How does the church feel about Halloween? About the merry pumpkin holiday Halloween

Chief Editor scientific and theological portal "Bogoslov.Ru".

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Biography

Was born on August 20, 1971 in Alma-Ata. Father - professor, doctor of medical sciences; mother is a teacher, candidate of chemical sciences.

In 1988 he graduated with a medal from secondary school No. 2 in Kislovodsk with in-depth study of the English language.

In 1998 he graduated from the Academy with a PhD in Theology, defended his Ph.D. thesis on the topic: "Orthodox assessment of the impact of technocratic civilization on inner world modern man ".

On March 15, 1997, he was ordained a deacon, and on September 21, 1997 - a presbyter.

Since 1998 he has been teaching basic theology at the MDS.

From 1999 to 2002 - teacher of basic theology at Sretenskaya Theological Seminary.

From 1999 to 2001 - teacher of basic theology at the military education department of the Orthodox St. Tikhon's Theological Institute.

From 1999 to 2003 - art consultant at the KhPP ROC "Sofrino".

From 2001 to 2002 - lecturer of the history of Russian religious thought at the MDA and MDS.

Since 2003 - Secretary of the Academic Council of the MDAiS.

Since 2005 - the author of the weekly program "Religious Encyclopedia" on Radio Russia (cycle "Peace. Man. Word"), as well as a participant in the "Pastoral Conversations".

Since 2005 - Associate Professor at the MDA.

In April 2007, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the scientific theological portal Bogoslov.Ru.

Since August 2009 - the head of the joint educational Internet project "Radio Russia" and the portal "Theologian. Ru "" World. Human. Word".

On June 27, 2009, by decision of the Holy Synod, he was included in the Inter-Council Presence (Commission on spiritual education and religious education, the commission on theology, the commission on the organization of the church mission, the commission on the information activities of the Church and relations with the media - the secretary of the commission). Member of the Information Group of the Inter-Council Presence.

Since November 2009 - Member of the Expert Council of the Synodal Department for Religious Education and Catechesis.

Since 2011 - member of the Joint Expert Council of the Orthodox Initiative Foundation.

Since 2011 - Member of the Expert Council Publishing Council Moscow Patriarchate.

In April 2013 by decree Holy Patriarch Kirill was appointed rector of the Pyatnitsky Compound at the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra in the city of Sergiev Posad.

Personal life

He is a widower and has four children.

Awards

1. Metal on glass
2. In the New Year - everything is new
3. Change change strife
4. Life 2.0, or the people who play games
5. Overcoming declarativeness: from words to deeds
6. Faces of history
7. In the week of Last Judgment, or why an inept hostess needs a bad neighbor
8. Fast! - Modern?
9. Requiem for "everlasting woman"
10. If the head is glass, there is nothing to knock on the door with it, or about the theology of victory
11. Do not cry for the unlearned, cry for the scientist ...
12. Information haze
13. Christ is Risen!
14. When they close their ears so they can't hear
15. Mixing ashes with tears ...
16. Win with this sim! ...
17. Birthday of the Church
18. Post-Christianity: Greek Syndrome
19. The enemy at the holy gates, or the marginality test
20. The minimum definition of Orthodoxy is?
21. Timely reflections
22. Say a word about the poor priest ...
23. Here the master is the Reverend
24. Reason in the Church: Real Presence
25. Job description of a true priest (* DSP)
26. Strong and Weak Church
27. On the joys and sorrows of the spiritual school today
28. What I didn't tell the President, or the City without a Head
29. Go there, I don't know where, or is there a way out of the maze of Christmas readings?
30. Lenten Reflections
31. Easter of Christ: "Be guided and understand that I am God!"
32. Where to go for the poor student, or does the Church need young scholars and theologians?
33. Alaverdi, or a few impressions about Georgian Orthodoxy
34. Strength in weakness
35. On a pilgrimage. Not at all according to Shmelev.
36. The paradoxes of church education.

