SRaaDH`DH CELEBRATION = HALLOWEEN DAY - OCTOBER 31 TO NOVEMBER 2.....
Posted by Vishva News Reporter on October 31, 2004

HALLOWEEN IS
SRaaDH`DH
AMONG WESTERN CIVILIZATION
ON OCTOBER 31, NOVEMBER 1 &2

MAYAN CIVILIZATION
FOLLOWS
VeDik CONCEPTS

 

 

This Creation we live in has infinite diversity...just look at the human race and how different each tribe and race is... And this diversity of humans has created a diversity in understanding every item in creation...But then IT IS ALL IN THE BEHOLDERS EYE.....Yesterday PVAF published an article on Death and Grieving as an example of diverse understanding of the same phenomenon in life....Another example can be seen in how diverse human races remember their dead relatives in different ways ......

Last year on October 30, 2003 PVAF published an article on how most of the humanity in western civilizations remember their dead on October 31 and November 1 and 2....please click on the following red hilite PVAF Halloween Day to refresh your knowledge base about this...Also you can review the remembrance of dead among veDik peoples by clicking VEDA PAGE on this PVAF web site and read more under the topic "Rites and Rituals: Vedik prescription to keep the mutually beneficial interrelation of gods and humans going" just click on the preceding red hilites

This year PVAF is expanding your knowledge base of the remembrance of the dead among Mayan peoples in Mexico whose civilization and culture appears to be very similar to the veDik lifestyle.....Mexicans honour the dead on Oct. 31, when the souls of departed children are believed to arrive, and on Nov. 1 and 2, when adults are believed to return.

Please click on the next line to read about Mayan's Days of the Dead from Edmonton Journal by clicking on the next line.....and after reading that you will be able to get more knowledge on Halloween from an article on the web site Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia.....



Mayans' Day of the Dead lives on

Lisa J. Adams
The Associated Press
Edmonton Journal: Sunday, October 31, 2004
CREDIT: The Associated Press

POMUCH, Mexico -- Antonio Hass pulls a wooden box from a small cement cubicle, brushes a year of dust from the top and pushes back the lid to reveal a pile of coffee-coloured bones and a small skull covered with patches of hair.

It's what remains of his father who died five years ago and, with the Day of the Dead approaching, it's time for an annual cleaning.

It may strike outsiders as macabre, but Hass says it's "the most natural thing in the world."

"There is nothing to fear from the dead," he says, tenderly rubbing the skull. "It's the living we should fear."

For this 58-year-old farmer and dozens of other descendants of Mayan Indians in a small village on the Yucatan Peninsula, the last days of October are devoted to cleaning the bones: dusting, polishing, scrubbing and rearranging the skeletal remains of family members in time for the Day of the Dead, when Mexicans welcome the souls of the dearly departed back to Earth.

Mexicans honour the dead on Oct. 31, when the souls of departed children are believed to arrive, and on Nov. 1 and 2, when adults are believed to return.

Surviving family members celebrate with meals, songs and prayers, both at home and in cemeteries. Tombstones are illuminated by candles, laden with orange marigolds and piled high with the favourite foods of the deceased, including tamales, small skulls made of sugar, and "bread of the dead" -- round, sugar-sprinkled loaves topped with strips of crust symbolizing bones and a knob representing the skull.

But Pomuch and a handful of other small Mayan communities dotting the Camino Real Alto region of the peninsula go further.

Without blinking an eyelash, Hass pulls one bone after another out of the box, wiping away black grit with an embroidered handkerchief. The handkerchief has served as a bed for his father's remains for the past year.

Bone-cleaning is believed to date to pre-Hispanic Mayan cultures, and is carried on today "so that when the souls return they will see they haven't been forgotten," says Venancio Tus Chi, 42, a cemetery employee who, for 25 pesos (about $2.50 Cdn), will clean bones for families who don't have the time.

Modern-day Maya in the Camino

Real Alto initially bury their dead in coffins, but after three or four years, they exhume them, dry the bones in the sun and scrub them with a soft cloth or small paint brushes.

