Answers in Genesis tries to explain the history of Halloween — and of course, the only way they can do that is to make shit up. I don’t know why, but I found their article particularly infuriating. Maybe it’s because they’re so shameless about inventing fictitious histories, and they exhibit no shame at all about it.
So we get to hear that Archbishop Ussher claimed that Halloween was the day that Adam and Eve sinned; that maybe it was to honor Noah’s wife, who died on a date not mentioned in the Bible; that it was a commemoration of all the people who died in a worldwide flood; that the devil did it. They build this entire speculative mythology based on people who didn’t exist and events that didn’t occur, and they pretend it’s history, just like they pretend creationism is science. It’s lies all the way through.
But then, I guess that isn’t hard for people who take pictures of an empty field and call it Noah’s Ark. It wasn’t a Great Deluge, it was a Great Delusion.
Also, this.
And next year, consider ordering Halloween booklets to hand out to those who come to your door. Candy and other treats are good, but there’s nothing that compares with the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Oh, man, I still remember those houses that handed out Bible tracts rather than candy when I went trick-or-treating as a kid. Yes, do that, because I learned to despise those smug jerks when they shafted little kids that way.
The Christianists are totally dating themselves now. They’re becoming more and more of a joke.
Looks like we need to add a lower level to the candy heirarchy:
http://boingboing.net/2012/10/29/the-candy-hierarchy-2012.html#thechart
I actually had a neighbor give one of my kids an ad for her law firm with a sucker attached last year. I am not sure if advertising would fall above or below religious propaganda, but they would both be pretty low on the chart.
Was he there?
Was he there?
So the Celtic Samhein festival traveled through a time loop to Biblical times, to inspire Noah?
Re. boggles, they feature frequently in the Carl Leandros series by, I think, Rob Thurman.
The current story in the xian’s rapidly evolving eternal unchanging mythology:
Halloween is satan’s birthday. That is what the fundies tell their kids in a lot of places.
Were they there?
PS The fundies got to my local elementary school. They aren’t having a Halloween party any more. It’s now a Harvest Party.
There aren’t many fundies in the area. In fact, pagans and New Agers probably outnumber them by a lot. But clearly someone complained and what could they do?
It works both ways though. They aren’t having Xmas or Easter parties either. It’s some sort of generic holiday party. So fundies 1 Pagans 2.
PSS Don’t forget the War on Halloween!!! It was overshadowed this year by the fundie xian’s other War. The War on the USA. But there are a couple of days left.
Umm… Samhain (pronounced SOW-een) was the day between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In most Celtic cultures, this was the day for finishing the annual slaughter, thinning the herds down to what could be supported over the winter. As such, it was observed as a day of death, and legend held that the unrestful dead would walk the earth between sunset and sunrise. Turnips (pumpkins are a New World fruit, and did not occur in Europe until the 15th century) were carved into grotesque faces and turned into candleholders and lamps, with the belief that these would frighten away the ghosts. Those that made it through would be given small gifts, in the hopes of appeasing them before they caused mischief. Bonfires were common, too, a custom that grew out of the need to smoke the meat so it would keep through the winter.
During a period of Celtic ascendency in Western Christianity, the observance was adopted into the Christian calendar, as were all of the Celtic festivals; and Samhain became All Saints Day, set aside to honor the departed in Christ. Previously, this holy day had been kept on the Sunday after Easter — first the resurrection of Jesus, then the hoped for resurrection in Jesus — but this resulted in an extended pilgrimage season in Rome during a time when food supplies were very scarce. So, why not move the feast to the end of the harvest season? The night before All Saints — or All Hallows, as it was eventually called in Early and Middle English — was when the closet pagans remembered the ancient customs. This was Hallows Even, eventually shortened to Hallows E’en and then Halloween.
Sinister to a Talibangelical, no doubt, but no more so than the Celtic traditions that got associated with the Feast of the Nativity or Easter.