Archpriest Pavel Velikanov A window to God Why do we need daily prayer and how to do it correctly? ” How not to miss the target? How to Conduct a Prayer Service Correctly? How can you pray in different ways, and why should you do it? Archpriest Pavel Velikanov answers these questions. It all starts with prayer - What is prayer, what is its role for a person and in church life? - Prayer is an integral part of any religious culture... But this can be approached from different angles. Most of all, I like the definition of Archimandrite Emilian, abbot of the monastery of Simonopetra on Mount Athos. In one of his sermons, he says that prayer is stretching the mind to God, and through this, stretching the whole person. This is a kind of doing, the purpose of which is to reorganize the inner world of a person. Emilian compares prayer to a sling. In prayer, the human mind stretches and shoots straight towards God. And in this shot, the person becomes different. Profound changes are taking place in the attitude of the human "I" to the world, to himself, to God. It is the most powerful tool for reorienting a person. - What does reorientation mean? - In the normal state, we are busy with ourselves, our problems and experiences. When a person begins to pray, an object of prayer inevitably appears, which he himself is not. And this is already a lot. This takes a person out of the bounds of his huge "I", which has filled the entire universe. At this moment, a person subconsciously understands that God is not me, but someone who objectively exists outside of my consciousness. This is something that I cannot put in my pocket and say that it is my property. WITH real prayer towards God begins the unfolding of the human personality in its normal condition from the state of egoistic magnetism, when everything that a person does not inevitably returns to himself. This is why it is always difficult to pray. Even the saints forced themselves to prayer until the end of their days. For many it seems strange to call the Church to work in prayer, but this is inevitable. Just as an athlete must force himself to work during training, otherwise what an athlete he is, a Christian takes the trouble to spin himself into prayer, even when he doesn’t feel like it. And this is completely normal. If this is not the case, everything else will not be there either. - Should I force myself to prayer? - Of course. Prayer is what causes the natural revolt of the fallen human nature, because something claims to destroy the absolute dictatorship of human self-sufficiency. What are the prayers - Prayer is the communication of a person with God. It doesn't have to be verbal. It can be smart, it can be a prayer-state, it can be doing. If we talk about the experience of prayer that exists among monastics, about hesychasm and its ancestor, the Monk Gregory of Sinaite, who asceticised on Holy Mount Athos at the turn of the XII-XIII centuries, then this is a completely definite phenomenon. This prayer service is associated with the Jesus Prayer, which in monastic practice is performed constantly, according to the rosary. It is a very short formula - only 5 words. In Greek it sounds like this: "Kyrie Jesus Christ eleison me." The Russian version of the prayer is longer: "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." This prayer is done orally and very quickly. When a person pronounces it regularly, it is read on inhalation and exhalation and is associated with breathing. Gradually, this prayer turns into the category of mental prayer, when it sounds inside, no matter what the person is doing. This is a very special practice that necessarily requires communication with an experienced spiritual father. Imagine that in the space of your inner world there is a certain constant process that becomes dominant inner life... It can be compared to a window that a person tries to keep open. Prayer is a window from our self-sufficiency, from this stuffy room. If you keep the window open, the fresh air of Divine power flows in and there is something to breathe. - Are there other types of prayer? - There are, of course, many types of prayer. There is such a concept - a person's standing before God, when the mind is so carried away by God, so in love with the Divine, that everything else is somehow of little interest to him. And even when a person is engaged in completely different things, the main focus of his attention still remains in the depths of this anticipation. This is well understood by people who were deeply in love. The very fact that you love is already a powerful source of inspiration. And no matter what a person does, he still warms his inner world with this light. The same goes for unceasing prayer... The purpose of all prayer is precisely to warm the heart. Not getting ecstatic pleasure by changing consciousness, but the joy of living right and righteously. Fathers often have such a concept as reducing the mind in the heart. This is a special state when, with the constant recitation of a prayer, the human heart is involved as a repository of personality, a certain core of our life. When this happens, a person tunes in to the wave of communion with God, his condition allows deep and direct communication with God. - Is the Jesus Prayer a monastic experience that is inaccessible to an ordinary layman? - Nothing like this. I know many parishioners who practice the Jesus Prayer. Nothing prevents this. A man sits in an office, is engaged in work that does not require the utmost exertion of strength, and quietly silently recites the Jesus Prayer. SI Fudel in his wonderful book "At the Walls of the Church" describes a certain doorman who already worked in a hotel in Soviet times, stood at the door, carried suitcases, and at the same time had the gift of unceasing prayer. How to Pray Right - Everything is very individual here. One thing is obvious - there must be a regime. A person who expects that the time will come when he will be freed from everyday worries, and the blessed charisma of unceasing prayer will visit him - such a person will never pray. Therefore, there is a certain rule of morning and evening prayers, prayer related to worship. The most important thing a person should be accustomed to is to attend a weekly temple during Divine Liturgy... The most correct prayer- a prayer of thanksgiving, the building of the Church as a community of people around Christ. This is the hardest part. Many people are ready to pray at home, but going to church regularly is hard. All parishioners can be clearly