Halloween and the paraphernalia of death: dark origins

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Halloween. This word came into use quite recently. And relatively recently, they began to celebrate this day, the meaning of which no one really knows. For some, this is an extra reason to have fun, for someone it is a holiday that has a sacred meaning, and for someone it is just an extra reason to get poisoned with alcoholic poison. But for most, this is some kind of funny ritual, which is (in an incomprehensible way) associated with "evil" pumpkins.

What is the meaning of the holiday Halloween for the Russian realities, and for what purpose did it suddenly appear so suddenly on a territory with a completely alien culture?

The origins of Halloween

The history of the celebration of Halloween goes back to the time of the "King of the Peas", and even historians disagree on where, in fact, this holiday came from. One of the versions says that Halloween has its origins in ancient Rome and is associated with the ancient Roman religious holiday Parentalia. However, most historians deny this version and are inclined to believe that Halloween is associated with the pagan beliefs of the ancient Celts and their holiday Samhain, which they celebrated on the occasion of the end of the harvest. After the appearance of Christianity on these lands, the Samaya holiday began to gradually transform, mixing with various Catholic rituals, and over time it acquired approximately the same form and form in which we can observe it now as Halloween.

Halloween: Just Business, Nothing Personal

Those who are interested in the origins of the Halloween holiday, or at least not be lazy to look at Wikipedia and read a couple of lines about the reason for the next self-poisoning with alcoholic poison, will have a fair question: what is the relation of the wild mixture of the pagan ritual of the ancient Celts with rituals of Catholicism has to the modern Russian society, in which the celebration of Halloween is gaining more and more popularity?

And the attitude, it should be noted, is the most direct. The thing is that any holiday is a business. And, as they say, nothing personal. And this is a very convenient way of earning money. On the eighth of March, you can get the annual proceeds from the sale of flowers; on New Year's - to sell people useless felled trees that will simply be thrown away in two weeks; on "Valentine's Day" - to sell tons of useless gifts like sweets, teddy bears and, again, flowers; and on Halloween - to sell cosmetics, masks, outfits and other carnival nonsense, on which the cunning organizers of this business actually make millions.

By the way, it is worth noting that the traditional Celtic holiday did not provide for any carnival attributes and the tradition of putting on costumes and disfiguring your face with paints came at the beginning of the 20th century - just at the dawn of various transnational corporations, each of which was looking for its own niche for business development. And it was at the beginning of the 20th century that the active introduction of the tradition of wearing carnival costumes on this holiday began. Not a single case of such a tradition was recorded until 1900 in the countries where Halloween was especially popular - the USA, England and Ireland.

Thus, all the carnival fuss, which was tied to the holiday much later, is nothing more than another imposed model of behavior with the aim of taking money. Let's not be unfounded, the numbers speak for themselves: according to the US Institute of Retail Trade, revenues from the sale of carnival costumes in this country exceeded three (!) Billion dollars in 2005. In 2006, these revenues amounted to almost five billion. An upward trend, as they say, is evident. Also in the USA, various attractions with all sorts of "scarecrows" are very popular for visitors, which are launched in honor of Halloween. The profits from these attractions also amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Halloween and the cult of death. Is there a connection?

It is also worth paying attention to the appearance of the holiday itself. Various attributes of death - bones, skulls, revived corpses and other evil spirits, as well as the theme of evil spirits, the afterlife, and so on - this is also, most likely, no coincidence. What is it for?

The fact is that in any society, one way or another, certain social problems are regularly brewing. And in order for people to think less about real problems and ask themselves questions about the direction in which they themselves and society as a whole are moving, some levers for managing this society have been invented. And one of them is the constant obsessive devaluation of human life. In the late 90s and early 2000s, it was the imposition and cultivation of the so-called "emo culture", in recent years - a massive fashion for participation in various suicidal groups on social networks. And Halloween is a more global project that affects not only adolescents with a fragile psyche who are not adapted to life, but even adults who, at first glance, are adequate and sane people. Gradually, the imposition of the cult of death, inappropriate behavior, the insignificance of human life, and so on, takes place under the guise of fun and celebration. And the danger of such a presentation is that when people are funny and cheerful, they no longer perceive the issues of death and inappropriate behavior as something destructive and dangerous.

And the most dangerous in the popularization of Halloween is the fact that this imposition of the cult of death affects all age and social groups. And pay attention - if even 30 years ago such satanic whistle-dancing with appropriate symbols was perceived by the majority of society as a deviation from normal behavior, today Halloween is celebrated almost at the national level. This is a typical example of how the so-called "Overton Window" works - a system for promoting the necessary concepts in society, when public opinion changes from a reaction of complete disgust to a certain phenomenon to a reaction of accepting this phenomenon as completely normal and natural.

Modernity and Halloween. Death is fun

The imposition of a cult of death in society and the artificial devaluation of life is a typical technique for relieving tension in society caused by social problems. When people despise life, cultivate death, live under the slogan in the spirit of the Old Testament Ecclesiastes: "All is vanity and vexation of the spirit," such people are easier to manage, because they are not worried about social problems, they are not interested in what will happen tomorrow, such people live one day … Such people will not be worried about either slave working conditions or the imposition of destructive tendencies. When a person lives for one day and does not value his life, it is easy for him to impose a philosophy of consumption, where entertainment and the accumulation of material wealth become the main value.

Concentration is also an important aspect. During the celebration of Halloween, people concentrate on the appropriate things - the attributes of death, evil spirits, afterlife, etc. There is a simple rule that determines the quality of human life - “what we think, so we become”. And if a person regularly concentrates on what Halloween has to offer, his quality of life will be appropriate. Such a person will be deeply unhappy in the long run, and an unhappy person, again, is easier to manage, because such a person will need external stimulants to be happy all the time, on which he will be dependent.

Thus, Halloween and its popularization are cultivated in our society far from the purpose of fun and entertainment. In principle, any destructive model of behavior is imposed in a society not for the purpose of entertainment, but in order to simplify the management of this society. And Halloween is a prime example of this. The "Overton window" in relation to Halloween and the cult of death is moving, and today the overwhelming majority of our society perceives this "holiday" as quite normal and fun entertainment. It is difficult to predict what consequences this will have, but already now we can see that the trend is disappointing: suicidal tendencies and devaluation of human life are gaining momentum in our society.

Both "big people" and corporations that want to control nations know very well that success will be all the more true the more people begin to brainwash with false values from an earlier age. Therefore, today this strange "holiday" is celebrated not only in schools, but even in kindergartens, and the Google search engine for the query "Halloween and Children" gives not articles about the destructive impact of the cult of death on the developing psyche of a small child, but advice on how arrange a children's party on the subject of death. Dear parents, you strive to teach kids kindness, light and beauty from childhood. Would you like your child to see Dad throwing himself at Mom with a knife? From just such a thought, the blood runs cold. But what better suits with knives or axes, the better the competition in whose death looks worse? Why is this funny? Why then are we surprised that the child is afraid of the dark, screams at night and has trouble sleeping, that schoolchildren suffer from enuresis and have a whole bunch of mental and psychological problems? Is it because their parents raised them in such a way in pursuit of fashion? Why are there more and more children diagnosed with "groundless aggression" in the offices of child psychologists? Do you really think that there is no hidden cause and control organization behind this?

In history, humanity has more than once paid for the fact that instead of uniting against the problem and eliminating it, it simply, following the lead of certain forces, laughed at this problem. We call on all parents to be conscious and responsible in raising their children: think about what such a dubious phenomenon as Halloween can teach your kids.