pridvorul lui laurentiu dumitru

Laurențiu Dumitru

Our less church-frequenting CHRISTIANS celebrate Halloween on October 31 (this being our second imported celebration, after the already-famous Valentine’s Day). Many consider that Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve) is just the evening (the eve) before All Saints’ Day, the Roman-Catholic feast celebrated of November 1. It is a time when Americans commemorate their dead, celebrate Christ’s victory over death and the powers of the dark, and laugh at… the evil things and death. It is therefore considered a Christian celebration, even if in all likelihood it has been imported from Celtic paganism (the Druids). However, it would be hard to convince a rational person that this celebration would have a Christian spirit…

The truth is different. Halloween is a 100% pagan, occult, celebration, “the day when the dead and all phantasms leave their graves…”. It is the biggest celebration of Satan’s servants: wizards, spiritists, and Satanists. The Americans have developed a whole industry around this celebration. One buys various macabre accessories on the occasion: masks, vampire, devil, dragon, zombie, leper, and skeleton, attires, as well as the ever-present pumpkins, with sales reaching up to half a billion dollars every year. Sales of horror movies go up at this time of the year, as the promoters of the movies are also speculating the public’s rising interest for the feast. The horror movie industry uses the public’s thirst for strong sensations to the maximum, showing that they don’t care about human psychology, which they feed with nothing but anxiety.

On Halloween, America makes greater preparations than for Christmas or Easter. Children dress up in horror costumes, they have fun scaring others, and go (“carol”) from door to door to receive sweets and candies. The youngsters, braver, go to cemeteries in the dead of night and have fun doing spiritism. It has been found that a lot of murders take place in the United States on Halloween night.

In fact, on the well-known TV show “Pagan Invasion”, it has been commented that upon being asked: “How would you like to celebrate Halloween?”, 80 percent of the American fourth-graders replied smilingly: “I would like to kill someone.” That is the impact of this feast.

Just as in previous years, we have promoted this feast this year, too (*2002), as kindergartens and children’s theatres have speculated the moment. If we don’t pay attention, our children will gradually develop a taste for the macabre, the occult, sadism, and violence (as they are helped along in that sense by monster cartoons, aggressive computer games, horror movies, and already classic children’s books such as Harry Potter and the like.).

The Church – that is, its living limbs, must not take part in this horrible and demonic celebration.

When our right-believing Holy Voivode Stephen the Great was building churches, the Americans had hardly heard about Christ’s teaching. Why should we listen to any of their teachings regarding what and how to celebrate? Let us hope that our believers will understand the vanity of this false celebration and that they will avoid it in the future.

(in romanian language: http://www.laurentiudumitru.ro/carti.php?id=1&cap=19 )

++++++

A few years ago I used to contribute with articles on the excellent website of Altermedia. One late October, I thought that perhaps it would be fit to send them my text on Halloween, which had also been published in my first book. A few days later, I was surprised to find a series of very interesting comments below my article. I say surprised because, in principle, I had never agreed to comments being accepted regarding the articles, back then, because of reasons that I will not present here. What a reader by the name of Dina said in her comment made me think and strengthened my conviction, yet again, that Halloween is nothing but a bad joke – to use a euphemism.

Last year on Halloween, a house was set on fire in Vancouver. In another Canadian town, a church was set on fire. A cat belonging to some children’s music teacher was caught that night and killed by extension (pulled by the head and tail at the same time). If you don’t open the door on such a night, you’ve got the chance of seeing your house painted with smashed eggs – in the best case. With all of these things happening, we prefer to spend our evening with friends who do not favor this celebration. Our children have started having nightmares after their first Halloween spent in Canada. We have been avoiding shops or at least departments selling season’s products, ever since. There are children who prefer not going to school on such days, in order to avoid being exposed to all sorts of hideous masks. The schools, too, are decorated in the same spirit. Tales are read to children about witches and other similar things.

The police are on alert. The number of crimes of any kind is rising on such a night. Despite of it all, the government puts up with this celebration that brings profit to some and devastation to others. The celebration captivates children by the sweets they get. It would be easier to walk across a cemetery on any other night of the year than pass through certain streets of the towns, decorated with grotesque scenes, inspired by horror movies, on Halloween night. There is such a powerful contrast between this celebration and the following Christmas celebration. Even to those who have no faith in God the comparison between what God has to offer and the powers of the dark is evident. However, the choice belongs to each and everyone. Merry Christmas!

Always below my article I found the following note, signed by “negel”: “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez considers Halloween as being part of the American culture of terror and recommends parents not to dress up their children in Halloween costumes.” Good for you, Chavez! When should we expect a Romanian president with the same man-like attitude?

(in romanian language: http://laurentiudumitru.ro/blog/2005/11/22/cosmarul-halloween/ )

(mulțumesc din suflet Mihaelei Mihăilă pentru osteneala de a traducere cele două texte de mai sus)