divided into two categories: those who go to the temple weekly, and those who go to the temple when the soul is lying. These are two completely different categories of people in their understanding of faith. When a person comes to the temple, he believes the correctness of his internal state by the spirit by which the Church lives. He kind of lowers himself, like a cucumber, into the brine and crawls out of there as a lightly salted cucumber with a certain taste and smell. And so it can lie in the refrigerator for a long time and not even go bad, but it will not have this aroma, this taste. This is the first and most important thing. Second, I am a supporter to prayer rule each person had an individual, taking into account the circumstances of his life. It's one thing when a person doesn't work anywhere. It's another matter when a person is busy in production. The third is a mother with many children, who has seven in her shops. Fourth - a person of a creative profession who does what he wants and when he wants. These circumstances should be discussed with the confessor, who determines the scope of the prayer rule. The prayer rule is daily scales, which, if not played, then the fingers will atrophy, and you will not play anything in class - let alone a concert. - What are the rules? - Firstly, the prayer is performed in front of the holy image, in front of the icon. That's right, when this image is close to a person, it causes certain feelings. This is a kind of key to talking with God. It is bad when a person has to force himself to look at the image, because he is a stranger to him. The image should not be someone else's. Unlike Catholic mystical spiritual practice, Orthodoxy insists on the absence of any kind of fantasy during prayer. Prayer with closed eyes not welcome. The mind abhors emptiness. We fix our gaze on the image of the icon, and this is the space in front of which we pray. Thought should not walk. It is necessary to focus the consciousness in front of this image. The next rule is to focus utmost on the words of the prayer. The mind should get away from any memories, reflections. He should, as Schema-Archimandrite Emilian writes, reach out to God in prayer so that only the words of the prayer structure human soul towards God. In addition, it is desirable and correct to say the prayer out loud. When prayer is chanted out loud, it activates not only our speech receptors, but also our hearing. It is more difficult to distract yourself from such a prayer than when you do it to yourself. Smart prayer is done to oneself, but one can talk about it when a person already has a certain skill and he can be collected for a long time and not run away with his eyes. And one more requirement of prayer is the absence of artificial heating of emotions. Emotions are not an end in themselves here. No ecstasy. We are doing our work for God. I recall an episode from the life of one of the Valaam ascetics. When he really wanted to pray, he put down his rosary, walked into the yard, chopped wood, and engaged in various everyday concerns. And when he was ready to do anything but pray, then he took his rosary and prayed. He explained it this way: when I pray and receive spiritual consolation from it, you can very easily take this consolation for God and find yourself in a state of delusion - instead of being utterly open to the action of Divine grace, you simply slam shut. You are self-sufficient - that's all. This will be the very spiritual impasse that many fathers warned about. Why is the heating of any kind of sensuality in prayer categorically cut off? Why is the reading monotonous in the temple? Why even partesian singing * in the church sounds more modest than opera singing? Because in prayer you need to open yourself not to emotions, but to completely different experiences. When I get to the Greek service and they start singing there, I almost physically feel like they took me by the scruff of the neck, they kicked me, and now - I'm already flying. And you understand that you are flying not because you are so good and you have trained wings, but because this temple element takes you and carries you away. There is no sensuality. There is an existence - a deep experience of man's standing before God, and everything sensible is ours, it goes somewhere from the side. Benefits of Prayer — Prayer is an event of no apparent benefit. The result of the prayer, if there is, will not be soon, and at first it seems that it is not obvious. To call it all by its proper name, for many, prayer seems like a waste of time. The logic here is clear: does God Himself not know what I need, why bother God with requests? What will I tell him? Lord, come on, solve my problems? And here we come to a very important thing - the significance of our participation in spiritual life. By doing something, we are doing ourselves. Prayer is not just a kind of begging technique. Prayer is working together. When the Lord says “ask and it will be given to you,” He does not say this because it will not be given just like that. The Monk Isaac the Syrian has interesting words that the son of his father no longer asks for bread, but longs for more and better in his Father's house. The Gospel says: do not worry about your soul, what you eat, nor about your body, what to put on ... Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all this will be added to you (Matt 6: 25-33). This attitude shows that even when we ask God for something, we do not put ourselves in the position of supplicants to some harmful master. Everything is exactly the opposite. God wants us to learn how to pray, because in prayer we become co-workers, we get involved in the process of co-creation. We are given the right to participate at our discretion in the decision Divine destinies the world. We are given the right to be His consultants, advisers, anyone. - Everything is in God's hands, but if you ask, does something change? - The most striking example here is the story of the prophet Jonah in Nineveh. God sends Jonah to Nineveh to say that soon she will completely perish, for this is the judgment of God. The verdict has already been passed, that's it. Jonah announces this. But suddenly the Ninevites repent, change their lives, and nothing happens - God revokes the sentence. And Jonah looks like a deceiver: who is a prophet who prophesies and nothing happens? Here in one night a certain pumpkin grows over Jonah, and he escapes under her from the scorching sun of the desert. The next night, the pumpkin dries up, and he is again