@raven – “The fundies got to my local elementary school. They aren’t having a Halloween party any more. It’s now a Harvest Party. ”
The rich irony being that the symbols and customs of a harvest festival are FAR more pagan than the symbols and customs of modern Halloween. By removing Halloween from the school, they’ve actually introduced paganism.
So when you egg the god-botherer’s houses, is it their Christian duty to forgive you and turn the other cheek?
And next year, consider ordering Halloween booklets to hand out to those who come to your door.”
Why not skip a step? Good Christians should just buy eggs and toilet paper, so they can egg and toilet paper their own house.
Handing out religious tracks on Halloween should be a crime. the cops should show up at their door, hall the out to the middle of the street, and the kids should be allowed to stone them with those god-awful orange and black taffee’s that old ladies like to hand out.
I notice AiG’s donations-received widget on the ark page has a target of $24.5 million. That Noah bloke, he must have been pretty damn rich; that’s all I can say.
Well, maybe it’s not a bad idea to show kids how to go begging door to door for something to eat. That experience may become useful if the Koch brothers have their way.
Speed scrolling through the Recent Posts side-bar caused me to blend some into:
I hope a boggle eats their testicles .
chigau (違う) #12
Dare I restart the mayo/ketchup debate…?
Yeah, we only visited the houses that gave out Bible tracts once, then avoided them every year after that. Also the apple/dental floss houses….sorry!
European cultures always had seasonal festivals like this one.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain
Drive away the spirits of winter with a big party in early spring and offer them gifts after harvest season so they won’t be to harsh on your land.
Not feeling like sacrificing the goat yet.
So even with a holiday that has an actual Christian connection*, AiG has to make totally new stuff up rather than saying ‘we celebrate the souls of the virtuous getting into Heaven’ and maybe doing some actual research about how that led to masks and candy.
* Albeit one placed on top of a European pagan root of ‘we harvested the crops and winter is coming’.
That raises the question: where to send the card and prezzie?
I guess:
His Stygian Majesty Satan
C.E.O.’s Office
Pandemonium Palace
Dis 666
Kingdom of Hades
should find him, but what’s the postage rate?
YOUR SOUL.
> So we get to hear that Archbishop Ussher claimed that Halloween was the day that Adam and Eve sinned
The article does make a large number of bizarre claims but that particular claim is not among them. (The article does try to suggest that there might be a link between Ussher’s chronology and Yom Kippur-–but they’re only willing to say that there “may” be a connection between the two.)
PZ–the article is filled to the brim with made up shit. How did you manage to make shit up too?
Referring to the Jewish fall holiday, the article says:
So… covering nakedness with animal skins leads to wearing costumes and masks?
I can almost see it.
Well obviously ‘covering nakedness with animal skins’ means ‘dressing up as animals’. I believe Adam dressed up as an antelope and Eve as a unicorn.
holytape
Aww…I like those god-awful taffies. Throw the boxes of raisins!
How can the fundies oppose Halloween? Have they forgotten their own history of the festival? Have they forgotten the very origin of the name itself? Halloween == [All] Hallow’s E’en [eve], the night before All Hallow’s Day. Trick-or-Treat is to lure all the evil spirits away from haunting the holy day of Nov. 1: “All Hallows’ Day”. Too much a child at heart, to me, Halloween is the most important holiday of them all (except maybe Easter) But Easter is only the most important if you believe all that “resurrection” cr@p, Halloween is the most FUN.
@PZ Myers #18
That kind of sucks if you want to send Satan a card for Walpurgisnacht as well. Obviously, he doesn’t get much mail, which is probably why he’s so cranky. (That, and the on-going problems with his home’s air conditioning.)
Why oh why doesn’t AiG have comments sections for their articles? It’s almost as if they’re afraid of something….