The bones are placed in small wooden boxes and laid in cement cubicles, viewable from the outside through wrought-iron doors.

Some chambers are multi-tiered. The top chamber of the Hass family's tomb is reserved for the father, the middle one for the mother and the bottom one for a son and grandmother.

Before and after Day of the Dead celebrations, the boxes are left open to view and decked with flowers and votive candles. Empty eye sockets peer out from skulls perched on piles of carefully arranged bones.

Each year, the newly cleaned bones are placed on or wrapped inside a new handkerchief embroidered with brightly coloured flowers, initials or symbols reflecting the departed person's personality or favourite things. It's like "changing their clothing so they will rest more peacefully," explained Valdemar Euan, 24, who cleans his grandmother's bones.

Most Mexicans claim Indian and Spanish ancestry and are at least nominally Catholic, and Christian beliefs suffuse the bone-cleaning tradition. Crosses adorn most of the tombs and a Roman Catholic priest presides over a mass in the cemetery on Nov. 2.

"Some people are afraid of touching the bones," says Maria de la Luz Canun, 55, who last Sunday cleaned the dismantled skeletons of her son, great-grandmother and her two in-laws.

"But it's like when you visit your mother: You may help bathe her, dress her, comb her hair. This is the same thing."


Halloween

From Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia

 

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31, usually by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting candy. It is celebrated in much of the Western world, though most commonly in the United States, to which Irish, Scots and other immigrants brought older versions of the tradition in the 19th century.

The name Halloween derives from the older form Hallowe'en, a contraction of "All Hallow's Eve", so called as it is the day before the Catholic All Saints holy day, which used to be called "All Hallows", derived from All Hallowed Souls. Halloween was formerly also sometimes called All Saints' Eve. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European pagan traditions, until it was appropriated by Christian missionaries (along with Christmas and Easter, two other traditional northern European pagan holidays) and given a Christian reinterpretation. Halloween is also known as the Day of the Dead, and it is a day of celebration for Wiccans and other modern pagan traditions, though the holiday has lost its religious connotations among the populace at large.

In England in particular, the pagan Celts celebrated the Day of the Dead on Halloween. The spirits supposedly rose from the dead and, in order to attract them, food was left on the doors. To scare off the evil spirits, the Celts wore masks. When the Romans invaded the British Isles, they embellished the tradition with their own, which is the celebration of the harvest and honoring the dead. The English traditions were then passed on to the United States.

Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult. Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the "liminal" times of the year when the spirit world can make contact with the natural world and when magic is most potent (see, for example, Catalan mythology about witches).

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Symbols

Halloween's theme is spooky or scary things particularly involving death, the undead, black magic, or mythical monsters. Commonly-associated Halloween "characters" include ghosts, witches, bats, black cats, goblins, banshees, zombies and demons, as well as certain literary figures such as Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Homes are often decorated with these symbols around Halloween.

Black and orange are the traditional colors of Halloween. There are also elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins and scarecrows, reflected in symbols of Halloween.

The jack-o'-lantern, a carved pumpkin lit by a candle inside, is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols. In the British Isles, a turnip was and sometimes still is used, but emigrants to America quickly adopted the pumpkin since it is much easier to carve. Many families that celebrate Halloween will carve a pumpkin into a scary or comical face and place it on the home's doorstep on Halloween night for fun. Traditionally, something like this was done in order to scare evil spirits away.

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Trick-or-treating

The main event of Halloween is trick-or-treating, also known as guising, in which children dress up in costume disguises and go door-to-door in their neighborhood, ringing the bell and yelling "trick or treat!". The occupant of the house (who might themself dress in a scary costume) will then hand out some small candies, miniature chocolate bars or other treats. Homes sometimes use sound effects and fog machines to help set a spooky mood. Children can often accumulate many treats on Halloween night, filling up entire pillow cases or shopping bags.

