyway.
Thanks for reading.
Why I Celebrate Halloween (and You Can Keep Your “Harvest Festival”)
It’s October and that means Halloween, my favorite secular holiday. I will being having a great amount of fun this year, as I do always. However there are often a lot of Christians that have serious moral hang-ups with the alleged worship of evil and pagan aspects of Halloween. The alternative, for much of evangelicalism, is to have a “harvest festival” at Church instead.
I submit though, that the concerns about the evil of Halloween are exaggerated and misplaced. Furthermore, if there is a need to “Christianize” Oct 31sth, than I think we can do better than a change in nomenclature to harvest festival. I will deal with the misplaced fears first, and the alternatives in a subsequent blog.
The general anti-halloween sentiments are well summed up here:
Those of you who actually worship Satan on Halloween, please comment on this blog. I ask, because I have never met any of you yet. Clearly, many Christians have because I keep hearing this rhetoric from both pulpits and message boards every October. I am of course, being sarcastic here. I really think that Christians make up the majority of people labeling Halloween a worship of evil, whereas the broader secular culture, which is busy celebrating it, knows of no such thing. For the majority of society, Halloween is an excuse to dress up and have some kind of celebration with no religious or spiritual aspects whatsoever.
For instance, when I was young, it was an excuse to go the grandparent’s of my neighbors and have a costume party out in the orchard. In College, it was an excuse to goof –off with the other undergraduates of my living complex. We would get creative with costumes (my friend once dressed up as an iPod). Now, it is a regular excuse to come up with fun outfits for my webcomic characters to wear each year.
Worship of evil? Quite clearly so!
But someone may persist (if they were not put off by my sarcasm) that Halloween does indeed have Pagan roots. It was, in fact, the Celtic new year and the suppression of evil spirits that roamed the earth on that night. This is true, but I still do not think that it justifies the general condemnation that many Christians have about Halloween. I have one simple reason: most people who celebrate Halloween are completely ignorant of these things. Most kids dressing up as ghosts, ninjas, faerie princesses etc have no knowledge of its roots and neither do their parents. The idea of the broader culture actually celebrating the “true meaning” of Halloween is so absurd that it was lampooned by the Onion News Network last year. Those true blue pagans who do, are an incredible minority.
There are many Christians, who still insist on a Christian alternative. While this might be a nice move, I think the Harvest Festival fails to hit the mark. But that is for the next blog.
For now, I will announce my plans. This year, I will be by an house full of 20-somethings and dressed up as either a Captain Hammer or a Mormon missionary. There will be much revelry and some liquor, like most years. I will likely be singing songs from Dr. Horrible and the Nightmare Before Christmas. Various other party games will ensue. It will be a joyous occasion shared with friends dear to me.
And this year, I preside over the goat sacrifice.
Thanks for reading.
I submit though, that the concerns about the evil of Halloween are exaggerated and misplaced. Furthermore, if there is a need to “Christianize” Oct 31sth, than I think we can do better than a change in nomenclature to harvest festival. I will deal with the misplaced fears first, and the alternatives in a subsequent blog.
The general anti-halloween sentiments are well summed up here:
The October 31st holiday that we today know as Halloween has strong roots in paganism and is closely connected with worship of the Enemy of this world, Satan. It is a holiday that generally glorifies the dark things of this world, rather than the light of Jesus Christ, The Truth.
Have you noticed how costumes and masks are getting generally more bloody, gory, and depraved each year? Unfortunately, the gruesome and grotesque and the occult are increasingly glorified in American society, not only on Halloween, but throughout the year in horror movies and in television programs.*
Those of you who actually worship Satan on Halloween, please comment on this blog. I ask, because I have never met any of you yet. Clearly, many Christians have because I keep hearing this rhetoric from both pulpits and message boards every October. I am of course, being sarcastic here. I really think that Christians make up the majority of people labeling Halloween a worship of evil, whereas the broader secular culture, which is busy celebrating it, knows of no such thing. For the majority of society, Halloween is an excuse to dress up and have some kind of celebration with no religious or spiritual aspects whatsoever.
For instance, when I was young, it was an excuse to go the grandparent’s of my neighbors and have a costume party out in the orchard. In College, it was an excuse to goof –off with the other undergraduates of my living complex. We would get creative with costumes (my friend once dressed up as an iPod). Now, it is a regular excuse to come up with fun outfits for my webcomic characters to wear each year.
Worship of evil? Quite clearly so!
But someone may persist (if they were not put off by my sarcasm) that Halloween does indeed have Pagan roots. It was, in fact, the Celtic new year and the suppression of evil spirits that roamed the earth on that night. This is true, but I still do not think that it justifies the general condemnation that many Christians have about Halloween. I have one simple reason: most people who celebrate Halloween are completely ignorant of these things. Most kids dressing up as ghosts, ninjas, faerie princesses etc have no knowledge of its roots and neither do their parents. The idea of the broader culture actually celebrating the “true meaning” of Halloween is so absurd that it was lampooned by the Onion News Network last year. Those true blue pagans who do, are an incredible minority.
There are many Christians, who still insist on a Christian alternative. While this might be a nice move, I think the Harvest Festival fails to hit the mark. But that is for the next blog.
For now, I will announce my plans. This year, I will be by an house full of 20-somethings and dressed up as either a Captain Hammer or a Mormon missionary. There will be much revelry and some liquor, like most years. I will likely be singing songs from Dr. Horrible and the Nightmare Before Christmas. Various other party games will ensue. It will be a joyous occasion shared with friends dear to me.
And this year, I preside over the goat sacrifice.
Thanks for reading.
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