Happy Halloween!

[floppa21]

So what are you wearing today? Today I am a Beautiful People.

http://www.marilynmansonartworkonline.com/mm.cgi/mask.html

 

[Cilpot]

I celebrated yesterday.. Was a kangaroo

Happy Halloween

 

[Japanrocks12]

I will be a misformed body with parts sticking to my sides and blood all over my face.

 

[Dell19]

I will be going home for the weekend... OooOooOoo scary

 

[funxus]

It's a very recent "tradition" here, and is still consider to be a commercial exploit by many and isn't really accepted by everyone. I have friends who've taken 'trick' seriously and covered people's whole houses with eggs. If we give it 10 more years though it'll have the same status as easter here...

Happy Halloween to those who celebrate it though.

 

[Elsaak]

What is it exactlly ?
A new commercial celebration ?
What it is based on ?

 

[Speedo]

Halloween Day celebration and Halloween costumes had its beginnings in an ancient, pre-Christian Druid Fire Festival called Samhain, the Celtic New Year. The Celtic tribes divided the year by four major holidays. According to their calendar, the year began on November 1st.



The date marked the beginning of winter. It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year. In Ireland the festival was known as Samhein, or La Samon, The Feast of the Sun. In Scotland the celebration was known as Hallowe'en. In Wales it was known as The Night of the Winter Calends.

Most of the customs connected with the Halloween today are residuals of ancient customs for celebrations of the New Year, first of the Druids and then of the Romans who conquered them, but adopted the Celtic practices as their own.

There is a story that Celts believed that at the time of Samhain - Halloween, which was at the same time an ending and a beginning in eternal cycle, the spirit world could intermingle with the living. As they believed that the souls of those who had died during the preceding year traveled into the other world, they lit bonfires in honor of the dead, to aid them on their journey, and to keep them away from the living. They would also dress up in all manner of morbid costumes: ghosts, fairies, witches, demons, etc. and noisily paraded around the neighborhood.

The realistic reason was probably to mark the beginning of the new year by relighting their fires from the Druidic fire that kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach. The Druids built a huge new year’s bonfire of oak branches, which they considered sacred. The families would then light their hearth fires from the new year’s fire.

The Druids were Celtic priests, religious leaders but also well educated - poets, scientists and scholars. In the early centuries of the first millennium A.D., the Celts practiced their own religion, before missionaries converted them to Christianity.

In the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October. One of them called Feralia, was held in late October to honor the dead. The other festival honored Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.

As Christianity spread over Europe and the British Isles, Christian missionaries attempted to to change the pre- existing pagan cults. But their efforts to wipe out pagan holidays, such as Samhain, had little effects. The brilliant and revolutionary concept of Pope Gregory the First, in 601 A.D., who instructed his missionaries to use existing customs and beliefs rather than try to obliterate them, to consecrate it to Christ and allow its continued worship, was much more successful, and it became a basic approach used in Catholic missionary work.

Church holy days were purposely set to coincide with native holy days. Christmas, for instance, was assigned the arbitrary date of December 25th because it corresponded with the mid-winter celebration of many peoples. Likewise, St. John's Day was set on the summer solstice.

Samhain, with accent on the supernatural, was by all odds pagan. So, it was not enough to identified Christian holy days with Celtics. Druids, as representatives of the rival religion, were marked as evil worshippers and Celtic underworld became identified with the Christian Hell. Followers of the old religion went into hiding and were branded as witches. The Christian feast of All Saints was assigned to November 1st to replace Samhain. The day honored every Christian saint, especially those that did not otherwise have a special day devoted to them. But, the old beliefs associated with Samhain never died out entirely. So the church tried again to replace it with a Christian feast day in the 9th century. This time it established November 2nd as All Souls Day - a day when the living prayed for the souls of all the dead. Once again, the traditional beliefs and customs lived on, in new forms and shapes.

All Saints Day or All Hallows (hallowed means sanctified or holy), continued the ancient Celtic traditions. In time, the traditional Celtic gods became less important, becoming witches, fairies, elves and many other supernatural creatures in more recent traditions. People continued to celebrate All Hallows Eve as a time of the wandering dead, setting out gifts of food and drink to the supernatural beings and their masked impersonators.

In 835 AD the Roman Catholic Church designated November 1st All Saint's Day, or All Hallows Day. Bonfires, parades and people in costume as saints, angels and devils marked this celebration.

Today our Halloween is a mixture of these holiday traditions - our familiar traditions of ghosts, skeletons, witches, adult and kid's costumes and tasteful treats all have roots in the past.

http://costumes.costumes-costumes.com/halloween-history.html

 

[Martacus]

Happy Halloween to you too! I wanted to dress up as Gordon Freeman, but first of all, I have a complete inability to grow a goatee with mustache, my hair is too long (I'm not going to cut it just to dress up as some video game character for one night) and I have no idea how to make up a mock HEV suit. Is it possible to buy one off the internet and just tape on a fake beard?

 

[Kinniken]

I just had neighbouring kids come knocking for sweets. They got a pack of biscuits, which is the closest I had to sweets.
First time I saw kids doing that in France though. It's really catching.

 

[RoddyVR]

i'm dressing up as "a homicidal maniac, they look just like everyone else."

i should put that in the Quote's game thread. lol.

 

[thestonesfan]

My wife said she was going to be a witch, and I said "But I thought you were supposed to dress up?"

 

[andrewgprv]

Well I was going to go to a Halloween party in Boise but I couldn't get work off so I didn't get a costume. I would have been Ziggy Stardust though.

 

[thestonesfan]

Originally posted by andrewgprv
Well I was going to go to a Halloween party in Boise but I couldn't get work off so I didn't get a costume. I would have been Ziggy Stardust though.

Mullet and all?

 

[GrandAdmiral]

I was going to dress up as a porn star but it was too cold today.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

I forgot it was Halloween...

I thought I was going to be mugged

Since I had forgotten it was Halloween all they got was a mince pie

 

[Ohwell]

I've fortified my house.

 

[CivCube]

Halloween's today? Then why do they scream at my face year-round...?

 

[Archer 007]

I see this holiday as childish.

Happy to everyone who celebrates though.

 

[Loaf Warden]

I'm not wearing a costume, but I've got a couple of glow sticks on. Makes me wish I had a rave to go to.
(Yeah, right. Could any of you picture me at a rave? )

I dressed up as Ziggy Stardust once back in high school. Some dumbass asked me if I was gay. I responded with, "Could someone please explain to him the concept of Halloween?" And someone did!

 

[SeleucusNicator]

I was Napoleon today; I might have pictures later, depending on how well they came out.