Recently, in every 31th October, many
people in the big cities in Indonesia such as Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya
celebrate Halloween. Some malls, hotels, and schools commemorate it with making
costume party, watching horror movies, playing scary games and so on. As stated
in Wikipedia, Halloween is acculturation between the harvest festival in west
Europe and the dead festival from pagan tradition, especially sambain celfic
people from Ireland. In Ireland, people leave before the night to gather food
for sambain’s party and sometimes they wear costume when do it. Then, Christian
adopts some pagan’s heritage with keep convincing that in the night, dead
people are walking among them and witches fly around them. Unlike in America,
in Indonesia people commemorates in different way. They just wear costume and
having fun with it. Indonesia should not commemorate Halloween because it is
not suitable with Indonesian culture it just waste time and money, Halloween is
the pagan’s celebration.
Halloween’s celebration is not
suitable with Indonesian culture because it comes from west culture and
Indonesia applies it just for show off and having fun. In addition to, there
are many Indonesian cultures that need to be paid attention and some of
cultures may be endangered if there is no one cares about it for example
megengan, grebek maulud, selapan and so on. Besides Halloween, Indonesian
cultures and traditions are more important to be concerned.
Another reason why Indonesia should
not celebrate Halloween is Halloween’s celebration just waste time and money.
First, setting the monster costume and spooky make up needs much cost and
spends much time. For instance the costume, there are only very few stores
selling costume apparels even there is no store selling certain costumes like
Nyi Blorong costume, Wewe gombel, Jenglot, etc. Also make up, usually it takes
long time to make scary finery and needs much money to make it like making
peeled skin, clawed wound, and burned face effects. However, the purpose of
doing those things is just having fun with others and that means
meaningless.
Moreover, Halloween is the Pagan’s
celebration. Pagans are group of people who like praise thing like statue and
they do not believe in God. According to history, Pagans are heathens and their
existence are despised and hated by the big religions like Islam, Christian,
and Jews. Therefore, celebrating Halloween means continue Pagan’s tradition
which is forbidden by religion.
However, there are many people who
still celebrate Halloween in Indonesia even though they already have known that
Halloween is not from Indonesia. They also have known that Halloween just waste
time and money. But, they do not know what origin of Halloween is. They celebrate
Halloween just for having fun with others. Indonesia should not celebrates
Halloween in view of the purpose and origin.
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