SEC-S13W2– Do you know the true meaning of Halloween?

Greetings to the Steem community,

I'm delighted to take part in the Steem Venezuela community challenge. This week's theme revolves around Halloween, an Anglo-Saxon custom known for its captivating costumes, makeup, and children going door-to-door for candy, as often depicted in movies.

What makes this challenge particularly engaging is that it has afforded me the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of this tradition, which has its origins in the United States and has since made its way to various corners of the globe.

Like many celebrations and rituals in Christian and Islamic religions, Halloween is originally a pagan festival and in this case it was linked to Celtic traditions. Later, the Christian Church changed the theme of this celebration and incorporated it into its own traditions. Considering the present this change can be seen as a re-marketing of the occasion.

In ancient days, Celtic Halloween was held over several days and was believed to allow the living to communicate with the dead and begin a new year.

Since the 7th century, Christians have had a feast day for the dead and martyrs on May 13, which was originally the result of a renaming of the Latin feast of Lemuria (where they commemorate ghosts). In order to counter the influence of ancient Celtic rituals Christian popes decided in the ninth century to move the Feast of the Saints and the Dead to November 1 and 2.

In this way, the Church claimed that the celebrations that occurred on these days were part of Christian traditions, and that the people who changed these traditions were not pagans...

From a personal point of view, Halloween, along with Christmas (the Winter Solstice) is one of the most notable examples of the restoration of ancient rituals by a new religion.

According to our religion, no Muslim should participate in Halloween parties, dressing up as a ghost, a witch or any other evil character. Indeed, this tradition goes against the main foundation of Islam, namely the oneness of Allah.

According to one of the traditions of this holiday, children dress up as scary characters and ring doorbells to beg for treats. Costumes symbolizing violence, bloodshed and death have a very harmful impact on young children who already harbor irrational fears. Muslim children must be instilled with a sense of dignity from an early age.

Furthermore, Islam condemns begging. It is against the dignity of a Muslim to beg on Halloween in the name of entertainment. However, if someone knocks on your door and asks for sweets, you can offer them because in Islam we do not refuse someone who begs.

I have the impression that there was an attempt to import Halloween and its trade to Tunisian territory, but it happened a little too late for it to take hold in an authentic way. I have never seen children playing “trick or treats” in our streets, and for good reason, I do not know any parent who would take the risk of letting their children walk around the capital without an escort. And access to homes has become complicated: most of the time, we do not enter without the building code(s), which give access to the intercom or vice versa.

Almost no one has a door directly onto the street anymore. Fewer and fewer places have this kind of configuration. All cities make secure chicken cages. Which makes all the Halloween folklore inapplicable.

For my part, I never celebrated Halloween when I was a child, it was an American film folklore set in small provincial towns or in suburban suburbs. This has never been a tradition in my family or even in my region.

My sister, who lives in Canada, found themselves “celebrating Halloween” as a family sometimes, it seems to me, but not on her initiative, rather that of one of their neighbors. This consisted of decorating your home with angel hair and plastic spiders, and putting on monster masks or wearing anything scary to scare the shit out of your parents.

Adults then participate in an implicit competition in the game of who can best reproduce the different nuances of fear, the winner generally being the one who was really afraid; and they eat candy and anything a little festive for the children (chocolate fondant from Picard, a great classic here). Also, it could seem like an excuse to reconnect with the guilty pleasure of buying gadgets in “pranks and tricks” stores.

I had never felt it as a national tradition, at least not in Tunis and I did not particularly see neighbors or friends talking about it and even less doing it, so I did not know how widespread this importation was.

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Thank you very much for reading, it's time to invite my friends @chiabertrand, @nahela, @steemdoctor1 to participate in this contest.

Best Regards,
@kouba01