under the scorching sun. And it just finishes him! In complete misunderstanding, he cries out to God and asks for death. And then the Lord says to him: look, you felt sorry for this pumpkin, which you did not plant, did you water? But should I not feel sorry for these unfortunate Ninevites, among whom there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know how to distinguish right hand from the left? That is, God is not a formal law, where everything is predetermined and our participation does not change anything. Why is Christianity always categorically against any fate or fate? Because in the space of our life we ​​are responsible for where our life will go next. Another thing is that God is outside this space, outside this time. He knows what will happen, but He does not predetermine our choice. In our time, in our place, we are really free, and therefore responsible. - And prayer also turns out to be a variant of freedom of choice? - Yes. And as it shows great amount miracles, prayer has power. She works. - Can you give an example? - I have a lot of similar examples. Well, here's a fresh case. My friend Aleksey somehow calls and says: we are in trouble, my wife is pregnant with her second child, and during an ultrasound examination it turned out that the child has a certain defect in the spine. Doctors say that it is necessary to have an abortion, the child is guaranteed to be born disabled, and will not be able to walk or sit. And the term is already long, six or seven months. In the whole world there is one only clinic in Switzerland where intrauterine surgeries are performed, and there they are ready to risk operating it. This naturally requires a lot of money. And time is running out. There are only 2 weeks during which the operation must be performed. That is, my friend needs to find 3-4 million rubles within a week. This is unrealistic! He is an ordinary researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies. I advised him to contact the Tradition charitable foundation. And now, just imagine - in a week the amount was collected one and a half times more than was required. And, of course, everyone prayed. He didn't believe it was possible. But he and his wife did the right thing: do everything you can, and leave the rest in the hands of God. As a result, the operation was performed, the child was born completely healthy. I baptized him a week ago. - Is there a temptation here to enter into commodity-money relations with God? In the 1990s, Adventists appeared in my hometown, who rallied many under their banners with a simple thesis: pray, don't drink, don't smoke - and you will have a two-room apartment. They were so convincing! - And How? - Well, not everyone got an apartment. But the people asked all the same. - Yes, temptation. I have a personal aversion to this approach. There is a certain mechanism in this - if I do this and that, then God will inevitably do this and that. But this lacks the most important thing - love, the possibility of love. If God is such a law, following which you will inevitably get some result of the law itself, this is far from Christianity. In Christianity, the emphasis is on the fact that there must be a personal relationship between man and God. This relationship presupposes faith as an area of ​​endless risks, the ability to trust someone from which you may receive a response that is not what you expect. - But are you talking about miracles? So Adventists are right? - I think that this is a kind of deliberate lowering of the level of relations. Just imagine, you come to some very famous writer, a very wealthy person. You have the opportunity to chat with him. And here you have two paths. The first way is to tell him how poor, unhappy you are, and how much you could do if you had a two-room apartment. And the second option: you just communicate with him and try to get something that is incomparable with any apartments, because he is a great writer, deep man, you can enter into some kind of emotional resonance with him, and even your quality of life can change simply because this person went through a concentration camp, he knows how much a pound is dashing and he has such an experience that you do not read in any book. It seems to me that if communication with God is reduced to begging for some specific worldly good, it means turning to the wrong and wrong. God has not forbidden us to ask Him. But at the same time we must add: Thy will be done, because God is not an instrument of our own life, but a goal. The very communication with Him is our goal. If I am friends with a person who has great financial opportunities, I will never ask him. Why? Because by doing so I will show that I am interested in him only as a money bag. And this is not love, but enjoyment. - They say that a tooth hurts, you need to pray to such and such a saint. It makes sense? - There is, of course, a sense in this, but much less than is traditionally believed. Still, saints for us are not alternative deities, more accessible than the huge, inaccessible God, as it happens in paganism. No, the saints are rather companions, people close in time and circumstances, but in no way a substitute for God. It is easier for a person to address them than to pray to Christ. But this is wrong, because the whole life of the Church revolves around Christ. We have no alternative holiness other than God. And even when we turn to a saint, we still turn to God so that through this saint we can be helped. And here we come back to the topic of collaboration. The Church believes that God gives the saints a certain grace, the right to act as intercessors before Him in certain needs. Again, this is not an alternative, but a collaboration. - Than Christian Orthodox prayer different from other spiritual practices, meditation, for example? - By the fact that the focus christian prayer is God. Not our experiences, not the enlightenment of consciousness, but God. Transformation idea human being in the format of a prayer is primary. Of course, I am not an expert in the depths of Buddhism, but from my acquaintance with yoga techniques, I realized that it does not matter it comes about the concentration of a person around his personality. There is no such transition of personality into eternity. What is the task of prayer? So that Christ may triumph in man. In prayer, we enter into a deep resonance with the will of God. This is the joy that you are being led, that you agree with the One who leads, you yourself follow Him wherever He goes. Interviewed by Olga Andreeva

