http://pc93.tripod.com/haloween.htm
The large Merriam Webster's dictionary gives the definition of Hallowe'en (spelled Halloween) as "the evening preceding All Saints' Day; the eve of October 31. In many countries Halloween is traditionally devoted to merrymaking, with playful ceremonies and charms to discover future husbands and wives." Nothing more.
It is not unwarrantable to predict that the time is not far distant when a world of more enlightened intelligence will be able to look back upon the present age, particularly in the Western area of civilization, and label it as the epoch in which the people celebrated a series of religious festivals around the cycle of the year in nearly total ignorance of their true significance. Certainly, whether or not this be the future's judgment on our present state of semantic nescience, it is to be presumed that if the departed souls of the Sages of antiquity are in any wise in position to gaze down the corridors of history from their day to ours, they must register uncomprehending dismay at the sight of our ghastly misconception and utterly travestied motives in our commemoration of the great annual festivals their dramatic genius instituted round the year. They must stand
agape at the sight of our mechanical parade of "holidays" and the completely distorted spirit and elan with which we go through the perfunctory observance of one after the other in total miscomprehension of the original inspiration and signification of each in turn. It must afflict them with consternation to see how in the case of every one of the cardinal festivals a true sense of the meaning to be dramatized by the occasion has been overlaid by some outer, some material or superficial reference that retains or conveys not the remotest relevance to the primal message.
While the divagation from the basic meaning is egregious in every instance, it has perh
H A L L O W E ' E N
A FESTIVAL OF LOST MEANINGS
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AUTUMN'S MYSTERIOUS REVEL
It is not unwarrantable to predict that the time is not far distant when a world of more enlightened intelligence will be able to look back upon the present age, particularly in the Western area of civilization, and label it as the epoch in which the people celebrated a series of religious festivals around the cycle of the year in nearly total ignorance of their true significance. Certainly, whether or not this be the future's judgment on our present state of semantic nescience, it is to be presumed that if the departed souls of the Sages of antiquity are in any wise in position to gaze down the corridors of history from their day to ours, they must register uncomprehending dismay at the sight of our ghastly misconception and utterly travestied motives in our commemoration of the great annual festivals their dramatic genius instituted round the year. They must stand
3
While the divagation from the basic meaning is egregious in every instance, it has perh