Tricks play less of a role in modern Halloween, though the night before Halloween is often marked by pranks such as soaping windows, egging houses or stringing toilet paper through trees.

Typical Halloween costumes have traditionally been monsters such as vampires, ghosts, witches, and devils. The stereotypical Halloween costume is a sheet with eyeholes cut in it as a ghost costume. In nineteenth-century Scotland and Ireland the reason for wearing such fearsome (and non-fearsome) costumes was the belief that since the spirits that were abroad that night were essentially intent on doing harm, the best way to avoid this was to fool the spirits into believing that you were one of them. In recent years, it has become common for costumes to be based on themes other than traditional horror, such as dressing up as a character from a TV show or movie. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, for example, costumes of firefighters, police officers, and United States military personnel became popular among children. In 2004, an estimated 2.15 million children in the United States are expected to dress up as Spider-Man, the year's most popular costume. [1] (http://www.nrf.com/content/default.asp?folder=press/release2004&file=costumes1004.htm&bhcp=1)

A program started by UNICEF involves the distribution of small boxes by schools to trick-or-treaters, in which they can collect small change from the houses they visit for donation to the charity.

BIGresearch conducted a survey for the National Retail Federation in the US and found that 54.1 percent of consumers plan to buy a costume for Halloween 2004. Those purchasing costumes will spend an average of $28.11. An estimated $3.12 billion will be spent on the holiday.

A child usually "grows out of" trick-or-treating by his or her teenage years. Teenagers and adults instead often celebrate Halloween with costume parties or other social get-togethers.

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Games

There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween parties. The most common is bobbing for apples, in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water; the participants must use their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity which inevitably leads to a very sticky face.

Some games traditionally played at Halloween are forms of divination. In Púicíní (pronounced "pook-eeny"), a game played in Ireland, a blindfolded person is seated in front of a table on which are placed several saucers. The saucers are shuffled and the seated person then chooses one by touch. The contents of the saucer determine the person's life for the following year. A saucer containing earth means someone known to the player will die during the next year, a saucer containing water foretells travel, a coin means new wealth, a bean means poverty, etc. In nineteenth-century Ireland, young women placed slugs in saucers sprinkled with flour. The wriggling of the slugs and the patterns subsequently left behind on the saucers were believed to portray the faces of the women's future spouses.

In North America, unmarried women were frequently told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. However, if they were destined to die before they married, a skull would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards from the late nineteenth century.

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Foods

Candy apples
Candy apples

Candy apples are a common treat at Halloween. They are made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, and sometimes then rolling them in nuts.

A Halloween custom which has survived unchanged to this day in Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish "báirín breac"). This is a light fruit cake into which a plain ring is placed before baking. It is said that whoever finds this ring will find his or her true love during the following year.

Other foods associated with the holiday:

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Cultural history

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Celtic observation of Samhain

In the Druidic religion of the ancient Celts, the new year began with the winter season of Samhain on November 1. Just as shorter days signified the start of the new year, sundown also meant the start of a new day; therefore the harvest festival began every year on the night of October 31. Druids in the British Isles would light fires and offer sacrifices of crops, animals and sometimes humans, and as they danced around the fires, the season of the sun would pass and the season of darkness would begin.

When the morning of November 1 arrived, the Druids would give an ember from their fires to each family who would then take it home to start a new cooking fire. These fires were intended to keep the homes warm and free from evil spirits such as "Sidhe" (pronounced "shee", the female members of whom were called beán sidhe or banshees), since at this time of year it was believed that the invisible "gates" between this world and the spirit world were opened and free movement between both worlds was possible.

Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. Villagers cast the bones of the slaughtered cattle upon the flames; the word "bonfire" is thought to derive from these "bone fires." With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers extinguished all other fires. Each family then solemnly lit their hearth from the common flame, thus bonding the families of the village together. Hundreds of fires are still lit each year in Ireland on Halloween night.

Neopagans still celebrate the sabbat of Samhain on Halloween, as well as also taking part in secular Halloween activities.

