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Halloween equivalents in different cultures

Valontuoja

New member
Joined
Sep 23, 2017
Messages
188
Location
Greater Finland
I thought about making a topic in order to learn what kind of different traditional festivals used to exist in different cultures. I thought it could be interesting. It could be interesting to hear how similar or how much this traditional satanic festival varies in different locations.

For starters I'm going to write about Finnish harvest festival Kekri which is quite similar to Halloween. Name kekri comes from proto-finno-ugric kekraj , which means wheel or cycle - it has a possible relation to the word chakra.

Kekri was an ancient harvest festival which originally used to be end of the year for farmers. It was the greatest festival of the year. Later it was replaced by All Saints Day and parts of Kekri were integrated into different holidays such as Yule. Church worked hard to stop people from celebrating this pagan holiday. Unlike Halloween Kekri didn't have a certain day, the day when it was celebrated varied during Autumn depending on when people had done all their farming work. First known mention of Kekri comes from 1500s priest Mikael Agricola who thought Kekri was name of a god ruling over cattle's fertility. He was quite wrong in thinking of Kekri as a god but the celebration has a relation to fertility. One purpose of Kekri was to make sure that the next year had a good harvest and Kekri was also considered a good time to get married.

Men used to dress as kekripukki ("kekri goat") which is an ancient symbol of fertility in the satanic civilizations. Women would dress as kekritär (-tär/-tar is an suffix which makes things feminine, kekritär = female kekri) into all white clothes covering themselves completely from head to toes. It was also possible for men to dress as women and vice versa similar to other carnivals and festivals of Europe. Kekripukki characters were trick or treaters of Finland similar to those of Irish tradition. Kekripukkis came and begged for food if someone didn't feed them they would threaten to destroy the stove of the house. (Goats are quite common in Finnish celebrations, Santa Claus is for example known as Joulupukki which means "Yule goat".)

Kekri was also a day of the dead as people thought that ancestors would visit their descendants and look at how the lands they once used to own are looking today. In order to honor the ancestors people would make food and warm up a sauna for them. Kekri has unfortunately ceased as a celebration since other celebrations have taken its place but it is enjoying a revival movement as people get more interested in their history and past.

Main sources
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/in_remembrance_of_the_departed/5664923
http://www.kekri.fi/kylalle/kylalle-kekritietoa (in Finnish)
 

Al Jilwah: Chapter IV

"It is my desire that all my followers unite in a bond of unity, lest those who are without prevail against them." - Satan

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