The festival of Halloween, which is celebrated widely and with much pomp and show in Western countries, is seen as a satanic practice by the priests in Russia, who believe that such celebrations are likely to attract evil spirits and ghouls.
Every autumn, the country is warned by the Orthodox church not to adopt the practices of dressing up like zombies, making ghost lanterns and celebrating Halloween.
However, this year, the Russians have found a way to take part in the fun and avoid any religious censure, that is by hosting the “Pumpkin Feast of the Saviour”.
The celebration, which will be similar to Halloween and mark the end of October, will be an extension of the annual Orthodox festival which is held for three days and during which the church blesses the food items, which are then consumed by the faithful. The food items include – the Apple, Nut and Honey Feasts of the Saviour.
The feast has been presented to the people of Russia either as an overlooked holiday which had existed for long but was not celebrated, or a freshly minted one which people can freely enjoy without getting worried that they will succumb to the occult.
Priests slam the Pumpkin festival idea, calls it ‘idiocy’
So far, the festival has had only limited take-up, however, the number of participants can increase amid rhetoric about “the Anglo-Saxons” in Russian media and the country’s decadent culture.
In the city of Izhevsk, a school planned a Pumpkin Feast in which students were free to dress up in red, black or orange costumes, “indulge their fantasies”, and use pumpkins to make food. However, the school faced criticism for the event and was forced to renege on its plans.
The Moscow Metropolitanate’s spokesperson Pavel Galushko, while speaking to the RTVI television channel, said the Pumpkin Feast is an imitation of Halloween which involved “contact with a dark force”.
“Makary”, who is a popular monk and writes about church matters in the blogs, called the initiative “idiocy”. “There is no Pumpkin Feast of the Saviour [in Russian Orthodoxy]. It is a stab in the heart to the religious believer,” he added.
Source : Wion