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Norse Autumn Blót

In the old Norse religion, and its modern revival, Ásatrú, the day now known as Halloween was a blót, which involved sacrifices to the gods and the blessing of food.

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Halloween customs

Observance of Halloween faded in the South of England from the 17th century onwards, being replaced by the commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot on November 5. However it remained popular in Scotland, Ireland and the North of England. It is only in the last decade that it has become popular in the South of England again, although in an entirely Americanized version.

The custom survives most accurately in Ireland, where the last Monday of October is a public holiday. All schools close for the following week for mid-term, commonly called the Halloween Break. As a result Ireland is the only country where children never have school on Halloween and are therefore free to celebrate it in the ancient and time-honored fashion.

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have evolved from the European custom called souling, similar to the wassailing customs associated with Yuletide. On November 2, All Souls Day, Beggars would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes" - square pieces of bread with currants. Christians would promise to say prayers on behalf of dead relatives helping the soul's passage to heaven. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits at the Samhain. See Puck (mythology).

In Celtic parts of western Brittany. Samhain is still heralded by the baking of kornigou. Kornigou are cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god of winter shedding his "cuckold" horns as he returns to his kingdom in the Otherworld.

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"Punkie Night"

"Punkie Night" is observed on the last Thursday in October in the village of Hinton St. George in the county of Somerset in England. On this night, children carry lanterns made from hollowed-out mangel-wurzels (a kind of beet; in modern days, pumpkins are used) with faces carved into them. They bring these around the village, collecting money and singing the punkie song. Punkie is derived from pumpkin or punk, meaning tinder.

Though the custom is only attested over the last century, and the mangel-wurzel itself was introduced into English agriculture in the late 18th century, "Punkie Night" appears to be much older even than the fable that now accounts for it: in this, the wives of Hinton St. George went looking for their wayward husbands at the fair held nearby at Chiselborough, the last Thursday in October, but first hollowed out mangel wurzels in order to make lanterns to light their way. The drunken husbands saw the eerie lights, thought they were "goolies" (the restless spirits of children who had died before they were baptized), and fled in terror. Children carry the punkies now. The event has spread since about 1960 to the neighboring village of Chiselborough.

Sources: on-line report from the Western Gazette and a National Geographic radio segment. Chiselborough Fair is memorialized by Fair Place in the village. The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868) reported that there was "a fair for horses and cattle on the last Thursday in October."

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Negative aspects

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"Mischief night"

The night before Halloween, known in some areas as "Mischief night" or "Devil's Night", is often associated with negative actions being performed by adolescents. Some of the acts range from minor vandalism to theft, or even violence. Many youths involved in mischief night would be considered too old for traditional trick-or-treating.

A dialect survey (http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/staticmaps/q_110.html) begun in 1999 by Harvard University indicates that there are a number of terms for this particular day of the year, but that the vast majority (70.38%) have no special word for it.

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Religious viewpoints

The majority of Christians ascribe no doctrinal significance to Halloween, treating it as a purely secular entity devoted to celebrating imaginary spooks and handing out candy. The secular celebration of Halloween may loom larger in contemporary imagination than does All Saints Day.

The mingling of Christian and "pagan" traditions in the early centuries following the founding of the Christian Church have left many modern Christians uncertain of their responsibility towards this holiday. Some fundamentalist Christian groups consider Halloween a Pagan holiday and may refer to it as "The most evil day of the year", refusing to allow their children to participate. Among these groups it is believed to have developed Satanic influences, as have many other Pagan practices.

In some areas, complaints from these fundamentalist Christians that the schools were endorsing a Pagan religion have led the schools to stop distributing UNICEF boxes.

Other Christians, however, continue to connect this holiday with All Saints Day. Some modern Christian churches commonly offer a "fall festival" or harvest-themed alternative to Halloween celebrations. Still other Christians hold the view that the holiday is "safe"; that is, that it is not Satanic in origin or practice and that it holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children.

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External links


 


 

 
 



 



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