For those who want to play the ancient Celts

It should be remembered that it was a completely peaceful and serene evening for them on the eve of All Saints' Day. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, we will not find anything seditious in it. We, Orthodox Christians, also have such a holiday, it is celebrated on the first Sunday after the Day of the Holy Trinity.

Before the Celts became Christians, these days they had a festival of autumn, the end of the harvest and the beginning of the new year. Although the pagans are usually listed all sorts of abominations like witchcraft rituals and human sacrifice, Celtic Samhain was no different, although the pagan gods were honored on this day and, of course, sacrificed to them. When the Celts converted to Christianity, they simply continued to celebrate New Year, which now almost coincided with All Saints' Day and became so called - All Hallows' Eve - "All Saints' Eve", which in colloquial speech transformed into Halloween.

Vegetable and other traditions

For centuries, the Christian Celts retained folk traditions and the attributes of the holiday - the custom to display in a conspicuous place near the house a turnip or rutabaga with a human face carved on it, which, in the view of the ancients, was supposed to drive away evil spirits from the house where the harvest was located. Later, the rutabaga began to be replaced with a pumpkin - it was very convenient to carve faces on it. The dried pumpkins were used as lamps, with a candle inside, and this is how the custom of decorating a house with a pumpkin appeared. The holiday became firmly associated with pumpkin only in the 1850s.

In addition to the vegetable tradition, on Celtic New Year's Eve, just like on Christmas Eve, the poor and children would go from door to door and beg for sweets. On the day of All Saints, it was customary to commemorate the dead. Poor people knocked on houses and collected lists of those for whom to pray. For commemoration, they were given sweets or some other food.

Among other New Year traditions that have come down from the dense pagan times, there were fortune-telling: Scottish girls cut the peel from apples and threw them over their shoulders. It was believed that the fallen peel took the form of the first letter of the surname of the betrothed. The poet Vasily Zhukovsky writes about a similar tradition in our poem: “Once on the Epiphany evening, the girls were guessing. They threw a slipper behind the gate, taking it off their feet, and throwing it ... ”.

These are, perhaps, all the traditions of Halloween - until the twentieth century came with its general commercialization, secularization and denial of all that is holy. At the same time, an incomprehensible interest in evil spirits, everything otherworldly and occult, arose in Western society. The interest was immediately put on the commercial stream.

What's wrong with a terrible holiday?

