Debrah Wright
Ms.Aguilar
Pre-AP English II-1
14 May 2014
Holidays: Holy Days or Horror Days
Shining lights, tasty treats, family coming in and pinching children's cheeks, the joy of gifts and the thrill of giving -- all these things are what can be expected during the holiday seasons. Grandma is cooking in the kitchen as you are sitting on the floor and staring inquisitively at the mesmerizing tree. Only one thing, though, is truly on your young mind, the multicolored themed wrapped up boxes beneath its dark pine branches. You think back to the other holidays where you received prizes and were allowed freedom. Like that one Halloween the first time you went as a makeshift sheet ghost. Appreciating the cool autumn air as it lead you into the night then greeting every welcoming person with a candy bowl with "trick or treat"! Possibly even reliving that one fateful February day where your first crush snuck you a chocolate kiss and a bright red card entailing the cliché poem involving violets and roses. You never question the origin of these days and yet you still reveled in the fun. Holidays show the truth behind what humans may think as sacred, traditional and what is important to their natural culture and life styles. Holidays also give people the opportunity to "blow off steam" and have something to look forward to in the simplistic patterns of living in a routine daily life. Holidays are shown as major rites and customary influences of ritualistic comfort throughout having annual celebrations. However, beneath the veneer of fun and celebrations these holidays , Valentines Day, Halloween, and Christmas, lies a sinister history that needs explored.
Today, February fourteenth represents a day of love, adoration, and true commitmen...
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...excuse for materialism. Companies use holidays as a get rich quick operations, manipulating the ideas of giving. "Today, the holiday [Valentines] is big business: According to market research firm IBIS World, Valentine's Day sales reached $17.6 billion last year; this year's sales are expected to total $18.6 billion" ( Siepel). Every year holidays seem to get more important to our economy and our own pockets and people forget to ask the questions of true importance. The questions that will lead to the truth. Behind every holiday there is a reason and a long past of stories and fictitious tales, and looking at them in the lime light shows the true nature of humans. The choice to accept the dark past and continue with the jolly festivals must be made. Knowing the truth of these holidays has lead to an insight on the past and can influence todays choices.
In order to explain, this we need to go back to the very beginning of this creepy holiday. Long ago, a people known as the Celts celebrated a holiday they called Samhain. The Celts lived two thousand years ago in what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Northern France. Celts began each new year on November first; This is the day that ends the harvest and marks the beginning of winter, cold and hard, which many then feared they had not stored enough food to survive. With that in mind it is no small wonder that this time of year was often associated with death. So the day before, Samhain , Celts believed that this world and the Deadworld boundaries blurred and th...
In digging the day of the dead a distinction between Dia de los Muertos and Halloween is made, the purpose, to highlight the differences and showing the importance and significance of Dia de los Muertos. This ethnography begins by loosely describing Halloween in American culture, it is described as a day where “children dress up as grotesque corpses” and a celebration empty of historic or cultural significance and knowledge. The author Juanita Garciagodoy, later goes on to describe Dia de los Muertos in a romanticized way, by statin that the dead “are not forgotten or excluded from recollections, prayer, or holidays because they are no longer visible” Garciagodoy then goes on to tell a heartfelt story about a couple one holding on to tradition,
Christmas has consumed itself. At its conception, it was a fine idea, and I imagine that at one point its execution worked very much as it was intended to. These days, however, its meaning has been perverted; its true purpose ignored and replaced with a purpose imagined by those who merely go through the motions, without actually knowing why they do so.
Written in the era directly preceding the holocaust, High Holy Days, written from the perspective of a young girl, is more telling than is evident at first read. Themes of a young girls distance, and doubt pertaining to her religion are prominent throughout the piece.
On christmas, you get presents but on halloween, you get candy. Kids like both of these holidays for these reasons and more. On christmas, besides the present, there is a discount for everything. You can buy video games for 50 percent off! Who wouldn’t like that! On christmas, you get the anticipation, and, on some parts of the world, snow comes falling down from the vast sky. With snow, you can do plenty of things like build a snowman, snow angels and etc. On halloween though, y...
