Religious scholar Fomin defended Halloween from attacks by the Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church condemned and called the celebration of Halloween “doubly inappropriate.” The Chairman of the Synodal Missionary Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, Bishop Evfimy of Lukhovitsky, declares that this is an alien holiday, which is intended to “legitimize the evil principle in the minds of people.” However, religious scholar Dmitry Fomin found many similarities in the pagan customs of the Slavs, Celts and Balts, as well as in the holidays that we still celebrate.

“In social terms, Halloween is a tool for integrating our society into the space of the Western world,” says the bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, Bishop Euthymius. The church hierarch emphasizes that in addition to carnival culture, the holiday brings “death, blood and all kinds of horrors.” This is uncharacteristic of Russian culture, where death has always been a “deeply sacred concept.” They don’t joke about her.

“All kinds of infernal cults, to which Halloween undoubtedly belongs, are aimed at the disintegration of our society, at alienating people from each other,” says Bishop Lukhovitsky.

Religious scholar Dmitry Fomin told MK that modern Halloween is based on the Celtic, and later the all-British autumn harvest festival of Samayan or Lemuria.

– Of course, this is not our holiday. It is generally difficult to judge how exactly our paganism was organized, since most of the early Slavic books of the Gromovniks, or “renounced books,” were destroyed, Fomin explained.

But it is known that in our pagan tradition the days of the solstices, summer and winter, were especially revered. This is already closer to the German and Scandinavian day of Midsommar, the summer day we have Ivan Kupala. The longest daylight hours, the shortest night, “when the border between worlds becomes permeable.” And, according to legend, you can also communicate with the spirits of the dead.

– Of course, the attributes are completely different – the heirs of the Celts have a pumpkin with a candle, or a Jack-o’-lantern (by the way, in Ireland they often had turnips, not pumpkins). The Proto-Slavs have a wreath, a fire, symbolizing the fiery Semaragl, and a fern flower. But the elements of the carnival are related to the pagan rituals of different countries. As well as the rapprochement of pagan rituals with Christian holidays, the expert said.

In England and Ireland, the church tried to tie the holiday to All Saints’ Day. More precisely, it was then the evening of all saints, when the church did not forbid talking with spirits, Al Hallows Evening. Which later transformed into Halloween.

The religious scholar noted that we also have many examples of pagan holidays that over time became church or folk holidays. For example, Maslenitsa is a purely pagan day when they burned an effigy of the goddess of winter, frost, death and withering, Mary Morena. The fire symbolized the world of Rule and his fiery messengers, the winged Semaragls. Which “throw away the snow, drive away the frosts.” Or Radunitsa, which some still call the Easter of the Dead. This is a traditional and revered day of remembrance of the dead by the Russian Orthodox Church, when you need to visit the cemetery.

Or carols before Christmas, when they wore sheepskin coats turned inside out and animal masks. In Slavic paganism, clothing inside out was considered an attribute of evil spirits, and people dressed up like this so that the evil spirits would not harm a person by mistaking them for one of their own. And they wore fur and masks in honor of the god Veles, who was the patron of animals and himself took the form of a bear. Well, collecting gifts, food and sweets in bags follows the harvest festivals and is reminiscent of the customs of Halloween.

Earlier it became known that the authorities of some regions also considered it inappropriate to celebrate Halloween in schools and other educational institutions. For example, in Yakutia, the local educational department sent out a letter with a recommendation not to celebrate an alien holiday. They did the same in Transbaikalia, calling Halloween “unpopular.” In Chita, the Rostov region, Kuban and other cities and villages, schools are strongly advised to refrain from “sweet and nasty” events.

In Tatarstan, Izhevsk, Udmurtia, Kaliningrad and Zaporozhye regions people gathered to celebrate Pumpkin Spas. The students were asked to dress up in clothes in orange, black and red tones, but without “evil spirits.”

At the same time, the Russian Orthodox Church had a negative attitude towards the newly-minted “Spas”. They say that pumpkin in no way correlates with the image of the Lord, unlike honey, nuts and apples. And the church did not comment on the idea of ​​holding the Day of Creepy Tales and Stories on October 31, proposed in the State Duma.