With the expected price rises now the Royal Mail is being
gifted to a bunce of rich bastards with nothing but profits in their eyesprivatised, one’s soul will probably be the cheapest stamp on the price list anyway.raven @5:
Hell, the fundies got to the entire county I lived in back in the late 70s and early 80s. Tricker Treeting was, in Washington County, MD, illegal. Instead, we all got to go to the local volunteer fire company’s Halloween Party (no devil worship costumes allowed) where we got a sermon, a bunch of cheap candy, some religious booklets, and a couple of small cash prizes for the best costumes (oddly, at our fire hall, the winning costumes for the boys was always a fireman and for the girls it was always a French Maid, Playboy bunny, or cheerleader (in every age group)).
Which was disappointing. In Arizona, the town was small enough that time of the year that we all had two costumes and hit every house twice.
The older I get, the more I learn that pretty much every holiday that you can think of is basically a layer cake of ridiculous pre-industrial superstition, religious oppression, and post-industrial mercenary capitalism upon which everybody can have their masturbatory culture wars. I say throw them all on the scrap heap and just get drunk and eat treats and give gifts whenever.
Here you go, folks, a handy link to the relevant Chick tracts online:
http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractByKeyword.asp?Subject=Halloween
you’re welcome!
nowimnothing @#@:
oh, my. That candy hierarchy is just so, so wrong that I don’t even know where to start.
Chas:
I find it interesting that the Chick Tracts keep claiming that Druids or pagans took people, or children, as sacrifices and left a jack-o-lantern. Which are native to the Americas. So how did the Druids and pagans have pumpkins in pre-Columbian Europe? Or am I asking too much for Jack Chick to actually give a flying fuck for facts?
Ogvorbis:
We pretty well know that the Celt engaged in human sacrifice, but we have NO evidence
that this was tied to any specific event or “holiday”. In fact, from the bog bodies, it looks like elite males were the ones getting sacrificed the most, not children or women
As for the Chick tract: At least the Chick tract admits the truth of Halloween’s Celtic
heritage without plastering it with weird psudeohistory about Noah and Archbishop Ussher. It’s the first time in history I’ve seen a Chick tract get ANYTHING remotely right( even with all the wrong stuff in it)
People writing things like “Archbishop Ussher? WERE YOU THERE?” until the site crashes and Jesus has to spit on their server until it runs again.
Ogvorbis, jack-o-lanterns predate Columbus. It’s just that before people had these nice, pre-hollowed pumpkins, they had to cut the innards out of turnips (most likely actually rutabagas, aka swedes). See post #6.
The name Halloween itself, along with Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve probably reflects a time when days were reckoned to begin at sunset as they still do on the Jewish calendar.
Mormons in my area have transformed Halloween into a “Fall Festival.” You can attend a mormon Ward party and arm wrestle the missionaries to “strengthen your testimony.” Your children will not be admitted if they are not wearing role-positive costumes.
Lynna, OM #35
]
That’s interesting. I grew up Mormon, and the people at the church went trick-or-treating like everyone else did.
I will be having some Queimada.
Mouchos, curuxas, sapos e bruxas.
Demos, trasgos e diaños,
espíritos das neboadas veigas.
Corvos, píntegas e meigas:
feitizos das menciñeiras.
Podres cañotas furadas,
fogar dos vermes e alimañas.
Lume das Santas Compañas,
mal de ollo, negros meigallos,
cheiro dos mortos, tronos e raios.
Ouveo do can, pregón da morte;
fuciño do sátiro e pé do coello.
Pecadora lingua da mala muller
casada cun home vello.
Averno de Satán e Belcebú,
lume dos cadáveres ardentes,
corpos mutilados dos indecentes,
peidos dos infernais cus,
muxido da mar embravecida.
Barriga inútil da muller solteira,
falar dos gatos que andan á xaneira,
guedella porca da cabra mal parida.
Con este fol levantarei
as chamas deste lume
que asemella ao do Inferno,
e fuxirán as bruxas
a cabalo das súas vasoiras,
índose bañar na praia
das areas gordas.
¡Oíde, oíde! os ruxidos
que dan as que non poden
deixar de queimarse no augardente
quedando así purificadas.
E cando este beberaxe
baixe polas nosas gorxas,
quedaremos libres dos males
da nosa alma e de todo embruxamento.
