Merry Christmas

Editor, DL Mullan
Religion / Holidays
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We here at the VDP Gazette wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Bless Us, Everyone...

and Stop Stealing our community's Xmas Lawn Decorations while you are at it.

Happy Thanksgiving

From All the Staff:

Have a Safe and Wonderful Thanksgiving... and, 

Movie Night: The Real Story of Halloween

Staff Writer, DB Holmes
Halloween / History 
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The Real Story of Halloween

 Halloween began centuries ago as a pagan holiday that honored the dead that warned of a netherworld of spirits and ghosts. Today, Halloween has morphed into a day for breaking rules, pushing boundaries and wearing disguises. But Halloween remains a time for us to deal with our own mortality. Our modern Halloween traditions have ancient roots -- people were going door to door and begging for treats on Halloween night as far back as the Middle Ages.

We may think our Halloweens are crazy, but Halloweens past have been wilder and more dangerous than they are now. During the depression, Halloween became so violent and destructive that civil authorities had to step in and prevent wide-spread vandalism in cities across America. Their solution, the ritual of "trick or treat," now generates $2 billion dollars in candy sales each season. And these days adults get dressed up for the holiday almost as much as kids do. But no matter how many jack-o-lanterns get carved or kids yell "trick-or-treat!" Halloween is still all about the "scare." Two thousand years and counting, and we still like to be scared on the night of October 31.

Source: History Channel 

A Brief History of Mother's Day

Staff Writer, DL Mullan

Mother's Day / Commericalization
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Is Mother's Day a day of celebration for the sacrifices of mothers or a cheap, commericalized holiday? If you said both: you're right. 

Mother's Day in one incarnation or another is celebrated the world over. In the United States, Mother's Day is celebrated with dinners, flowers, and cards. Most of which the founding mother of Mother's Day found repugnant. Anna Jarvis lobbied for the holiday after her mother died in 1905. By 1915, Woodrow Wilson was signing the day into law:

Following the success of her first Mother’s Day, Jarvis—who remained unmarried and childless her whole life—resolved to see her holiday added to the national calendar. Arguing that American holidays were biased toward male achievements, she started a massive letter writing campaign to newspapers and prominent politicians urging the adoption of a special day honoring motherhood.

As soon as her holiday for motherhood was official, the holiday became one of money and greed. Jarvis was soon disenchanted by her own achievement because others had ruined it with commercialism. 

While Jarvis had initially worked with the floral industry to help raise Mother’s Day’s profile, by 1920 she had become disgusted with how the holiday had been commercialized. She outwardly denounced the transformation and urged people to stop buying Mother’s Day flowers, cards and candies. Jarvis eventually resorted to an open campaign against Mother’s Day profiteers, speaking out against confectioners, florists and even charities. She also launched countless lawsuits against groups that had used the name “Mother’s Day,” eventually spending most of her personal wealth in legal fees. By the time of her death in 1948 Jarvis had disowned the holiday altogether, and even actively lobbied the government to see it removed from the American calendar.

As you spend your Mother's Day remember: it's the thought that counts, not the cards, the gifts, or the pies. Those materialistic things are not what the holiday is about and never was to the founder Anna Jarvis. 

It's about celebrating family.

Source: History Channel 

Happy Easter, Pagan Holiday Worshipers

Staff Writer, DL Mullan

Holiday / History
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Easter has been celebrated in one form or another before the time of Christ. Yep, you guessed it: the Church copy and pasted a religious holiday onto another religion's holiday. So what are you celebrating Easter for? 

The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE), a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similarly, the "Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos." 1 Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Similar Goddesses were known by other names in ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, and were celebrated in the springtime. Some were:  

Aphrodite, named Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two places which claimed her birth; 8
Ashtoreth from ancient Israel;
Astarte from ancient Greece;
Demeter from Mycenae;
Hathor from ancient Egypt;
Ishtar from Assyria;
Kali, from India; and
Ostara a Norse Goddess of fertility.

Easter is celebrated by Christians today on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. Why is that?

"About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill ...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection." 3

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians:

"... used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation."

Many religious historians and liberal theologians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity, or were taken from the life of Horus, an Egyptian god. Ancient Christians had an alternative explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. 4 Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis and Horus legends as being a Pagan myths of little value with no connection to Jesus. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.

Wiccans and other modern-day Neopagans continue to celebrate the Spring Equinox as one of their 8 yearly Sabbats (holy days of celebration). Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer's crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. In those places where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers is believed to assure fertility of people and crops.

As you celebrate today, maybe you should wonder why holidays are set the way they are. Maybe you are not celebrating what you think you are. Maybe, it's a stolen pagan holiday. Food for thought.

Have a great and wonderful Easter!


Source: Religious Tolerance