Halloween Rising

[poliphilo]

Give it a few more years and I predict Halloween will be an official holiday in the UK.  It has already elbowed Bonfire Night aside, and must be running neck and neck with Easter in the competition to become our second most popular feast- after Christmas. The churches won't like it, of course, but the churches carry less and less weight in the national discourse. 

TV coverage this year included a remarkably friendly report from a blasted heath somewhere in Leicestershire where a group of druids (but they looked more like bog-standard pagans to me) were running a circle in the wind and the rain- and drinking mead from a horn. Druidry achieved charitable status as a bona fide religion a few weeks back- which is another straw in the wind.

Slowly, but by measurable increments, Britain is becoming a pagan country. I don't mean that vast numbers are going to be joining covens or groves,  but that a distinctly pagan frame of mind- impatient with religious dogma, hedonistic, secular but superstitious, keen on Nature- is becoming the national norm. Most people still think druids and witches are a bit weird and extreme- what with all that dressing-up and stuff-  but- like the TV reporter in Leicestershire- they're coming to find themselves more and more in sympathy, less and less spooked. 

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

The BBC's coverage from a coven in Weymouth was remarkably sympathetic, I thought, especially with the explanation of what spells are. I suppose this trend is the natural development of environmentalism, our obsession with ancient history, and the People of the Book apparently bickering and whining at each other all the time.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Paganism is on the cusp of respectability. In some ways I regret this. One of the reasons it attracted me so much in the early 90s is that it was a rebel religion.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

But why would the churches not like it, especially in the years when All Hallows falls between Monday and Friday? It would restore the connection between holy day and holiday. Instead of shifting it to Sunday, as so many churches do, they'd celebrate it on the Eve.
Medieval - and more ancient - tradition restored for all- that would be brilliant¬

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of the evangelicals- who see the devil in everything- and have forgotten (if they ever knew) that Halloween is a Christian feast.

[sovay]

I'm thinking of the evangelicals- who see the devil in everything- and have forgotten (if they ever knew) that Halloween is a Christian feast.

It might still be unacceptable: all those saints, you know. Not exactly Protestant.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

True...

[treehavn.livejournal.com]

I miss Bonfire Night. Canada is sadly lacking in a holiday that involves going out in the cold to drink whisky from a hip flask while gently toasting one side of yourself on a giant fire.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've never let the absence of a holiday prevent me indulging in large bonfires.:)

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I've been known to light a bonfire for myself on occasion, just to sit by it and watch the flames, feel the one-sided heat and have some connection to the primeval concept of the fire.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My father used to be a great bonfire maker. I caught it from him.

[methodius.livejournal.com]

I haven't celebrated Halloween since my Anglican days, when I was Rector of All Saints Church in Melmoth, Zululand. Then we used to have a bit of a bash for the patronal festival. As for the American "trick or treat" stuff, I know that mostly from the Nancy and Sluggo and Charlie Brown comics of my youth. I've never seen it live, neither here nor in the UK.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Trick or treating has caught on in Britain over the past twenty years. I'm not fond of it.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I like it. I loved going trick-or-treating as a child and I love the children coming 'round to my place now. I love carving pumpkins and decorating.

Every year I figure that the fear of kiddie diddlers or the machinations of God botherers has finally killed the holiday and every year I still get a few kids coming by, sometimes more, sometimes less, but they still come. Sunday night, one of our first customers was a girl up the street, with her two youngins, that I distinctly remember knocking on our door when she was just a child.

Halloween, in some small way, helps draw our neighborhood together and, in an age when so many forces are pulling us apart and isolating us, that has to be a good thing.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Trick or Treating is embedded in your society. It has rules- which everyone accepts. Over here it's a new phenomenon- something we've copied from your TV shows and movies- and it's a bit lawless. A few years back- before the Muslims moved in and tamed the area- we were getting gangs of tough youths banging on the door demanding protection money. It wasn't at all pleasant.

You have standard bogs there?

[jorrocks-j.livejournal.com]

Is...is this a metric thing?....

Re: You have standard bogs there?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess it must be a Britishism. It means average, ordinary, unexceptional.