Forzas do ar, terra, mar e lume,
a vós fago esta chamada:
se é verdade que tendes máis poder
que a humana xente,
eiquí e agora, facede que os espíritos
dos amigos que están fóra,
participen con nós desta Queimada.
Hopefully the end result is going to be subject to a review by a real engineer. The structure shown in one of the pictures is incorrectly triangulated so that there are point loads in the middle of a beam.
Their “designer” is not so intelligent.
Chris P
How is it that donations for the pegs, planks, and beams used to build (assuming, of course, it is ever built, and that the whole thing isn’t just a scam by Ham to bilk believers out of their money) are tax deductible?
It’s bad enough that religious donations in general are deductible, but for this monstrosity? Please.
If Halloween is now a harvest festival, I guess that Thanksgiving is up for grabs as a pagan festival. Oh, wait– it already is.
All Hallows Eve: “when the lakes and rivers are gates of glass so that the spirits of the dead can walk through.”
Well, that was the weirdest error message ever: “Guru meditation”? “Varnish [the] cache server”?
Can a technical expert please explain this to me?
Well, Varnish cache server is a well-known euphemism for paying to watch someone else satisfy themselves (thus the ‘cache’ (pronounced ‘cash’ in this instance) in the phrase), and, well, we all know what ‘varnishing’ means in this context. Apparently, that service, watching someone else satisfy themselves, is not available at this time.
And the numbers? That is the phone number to set up the appointment for the varnish cash server. Does that help you?
(all attempted humour – really)
2 nowimnothing
Looks like religious tracts were included this year
http://boingboing.net/2013/10/30/the-candy-hierarchy-2013.html
In danger of going off topic but… Guru Meditation was the
Error message for the Commodore Amiga. The point was that your IT expert , or ” guru” was to ” meditate” on what caused the computer problem. Since then, its been a big IT joke.
One of my good friends worked as a waitress in grad school at a Po’ Folks (I think that chain is extinct now). She always said that the Sunday post-church shift was the worst. The churchgoers were lousy tippers, and would indeed sometimes leave a tract in lieu of a tip. Even worse, she said that sometimes they would berate her for working on the Sabbath, without a hint of self-awareness of their role in abetting that by going to a restaurant on the Sabbath in the first place.
tbp1 @46:
My sister worked for many years at a very upscale restaurant. Tab for a four-tip averaged $300.00. For any tab over $1,000.00, or with more than 8 patrons, the tip was factored in automatically. She once had a seven-top with a $900.00 dinner and bar tab which tipped three Chick Tracts and a fake million-dollar bill with Jesus on it. Since my sister claimed all her tips (she was audited four times during the Reagan years), she always owed the restaurant money for her taxes. Which means that, effectively, she paid the restaurant to wait on that table. As did the bartender.
There is a very religious family that lives near my kids’ grandparents. I like how they do it. They grill hot dogs and serve hot cider to all the Trick or Treaters. They leave religious books that are free for the taking on a nearby table. They aren’t pushy or cranky. They’re neighborly.
Jackie @48:
That sounds like the right way to do it.
A local church always has an awesome “Trunk or Treat” going each Halloween here, with huge lines to get in. Each of the cars outside handing out candy is decorated for a theme, and everyone is in costume. Most have music related to the theme of their car. Last year someone had their Harley set up so you could take pictures of your child on the bike. They have live music some years from a local band, and indoors they have free coffee, hot chocolate and lemonade, as well as food you can buy. There’s carnival games for the kids and a place for photos- and NO religious pressure. None. I think there is a table with some pamphlets about the church if you want them. I always donate some money at the tip jar to keep the event going, because I appreciate having a safe, fun place to take the kids each year.
I got this far before I started laughing. You just know some things are going to be a hoot.
@birgerjohansson
Of course not! Pagans can’t inspire anything, because they don’t have God’s divine spark of inspiration! Whenever heathens appear to have invented something, it’s actually something a Christian invented and they stole!
