Hopefully my new pair of eyeglasses come in today. Because I can't stand wearing my spare since the lens is oversized and makes me look like someone from the 70s aside from the fact that it makes me dizzy.
You can probably guess that I didn't do anything for Halloween/All Saints Day/All Souls Day. Speaking of Halloween, like most festivals, it's a bastardization of various practices. And since I didn't know you found it to be so "unChristian", hence the text message. But while we're at the subject of corrupted practices, no one knows it better than the Filipino.
For one, it's been a practice to recite the pasyon during Holy Week, which is an oral tradition of Christ's mystery. And since the Spaniards centuries before wanted to brainwash the Filipinos into subversion, it's a tale that has many variants, has incorporated folk lore, and may literally take days to recite. One version even had Christ fighting it out with the devil on Black Saturday. And of course, a lot of the sources draw from Apocrypha. And if some of you are wondering where Mary's Assumption came from (aside from the fact that it's nowhere mentioned in the Bible)...
And I guess all these practices of burning candles for the dead, giving them food, etc., are done for various reasons. If you don't really believe in the afterlife, then of course the offering of foods and goods is nothing but to appease those living in this world. Of course before, a Christian burial was important since not getting one meant that the corpse wasn't going to heaven (and the social implications of being thought as a heretic). In comparison to the Greeks who believed that if the body didn't get buried, it wouldn't go to the afterlife and will forever be tormented until it gets buried (hence Antigone). There are also those who believe that burying the body is a way to honor the earth, the balance that mother nature gives. There's always reincarnation for those who are hoping.
And why did I bring this entire subject up? Because apparently, I didn't get enough sleep... =)
You can probably guess that I didn't do anything for Halloween/All Saints Day/All Souls Day. Speaking of Halloween, like most festivals, it's a bastardization of various practices. And since I didn't know you found it to be so "unChristian", hence the text message. But while we're at the subject of corrupted practices, no one knows it better than the Filipino.
For one, it's been a practice to recite the pasyon during Holy Week, which is an oral tradition of Christ's mystery. And since the Spaniards centuries before wanted to brainwash the Filipinos into subversion, it's a tale that has many variants, has incorporated folk lore, and may literally take days to recite. One version even had Christ fighting it out with the devil on Black Saturday. And of course, a lot of the sources draw from Apocrypha. And if some of you are wondering where Mary's Assumption came from (aside from the fact that it's nowhere mentioned in the Bible)...
And I guess all these practices of burning candles for the dead, giving them food, etc., are done for various reasons. If you don't really believe in the afterlife, then of course the offering of foods and goods is nothing but to appease those living in this world. Of course before, a Christian burial was important since not getting one meant that the corpse wasn't going to heaven (and the social implications of being thought as a heretic). In comparison to the Greeks who believed that if the body didn't get buried, it wouldn't go to the afterlife and will forever be tormented until it gets buried (hence Antigone). There are also those who believe that burying the body is a way to honor the earth, the balance that mother nature gives. There's always reincarnation for those who are hoping.
And why did I bring this entire subject up? Because apparently, I didn't get enough sleep... =)
posted by Charles at 3:17 PM
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