why do Americans celebrate Halloween? isn't that an occult celebration?

Question

i heard that halloween is actually a day when all those satan-loving-people gather to worship him with the expectation that he will come to them... maybe i'm wrong but its just an opinion

Answer 1

Once again, ignorance prevails.

Halloween is a Pagan holiday, to which one of the original names it is commonly known as is 'All-Hallow's Eve,' and despite what you could think, Paganism is not a stanic worshipping ritual. It is a day in which we honour the deceased and can ask them for guidance, reconcilliation and offer them our best prayers and wishes in the afterlife.

Halloween, much like a fair number of Pagan holidays, is a corrupted version by chirsitanity, which has "borrowed" a lot of things from other religions. The use of holly and mistle-toe during winter celebrations, choosing to celebrate the birth of jesus during winter, which is our Winter Solstice, even dressing formally for weddings (where christians only wore casual clothes before adopting Pagan rituals.

If you are going to call anything about the Pagan religion satanic, then I hope you will also have the presence of mind to realise that a lot of christian holidays you celebrate would be defacing your own beliefs and vputting yourself into the category of satanic worship.

Answer 2

The festival of All Saints, also sometimes known as All Saints' Day, All Hallows,is a feast celebrated in the honour of all the saints, known and unknown. Halloween is the day preceding it, and is so named because it is "The Eve of All Hallows". All Saints is also a Christian formula invoking all the faithful saints and martyrs, known or unknown. Halloween did not become a holiday in America until the 19th century, where lingering Puritan tradition meant even Christmas was scarcely observed before the 1800s. American almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries make no mention of Halloween in their lists of holidays. The commercialization of Halloween in America did not begin until the 20th century, beginning perhaps with Halloween postcards, which were most popular between 1905 and 1915, and featured hundreds of different designs. In the United States, Halloween has become the sixth most profitable holiday (after Christmas, Mother's Day, Valentines Day, Easter, and Father's Day). Halloween is now celebrated in many parts of the western world, most commonly in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Ireland, the United Kingdom and sometimes in Australia and New Zealand and Scotland. In recent years, Halloween has also been celebrated in some parts of Western Europe.

Answer 3

Americans celebrate it because it's fun. You get to wear costumes and get candy. What else do you need?

As some of the others said, it's the ancient festival of Samhain, the Celtic new year. It has nothing to do with Satan; Satan is a Christian figure, and pagans do not believe in it.

But more importantly, this pagan holiday serves a very important and healthy psychological function. It's the holiday that acknowledges the death aspect of the life cycle (all pagan holidays celebrate some aspect of the life cycle),, and invites people to 'walk around in its shoes' so to speak. By dressing up as symbols of the things we fear, and by allowing ourselves to be frightened (as in haunted houses), we acknowledge and embrace our fears and therefore, gain a better understanding of them.

This brings our fear into light and removes its power to make us afraid. So you see, it helps us process the fear and change it into something manageable. The holiday also celebrates the hope of an afterlife, so it's not just about fear either. This is why it's so fun and exciting, and good to participate in. We will get nowhere with our fears if we always run from them. We will do much better to understand that fears can be endured and survived, and changed.

And you get candy.

Answer 4

All Hallows Eve (or Hallow e'en) is not a night where people can worship with Satan. It is a night where the spirits of the dead are said to come back and inhabit the earth, and the celebration of the day is a tribute to them. It is not evil or sinister. It's just that the day has been turned into a joke and the original meaning behind it has been lost behind costumes and parties and trick or treating etc.

Answer 5

Pagan actually, not occult. We celebrate it because it was a traditional pagan festival in Ireland and we happen to have a good deal of Irish immigrants who brought it over with them.

It has nothing to do with Satan as the Celts had no such concept. It is however said to be the day that the spirits of the dead, and other such things, are free to walk the Earth. At one point the Christian church tried to end the practice by rebranding it as a Christian festival to honor the Saints, hence it's alternate name of All Hallows Eve.

Answer 6

Hi,

Halloween, is a tradition celebrated on the night of October 31, most notably by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting sweets, fruit, and other gifts.
Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world and when magic is most potent.

Regards
Chandra

Answer 7

Halloween is linked to the pagan Samhain, which is a day that people of old believed that spirits of the dead returned to earth. Many of our Halloween traditions have roots in this pagan celebration, including costumes (to either disguise themselves from the spirits or to scare the spirits, depending on what source you read), trick or treating (Druids went door to door looking for animals or humans to sacrifice, if you complied you were blessed, if not you were cursed), and jack-o-lanterns (candles put inside root vegetables either to scare off spirits or as a sign that a person gave an animal sacrifice, again depending on the source you read).
Many of us celebrate Halloween without understanding what the holiday really is. In some Christian denominations, there is a push to stop celebrating this day and either not acknowledge it at all or to replace it with harvest or autumn celebrations.

Answer 8

Others have listed the historical aspects of Hallowe'en, so I shan't recap them, but I will say this...

I'm a Satanist and yes...a lot of Satanists that I know will gather on Hallowe'en to do rituals, curse their enemies and prepare magically for the year ahead (as well as celebrating the year that's past).

We also like to chat and drink and have fun revelries before or after the rituals.

Answer 9

Halloween is a day when little kids and parents party with candy and fun or go trick or treating. This has nothing to do with satan

Answer 10

Halloween is not really based on believe, it is just for fun, parties, Trick-or-treating, and just dressing up. People are Cinderella, Police officers, and all sorts of things on Halloween. It's not like Americans practice black magic or voodoo on Halloween.