It was in the twentieth century that the ancient, pagan Halloween was revived by Satanists, and not only revived, but gave it an already open character of worship of evil spirits. "Terrible holiday" began to gain popularity.

New attributes of the rethought Halloween have appeared - it was decided to meet it in costumes of witches and vampires, and decorate the house accordingly. Naturally, in such fanged outfits, children began to beg for sweets with the appropriate jokes: "Sweet or life." Collecting names for prayer in the process was no longer discussed.

The commercial scale helped popularize Halloween. After the involvement of representatives of the film industry and music producers, he became known far beyond Europe and the United States.

The history of Halloween confirms once again: the holiday is the meaning that is put into it. If someone wants to arrange a celebration in honor of devils and vampires - in a good way, or rather, not at all kind.

Well, can you just exercise?

How dangerous are the demonic attributes of a "secular" holiday for those who do not seek to put any serious meaning into them, - the priest comments.

Archpriest Nikolai Markovsky, rector of the Intercession Church in Zaitsevo, Gorlovka:

When we celebrate a holiday, we must present its history. When children are asked to dress up in such "harmless" costumes, first they need to explain what we are celebrating.

Halloween is a holiday of the ancient Celts. They divided the year into two parts - winter and summer. When the winter period came - October 31 - New Year was celebrated. The beginning of winter, darkness, death, as the ancient Celts believed. On this night, large bonfires were lit and the Celts worshiped the pagan god Samhain. They believed that on this night the doors open from the world of the dead to the world of the living and dark forces come to our world. To appease them, so that the dark forces were supportive of people living on earth, all kinds of sacrifices and treats were brought to them.

When orthodox child going to church, communion, living Christian life, dresses in the costumes of demons, witches, vampires, he identifies himself with an unclean spirit - that with which the Church is waging an implacable struggle. We dress our child in this unclean spirit, laugh, clap our hands and say, “Oh, how fun it is,” but is it fun? In my opinion, this is a great tragedy.

The Holy Fathers say that you can be either with God or against God, there is no “neutral way”. If we dress our child in this way or allow him to celebrate Halloween, is this child with God? In my opinion, this child is not with God, but with a completely different side.

Let me give you one phrase as an example. It was said by Anton LaVey, founder of the "church of Satan" and author of " satanic bible":" I am glad that Christian parents allowed their children to worship the devil at least one night a year. Welcome to Halloween. "

What harmless outfits, what harmless festivities can we talk about when there is direct worship of Satan, when those who celebrate this holiday directly laugh at Christians and Christian values? Today, Halloween exists in earnest, quite seriously as a celebration of demon worship.

The devil is called the father of lies. The fact that Halloween is a joke and a fun holiday is a hoax. At first glance - a meaningless entourage, a pumpkin with a candle, but this is a lie. This is how the devil works - by the method of lies. He deceives people: "Yes, get dressed, yes, have fun, nothing terrible will happen," and terrible things happen, because by such actions, in fact, we betray Christ, Christian faith... We betray what we believe in.

As former Satanist John Ramirez noted in his book Out of the Devil's Cauldron, “We don't think we are performing any demonic rituals or human sacrifice, but did you know that as soon as you dress up, you immediately belong to the enemy ? Because by doing so, you have transferred your legal rights and you have dedicated yourself and your children to celebrating the feast of the devil. You have just made a pact with the enemy and have already sacrificed your children spiritually by dressing them up in appropriate costumes. "

Archpriest Nikolai Markovsky:

Nevertheless, Orthodox Christian there is no need to somehow highlight this day - to arm against evil spirits carrying holy water in a bottle. If a person comes to church on Sundays, prays, confesses, partakes of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, lives a Christian life, this is sufficient protection against any impure forces. He does not need to be afraid of evil spirits, even if she herself is afraid of him. If you got up in the morning, read morning prayers why are you afraid?

Halloween at school: how should parents behave?

Orthodox parents should be aware of what Halloween is and explain to their children what it symbolizes so that the child does not treat it as some kind of game or a meaningless celebration. During the sermon, the rector of the temple should explain to the adult parishioners and children the history of this holiday and the attitude Orthodox Church to celebrate Halloween.

If such "celebrations" take place in kindergarten, school, college, an Orthodox child should distance himself from this, clearly and truthfully tell the teacher: "I am an Orthodox Christian, and I will not celebrate this satanic holiday." I do not think that any teacher will insist today that the child take part in this holiday.

