An evangelical Bogota councilman released a video explaining the “satanic” origins of Halloween in an ongoing quest to ban the increasingly popular celebration.
Marco Fidel Ramirez, the self-proclaimed “councilman of the family” in Colombia’s capital has been campaigning to ban Halloween for over a year, claiming the celebration inducts children into the world of “satanism and witchcraft.”
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“It is a cult of death, the devil, witchcraft, ghosts, and fortune-tellers, that celebrates inducting children into witchcraft and satanism,” said Ramirez last year when he was also campaigning, but without success.
To convince Colombians of the satanic nature of the pre-Christian festival, the politician released an educational video, explaining the origins of Halloween.
According to the video, Halloween originates from Britain and was initially a festival for druids, local elders in ancient Celtic history, who the video claims were followers of a “Lord of Darkness.”
What historians believe originated as a festival to commemorate the end of the harvesting season, Ramirez’ video claimed that the originally pagan rituals involved human sacrifices to an evil supernatural deity who later became known as Satan.
According to the video, the English “trick or treat” translates to Spanish as “give me something or I will hurt you.”
Ramirez had previously claimed he met Jesus Christ.
Historians have yet to find consensus over the origins of Halloween. A popular theory is that the festivity stems from the Celtic Samhain holiday to celebrate the end of the harvesting season, while other historians have suggested it could also come from Roman rituals that merged with native Celtic rituals after Christian missionaries converted the Britain and Ireland to Christianity.
