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From: dk@browngr.UUCP (David Kantrowitz)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Halloween
Message-ID: <1513@browngr.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Oct-84 18:00:32 EST
Article-I.D.: browngr.1513
Posted: Wed Oct 31 18:00:32 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Nov-84 05:20:37 EST
Lines: 22


Although Halloween may have no religious significance attached to it,
there is an additional Hallachic principle which celebrating the holiday
violates.  This is the prohibition against doing Chukash HaGoy - following
the customs and practices of the nonJewish nations around you.
This principle is the reason why some families I know do not celebrate
Thanksgiving, or any other secular American holidays.

A good reason for living by this principle is easy to explain: By avoiding
the special practices of the secular world, you avoid socializing with them
too intimately.  If one were to go trick-or-treating, where would you go?
Not to your Jewish friends, unless they were also celebrating (which is
unlikely).  Most of the people you meet will not be Jewish, and consequently,
any long term social relationships that result will not be Jewish, and the
more of these you make, the more forces start pulling you away from Judaism
and into assimilation.

The Jewish people have their own special times to celebrate, such as Hanukkah
and Purim.  The more nonJewish things you do, the less Jewish you become in
all aspects of your life.  This is not a paranoid fear of anything foreign;
it is something which happens all the time, whether or not the victims are
aware of it.  Assimilation starts way before the level of intermarriage.