HALLOWEEN (negative) and PURIM (positive)
Hugh
Halloween
means different things to different people.
For gentiles or non-Jews, it is a festival celebrated the day before All
Saints' Day. It is a time for costume parties and games. Many superstitions,
pagan rites, and symbols are connected with Halloween.
The
Irish use "jack-o-lanterns because of a tale that a man named Jack was
unable to enter heaven because of his miserliness and could not enter hell
because he had played practical jokes on the devil―so he had to walk the
earth with his lantern until Judgment Day.
The
Druids believed that on Halloween, ghosts, spirits, fairies, cats, witches and
elves came out to harm people. They thought the cat was sacred and believed
that cats had once been human beings, but were changed as a punishment for evil
deeds.
In the
700's C.E., the Roman Catholic Church named November 1 as “All Saints' Day”
combining the old pagan customs of the Druids and the Christian feast day into
a Halloween festival. During early times in the
Purim, on the other hand, is a Jewish festival holiday associated
with the Book of Esther found in the Bible.
Costumes
are worn, not to remember witches, ghosts, spirits, fairies and eves, but to remember
the inner and outer self.
By
this I mean, each of the characters in the Purim story had to fight their deep
secrets. In the Bible,
(a) The King, not of royal blood, had to overcome
his inferior feelings,
(b) Queen Vashti had to find her inner self and
not dance naked in front of the King's court knowing that she would be killed
or exiled if she didn't.
(c) Esther and her cousin, Mordechai had to hide
their Jewishness and only when the Jewish nation was about to be destroyed, came
out into the open.
(d) The evil Haman had to hide his secrets for
royal power. This is why during this festive holiday costumes are worn
representing the hidden inner, deep thoughts of the chief characters.
And
instead of playing harmful and not so harmful pranks on your neighbors and
instead of saying to your neighbors, "give me a treat or I will play a
trick on you,"―extorting them into paying homage―Jewish
children and adults go out to neighbors and give their neighbors gifts of food
and money, depending upon their needs.
Purim,
to the Jews all over the world, is a joyous holiday, celebrating another event
in history when the Jewish People, for the eighth time were saved from
destruction.