Each holiday serves to strengthen pride in their own histories and cultures. As people continue these celebrations, they are reminded of who they are, where they came from, and their society’s beliefs and values. Along with this, cultural awareness is also promoted. People from countries all around the world are beginning to celebrate Halloween, and more and more are becoming increasingly aware of Day of the Dead.
When Halloween approaches, I feel the air becoming cooler and the nights becoming longer. Clouds over lap the moon creating an eerie look in the sky. Children grow more and more excited to put on their costumes, and they spend one night out of the whole year going door to door getting free candy. As I have grown up over the years, Halloween is celebrated differently for me. I always notice that even though it is celebrated differetly the people haven’t changed and that’s what makes it memorable.
Everybody celebrates Halloween, but some people might celebrate the spooky holiday in a variety of ways. Most people celebrate this holiday by going door to door asking the greeters for candy while in their costumes. Others may see the night as an advantage to play pranks on others or even to create public haunted houses or haunted trails. For people that like to hold public events, they may create costume parties. For those that are either lazy or they just don’t want to participate in the events, they may spend the night by staying in their houses and doing an activity of their own. Most do not know this, but Halloween was originally a holiday to honor loved ones who passed.
...f greed, we as a nation need to seriously rethink why we celebrate the holiday, and make amends to our practices in order to embody that meaning.
Holidays have always been known to affect our consumer culture for many years, but how it all began eludes many people and very few studies have been completed on it. Even though some say that the subject is too broad to precisely identify how holidays, especially Christmas, directly affect our market, I have found that people’s values, expectations and rituals related to holidays can cause an excessive amount of spending among our society. Most people are unaware that over the centuries holidays have become such a profitable time of year for industries that they now starting to promote gift ideas on an average of a month and a half ahead of actual holiday dates to meet consumer demands.
The Catholic holiday Day of The Dead and the westernized holiday of Halloween are two very different holidays celebrated for completely different reasons. The only real similarities between them is the closeness of their date of celebration and their use of the object of death. Other than these two things the holidays are very different from each other.
When Halloween comes around, social norms are virtually non-existent throughout the days leading up to and day of Halloween. “Halloween constitutes a time of transition when orthodox social constraints are lifted, a moment of status ambiguity and indeterminacy when ritual subjects can act out their individual or collective fantasies, hopes, or anxieties.”(Rogers, 463) Rogers position explains how essentially, society’s social barriers are lifted so people are able to act upon their own desires and not feel judged or scolded. This can be represented through costumes of which people choose to wear or simply through the actions people take on the holiday. For example, a person who may not consume alcohol regularly could be more prone to drinking on Halloween knowing that it is a activity is apparent among an adult population. Similarly, Rogers discusses how youthful revelry is also apparent on the holiday. This quote also reflects the ideas portrayed on the most recent events of Halloween at Central Michigan this most recent year, that will be discussed
People dream of the months of pumpkin spice, fall leaves, and scary decorations. When that's all over, they move on to putting their decorations on a tree, hanging twinkly lights, and drinking eggnog. The months of October through December cause people to become enlivened at the thought of what they will do to celebrate the holidays that are in them. Halloween and Christmas are two holidays in the last few months of the year that so many people look forward to. Halloween is the fear-based holiday involving frightful decor, receiving candy from strangers, and dressing in costume while throwing a party. Christmas is celebrated by filling houses with all things red and green, gifting presents topped with bows, having a family dinner, and throwing
Halloween is a historical holiday that dates back to several thousand years ago. When I think of Halloween some things that come to mind are decorations, pumpkins, costumes, and parties. Although, some Halloween traditions have come and gone, there are many that we still celebrate today in the United States.
Holidays are a celebration and an enjoyment of festivities. Although they are a commonality across the world, holidays differ between countries and cultures. But, what many do not realize is that holidays are ultimately ideology driven, that is that the group that celebrates these holidays follows a certain set of ideas and beliefs. Whether the ideology is religion based, or politically based, all holidays are centered around ideologies.