I have three schoolchildren. My children know very well what Halloween is, we had conversations on this topic, and they do not hesitate to say at school if such events are taking place: "We will not take part in this." There is nothing shameful or shameful in this. This is a clear defense of their faith, their Christian views.

And what to do with a pumpkin?

We will offer several recipes. Hope you enjoy!

Pumpkin pie

pumpkin - 300 g
apples - 1 pc.
butter- 100 g
sugar - 150 g
chicken eggs - 2 pcs.
flour - 200 g
baking powder - 1 tsp.
sunflower oil - 1 tsp
ground cinnamon - 1 tsp
honey - 1 tsp

Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

Grate pumpkin and apples and mix in one container, add 50 g of sugar, cinnamon and honey. You can also add some soaked raisins and nutmeg... Mix everything and heat until the pumpkin gives juice and the sugar dissolves well.

Grind the preheated butter with the rest of the sugar, add the eggs and stir until smooth.

Combine two mixtures: pumpkin with apple and butter with eggs. Mix well.

Add flour. If the pumpkin has given a lot of juice, you need more flour. If there is little juice, on the contrary, less. Mix flour with baking powder. Add in small portions, stirring well each time. The dough should be very thick.

Pour the dough into a greased pan and bake in the oven at 180 ° C. Average baking time is 40 - 45 minutes. Look for the dough, check the readiness with a match. If the pumpkin yields too much juice, the pie will take longer to cook.

Pumpkin cookies

Pumpkin - 250 g
Egg - 1 pc.
Butter (room temperature) - 200 g
Sugar - 200 g
Flour - from 300 g (up to 3-4 glasses)
Cinnamon - 1 tsp
Nutmeg - 0.5 tsp (optional)
Soda - 0.5 tsp.
Salt - 1 pinch

1. Cut the pumpkin into pieces and boil in slightly salted water until soft (20 minutes). Then drain and mash the pumpkin.
2. Beat softened butter with sugar, add egg, spices.
3. Add pumpkin, stir.
4. Adding sifted flour and soda (if you wish, you can extinguish the soda with lemon juice or vinegar), knead a soft dough so that you can make cookies from it.
5. Roll out the dough into a layer, cut out cookies of any shape (I got 13 pieces). Put it on a baking sheet (you can cover the baking sheet with parchment).
6. Preheat the oven to 190-200 degrees, place the pumpkin cookies in the preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown.

Pumpkin cookies are very soft and delicious.

Candied pumpkin

Peeled pumpkin - 1 kg
Sugar - 1 kg
Water - 200 ml

Take 1 kg of sugar and a glass of water - from which we will cook syrup.
We take a delicious, sweet pumpkin. Chopped pumpkin should be 1 kg.
V a large pot put sugar and pour out a glass of water. We put sugar syrup to cook. When the syrup boils, put it on a small fire and cook until thickened.
Cut the pumpkin into small cubes.
When the syrup thickens, put the pumpkin pieces in it and stir.
Boil the pumpkin in syrup for 10 minutes.
After the pumpkin has boiled, we soak it in syrup for a day.
Then you need to strain the syrup through a colander. (In the remaining syrup, you can boil, for example, apples. You get apple-pumpkin jam.)
Put the pieces of candied pumpkin on parchment paper - they should dry for about 2 days.
After two days, the candied pumpkin fruits have dried up and look like candy.
Sprinkle candied fruits with icing sugar.
You can store them in a glass jar.
Enjoy your tea!

Halloween appeared among the Celtic tribes of England, Ireland and northern France (Gaul) in the pre-Christian era. Being pagans, the Celts believed in the birth of life from death. The beginning of the "new" year, new life in general, they celebrated in late autumn, on the night of October 31st to November 1st, when the time of cold, darkness and death began. On this night they glorified pagan god Samhain, worshiped by them as the Lord of Death. On the eve of the "New Year's celebration", druids (Celtic priests) extinguished hearths, fires, bonfires, lamps. In the evening next day they lit a huge bonfire, on which sacrifices were made to the prince of darkness and death. The Druids believed that if Samhain remained satisfied with the sacrificial rewards of his faithful, he would allow the souls of the dead to visit their homes on that day. This is where the custom of roaming on Halloween night, discharged in costumes of ghosts, witches and all kinds of other spirits, symbolizing communication with underworld and evil spirits.

