So I try to do as best as I can a thematic talk.

Halloween.

So. So you'll see that it ties into my normal psychological Buddhist

spiel, but there's a tenuous connection. So Halloween

started as a harvest, pagan harvest ceremony at the end of the harvest season and it marked the time of

year when people would prepare for the long cold winter months, take stock.

It was originally a Celtic pagan ritual for thousands of years and around the year 600

when Christianity was being exported.

Pope Gregory had an idea of incorporating

different pagan rituals and observances into Christianity rather than trying to have

because the attempt to simply have Christianity take over and replace all of the pagan rituals

wasn't working out too well.

So they took this... and they created something called All Saints Day on November 1st. So, Halloween became All Saints Day.

On November 1st. So Halloween became All Saints Day Eve. And the reason this is

interesting is that in the early Christian mythology it was said that the souls of the people who had departed during the previous year would wander the earth until all same day when they would

apparently go wherever they go.

But on the very last eve, which is our Halloween the spirits of the dead would take over the

living and act out through them. Of course the Halloween parade also became an excuse to act out on repressed emotions and impulses.

And that's what our talk's going to be about tonight.

So it was basically a time when people could act out on

authentic parts of themselves that have been repressed during the year, the

inconvenient things that we don't like acknowledging during our day-to-day life.

...