My favorite Buddhist holiday
Buddha's birthday is celebrated on a holiday known as Vesak and is on the first full moon in may. (June in leap years) the official name for this holiday is "Vesākha." The date varies from year to year on which this holiday falls, but it is normally in the 5th or 6th lunar month according to wikipedia.com. The decision to agree to celebrate Vesākha as Buddha’s birthday was formalized at the first Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists held in Sri Lanka in 1950, but this festival held every year in Buddhist communities is a centuries-old tradition.
Celebrating Vesākha also means making efforts to bring happiness and help to the unfortunate like the old people, the crippled, and the sick. To this day, Buddhists give out gifts of cash to various charitable homes throughout the country. Vesākha is a time for joy and happiness, expressed not by buying worldly things for yourself or someone you know but by helping and donating to others in need. Also concentrating on useful activities like cooperating and lighting temples, painting and creating scenes from Buddha's life for the public's view. Devout Buddhists also work together to provide food, drinks and vegetarian food to followers who visit the temple to pay their respect to the Enlightened One, otherwise known as Buddha.
I tried looking up Halloween but very few religions actually celebrate this holiday. It is forbidden by Islamic culture and religion from what i have found, most Christians see the holiday as secular and celebrate it because of the fun and good times their kids and they have. Celtic Pagans see it as a holy day while some wiccans see halloween as offensive and stereotypical. Jehova's Witnesses do not celebrate it because they believe that anything that came from a pagen holiday should not be celebrated by "true" Christians.
In my opinion haloween is just like alot of holidays celebrated in the U.S.A. what i mean is it is just another day of the year that our government uses to make money. Some small shops like Treasured Vessels survive because of holidays, many people come in for christmas decorations and haloween ones as well, so the extra income is a good thing in many cases. Where would flower shops be without valentines day? Our America realy needs holidays to survive but that does not in any way make them holy while a few people celebrate our big holidays because of religous reasons many only do so because they feel they have to, we are surrounded by decorations and gifts and people running around crazy just to find the perfect gift. If you celebrate a holiday because you feel you have to, or give a gift because of the time of year not because you want to do something for that person, than why bother? That person you forgot always loves you just as much as they would have if you got them something shiney, just because you showed up.