Halloween was actually invented by Noah as a way to enforce the Curse of Ham. Every year, the descendants of Shem and Japheth would go to the homes of the descendants of Ham and ask for their treat, a child they could keep at their God-ordained slave. If the parents refused, they got a trick: they were killed and their house burned down/ It was all perfectly just and moral until it was corrupted by those evil pagans.
Can’t these guys do simple whole-number math?
“40 days and 40 nights” of rain. Let’s cut them a little slack and say it was very heavy rain, say 1 inch an hour. That’s 24 inches per day, 2 feet, or 80 feet in total.
So that’s bad for Miami Beach, the Marshall and Gilligan Islands, but still like 95% of land is still above water.
Did Noah just collect and preserve sandgrasses?
Yes, but that’s tempered by their second amendment duty to shoot at you, don’t you know….
if they are paranoid by the pagan Celtic nature of Halloween what must they think of the way the Day Of The Dead is celebrated in Mexico?
visiting grave yards, skulls & dancing skeletons and “alters” for the departed
uncle frogy
george,
I’ve seen someone calculate the amount of energy released as heat when 27,000 feet of water falls from a height onto the earth. Not remembering the details, but we’re talking steam and boiling water. No fish – fresh or salt water – in those seas. Also the Ark would have needed serious insulation and air conditioning equipment. Good thing God always provides.
I notice at the top of the page on the ark encounters nonsense page that they claim to have raised $13,657,789 of the $24.5M they want to build this idiotic thing.
They are loons, but they get a lot of money from other, gullible loons.
There’s also the not so small problem of where 27,000 feet of water came from, or where it eventually went. It’s not like there is a big drain plug at the bottom of the ocean.
Also if you estimate the number of man-hours it would take Noah and sons to chop down and hew and haul all that wood, it’s in the thousands of years. And the whole concept of someone who had never built a canoe being able to design and build, successfully, the first time, the largest ship ever made, is a bit hard to swallow.
Also, wood has to be dried for a couple of years at least before being used for boat planking. Warping and shrinkage, you know.
Hey look, free eggs and toilet paper.
Yep, that’d do it. But surely (don’t call me Surely. Sorry, couldn’t resist) nobody would have such an infantile sense of humour as to do that; it’s be as daft as pulling that old ‘don’t call m…… ah, you could be right after all.
And have you seen what the donations actually buy?
A peg, one lousy wooden peg can be yours for just $10 per month.
A plank (no, not old Kenneth of Ham) for just $100 per month.
A beam (not even the fucking sunbeam that I was promised JC wanted me for) for the measly sum of $1000 (yes, you heard me, I shouted loud enough, one thousand of your easily-earned (!) dollars) per month.
Oddly, they don’t say for how many months the donor is expected to cough up, but it doesn’t really matter does it? Who’s going to begrudge the baby JC such trifling sums?
But, $10 dollars for a fucking wooden peg. I can see now why they call them the ‘flock’, being so easily fleeced.
Then I saw this gem:
Now it’s starting to look like the bargain of the century…..
Come on now, the answer’s obvious: magic man magically created it to drown everybody, then magicked it away again.
Whoops, I nearly missed this bit..
Now, where did I leave my credit card?
The whole Ark Park financing is pretty dodgy.
They are donating to…a for profit company. The Ark Park owns the park and subcontracts the operations to AIG, a nonprofit. Right here, you can see how strange it is.
They’ve also had trouble raising money.
Last I heard, they were going to issue Municipal Bonds with the city of Williamstown.
My understanding is that the city of Williamstown isn’t liable for the bonds. Ark Park is. And Municipal Bonds default fairly often.
It’s possible a lot of that $13 million is actually bond sales. And if the Ark Park defaults, well, didn’t anyone read the propectus. It’s just business, get the money upfront, and make sure you aren’t there if things fall apart.
At the links PZ included in his post, one mentions that Ham has already collected more than $13 million dollars for his ark project.