An important part of the pagan cult is also the "fun" Trick-or-Treat, which is a ritualized act of offering dark forces in the service of Samhain. It was believed that the souls of the dead, who reigned in the world of darkness, cold and death, on the day of their visit to the world of the living, experience an insatiable hunger. Therefore, the Kelian pagans prepared treats for the spirits wandering in the darkness of the night, for they believed that if they were not propitiated by offerings, then the anger and curses of Samhain would fall on people.

This is the true meaning of this pagan holiday. It is quite obvious that it is impossible for an Orthodox Christian to take part in such "celebrations," for this is a direct expression of idolatry, betrayal of our Lord our God and our Holy Church. Taking part in the ritual of imitation of the dead, wandering in the darkness of the night and begging or distributing food, we show a desire to enter into communion with the dead, whose ruler is no longer Samhain, but Satan himself, the Evil One, who rebelled against the Lord God. By distributing treats, we do not just give sweets to innocent children, but we present a gift in memory and honor of Samhain, and therefore of Satan.

There are other customs related to Halloween that we should move away from. For example, all kinds of fortune-telling, prophecies, witchcraft and divination, or the custom to exhibit a pumpkin with a terrible face carved on it and a candle lit inside, called "Jack O'Lantern" (Jack Lampadny). In pumpkins (and in ancient times other vegetables were also used) they brought a "new" fire from a sacred fire, and the face on the pumpkin served as an image of the dead. Such a "sacred lamp" that burned all night is a demonic perversion of the holy lamp, lit in front of the image of the Savior and His saints. Even decorating a house with a similar pumpkin with a "merry" face is already participation in the pagan festival of death.

The Holy Fathers of the early Christian Church, which at that time was strictly Orthodox, tried to resist pagan tradition Celts and established on the same day the Christian holiday of All Saints (in Eastern Church All Saints are remembered on the first Sunday of Pentecost). From the holiday of All Saints comes the word Halloween - i.e. All Hallows ’Even, which means“ All Saints Eve ”, which eventually became“ Hallow E’En. ” Unfortunately, through ignorance or ignorance of people, a pagan festival celebrated on the same day Christian holiday All Saints (in the West) were mistakenly called Halloween.

The anti-Christian people responded to the efforts of the Church to overcome the pagan holiday with an even greater manifestation of jealousy that evening. Many rituals were performed during desecration and mockery of Christian divine services, they dressed up as skeletons in a mockery of the veneration of the relics of saints by the Church, stolen crosses and even the Holy Gifts were used for blasphemous actions. The custom of begging turned into a systematic persecution of Christians who, due to their convictions, could not take part in the holiday dedicated to the prince of darkness and death.

Commitment to Western society pagan holiday indicates that attempts Western church to replace the pagan celebration with a Christian holiday and concepts had no success. But why is a pagan cult clearly contradicting Orthodox faith so firmly rooted among many Christians? The reasons for all this are rooted primarily in the spiritual apathy and lethargy of Christians, who abundantly feed atheism, atheism and apostasy. Society, convincing us that Halloween and similar holidays, despite their clear pagan origins and idolatrous essence, are harmless, innocent and have no of great importance, thereby undermines our spiritual foundations, contributes to the spread of lack of faith and atheism.

The "holiday" of Halloween undermines the very foundations of the Holy Church, founded on the blood of martyrs who refused to honor or serve idols in any way. The Holy Church must take a strict position of resistance to such phenomena, since Christ the Savior told us that the Lord God is our judge in all our actions and convictions and that our deeds can be either "FOR GOD" or "AGAINST GOD". There is no middle "neutral" path.

Today we are witnessing the birth of satanic cults. On the night of November 1, satanic "services" are performed, there is information about the abduction and murder of small children by the servants of Satan. Now Satanists have already begun the ritual murder of Orthodox priests, as happened many times in the state of California ... Everywhere Satan is stretching nets in order to catch as many innocent people as possible. Newspaper shops are full of printed material on spiritualism, supernatural phenomena, seances, prophecies, and all kinds of demon-inspired activities. All these works serve Satan, for they do not come from the Holy Spirit, but from the spirit of this deplorable world.