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How Will You Celebrate Halloween This Year?

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belbbmfan:

--- Quote from: DavidInIndy on October 06, 2008, 05:15:24 pm ---Oh, the Witches Walk sounds like FUN! And spooky! I'd love it! :D

Do they celebrate St. Maarten's Day in Belgium Fabienne?

--- End quote ---

Yes! But only in a small part of Belgium. Sint Maarten is celebrated in the region of the city of Aalst. Many kids get their presents from Sint Maarten there on November 11th instead of Sint Nicolas on december 6th.

Ellemeno:
I clicked four disparate choices, yet all true:

Attend a Halloween party
Take the kids Trick-or-Treating
Stay at home and spend time on Bettermost
I don't celebrate Halloween

I would pretty much ignore Halloween, if I could.  I'd rather stay home and be on BetterMost.  But I have a kid, and so far she was young enough that she didn't quite know about trick or treating, so I didn't have to take her, but the cat's out of the bag, and we're going this year.  Also, we have friends who have a Halloween party every year, and so we go, although I wind up bailing on it about half the time at the last moment.  I'm just not into creepy.

Now Thanksgiving is a different story.  I love that holiday.

Jeff Wrangler:
I'm really not into creepy either, but I've always loved the make-believe aspect of Halloween.  :D

October is my favorite month, and I guess I love both the fall holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving.  :D

belbbmfan:

--- Quote from: Kd5000 on October 06, 2008, 06:25:38 pm ---I had read that Halloween was starting to catch on in Sweden, but that ppl were becoming concerned about the Americanization of their culture and so it was dying out. Was this ever the case in Belgium?

--- End quote ---

I has never caught on over here. It's just something we know from American movies and tv series. Kids don't go trick or treating over here and I've never heard of a Halloween party over here.

I don't know where the tradition of the witches walk in my village came from. I grew up in another part of Belgium and it wasn't a tradition over there. I'm guessing there must be a Halloween link somewhere, but I'm not sure. I once read that Halloween has european/catholic roots, so maybe a witch walk is something that is done in other countries too.

But we're not really worried about Americanization.  ;)

David In Indy:
Hi Fabienne! Yes, Halloween did indeed originate in Europe. It's strange how Halloween has become such a big holiday in the US but not in other countries, since it was Europe that gave us Halloween to begin with! :)

From Wikipedia:

History

Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (Irish pronunciation: [ˈsˠaunʲ]; from the Old Irish samain).[1] The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is sometimes [2] regarded as the "Celtic New Year".[3] Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, now known as Halloween, the boundary between the alive and the deceased dissolved, and the dead become dangerous for the living by causing problems such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would frequently involve bonfires, into which bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown. Costumes and masks were also worn at the festivals in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or placate them.[4][5]

History of Name

The term Halloween is shortened from All Hallows' Even (both "even" and "eve" are abbreviations of "evening", but "Halloween" gets its "n" from "even") as it is the eve of "All Hallows' Day",[6] which is now also known as All Saints' Day. It was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions,[3] until Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV moved the old Christian feast of All Saints' Day from May 13 (which had itself been the date of a pagan holiday, the Feast of the Lemures) to November 1. In the ninth century, the Church measured the day as starting at sunset, in accordance with the Florentine calendar. Although All Saints' Day is now considered to occur one day after Halloween, the two holidays were, at that time, celebrated on the same day. Liturgically, the Church traditionally celebrated that day as the Vigil of All Saints, and, until 1970, a day of fasting as well. Like other vigils, it was celebrated on the previous day if it fell on a Sunday, although secular celebrations of the holiday remained on the 31st. The Vigil was suppressed in 1955, but was later restored in the post-Vatican II calendar.


Full Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

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