He certainly has a few million dollars in cash that was donated by the mugs in the pews, but most of the money is promises only. Various Christian businessmen have promised huge amounts of cash but it won’t be paid into the fund until building actually starts. And not all at once either. The promised money will be handed over in installments. If the building stops so do the promised donations.
Administrative costs (wages for Ken Ham for example) will slowly use up the actual cash in the fund and then the promises will be all that is left. So no ark.
On the “40 days” thing, there was a discussion about that on some thread awhiles ago. The evidence-backed conclusion was simply that 40 was a common euphemism for many, not to be taken as a literal value 40.
At 46, Ogvorbis: Apologies Available for All!
That’s pretty awful. Working at a Po’ Boys, my friend was never stiffed for a tab that big, but still, it rankled when it happened. I think it bothered her more when someone would leave a tract, as opposed to just not leaving anything. In the former case, they were trying extra hard to be jerks while feeling self righteous about it. In the latter, she just figured they were cheap.
My dad, who was actually both religious and conservative, but not a jerk about it, taught me that if you can’t afford the tip, you can’t afford the meal, so either stay home or go someplace cheaper. I have always taken that advice to heart. When I travel abroad I make sure to find out what the local tipping norms are so I don’t inadvertently cheat someone out of their wages.
That said, I hate tipping. I wish restaurants and bars would just pay a decent living sage and we didn’t have to tip at all. It works that way in Japan and Korea, where as far as I can tell, you don’t tip anyone for anything, ever. And with only one or two exceptions, we got splendid service everywhere in both countries.
@Don Quijote
That’s Galician, right?
blf@65
“40 days” was probably translated from the original text in the lingo of the Fishers and Handwavers Guild, meaning ” It was thiiis looong!!”
Raven @ #63; it sounds like the South Sea Bubble all over again.
At length corruption, like a general flood,
Did deluge all, and avarice creeping on,
Spread, like a low-borne mist, and hid the sun.
Statesmen and patriots plied alike the stocks,
Peeress and butler shared alike the box;
And judges jobbed, and bishops bit the town,
And mighty dukes packed cards for half a crown:
Britain was sunk in lucre’s sordid charms.
Alexander Pope
Or maybe Swift was more pertinent:
Subscribers here by thousands float,
And jostle one another down,
Each paddling in his leaky boat,
And here they fish for gold, and drown.
Well whaddya know? I do culture.
The photographs prove that Ark Encounter™ has been completely successful with their project. It’s obvious that they have produced an imaginary replica of an Ark which is, in every way, identical to the imaginary original. Take THAT all you Atheists.
60 Acolyte of Sagan writes:
According to the site it’s for ten months. So your peg costs $100. A plank is a grand. And a beam is five. Yep, five thousand dollars. And for that you get four tickets and Ken Hamm will sign your personal replica of Noah’s Ark.
https://www.facebook.com/aigkenham/posts/649332088430484
Hah. Even Ken’s followers don’t like who he’s hanging with now…
I didn’t think boggles eat humans. Grues, on the other hand, most certainly do.
Unfortunately, Boggle is a vegetarian now.
Were you perhaps thinking of a boojum? There’s so many snarks around here, one of us is bound to be a boojum…
@67 vaiyt
’tis indeed galego or gallego in Spanish. Actually I shouldn’t have posted that. There are a couple of lines in there that are decidedly sexist. Although, I suppose, it’s difficult not to be when talking about witches.
I thought Halloween marked the night a certain Mr Myers escaped from a lunatic asylum and proceeded to slaughter a number of people in the town of Haddonfield.
Hmmm…. Myers. Now there’s a name to conjure with.
Woggler #77
Here ya go.
At $1000 p/mth, the beam weighs in at ten thousand dollars.
Methinks somebody’s making a prophet-eer.
Thank you, I’m here all week!
tvp1, We dont tip Waiters in Australia either – unless one wishes to reward service so outstanding it is above expected. One can rest assured that all staff are paid at least the minimum wage which is high enough to be a ‘living wage’. Makes life much easier for customers and staff are not penalised for being a colour other than White, the wrong age or gender etc.