Halloween face paint found to contain high levels of toxic heavy metals

“(NaturalNews) Ghouls and goblins may be spooky, but what should really give you the creeps this Halloween is the decorative makeup you might be putting on your face. New evidence from the nonprofit Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan shows many novelty face paints used for Halloween are tainted with toxic heavy metals like cadmium and lead.

Your Halloween Costume May be Hazardous to Your HealthResearchers at the Ecology Center tested 31 types of novelty makeup you can find on the shelves of big name outlets and party stores all over the country. Every single product contained traces of some kind of metal, but that is just the beginning. More than half of the products contained cadmium, a toxic heavy metal linked to cancer, birth defects and brain damage. Other toxic metals like mercury and lead were also detected.

Even more disturbing is the popularity of these products with children. Kids dressing up as comical clowns and blood-sucking vampires routinely have their faces painted to match, but dress-up can turn ugly if toxic metals are involved. Children are especially at risk because their growing bodies and developing brains are more vulnerable to toxins like heavy metals. The health campaign director of the Ecology Center says parents should err on the side of caution until we know more about what levels of these metals are safe or unsafe for our children.

Representatives of some of the manufacturers insist their products have been tested to ensure legal levels of heavy metals, but health advocates say legal levels for topical products may be far too high. Not enough testing has been done to determine how much of these products are absorbed through the skin. Our skin is highly permeable, and putting these toxic metals on our skin may be no more safe than putting them straight into our mouths.

This Halloween the wise choice would be to avoid commercial makeup by either making your own at home or simply going without. When it comes to your health and that of your children, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Sources for this article include:
http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parent…
http://www.annarbor.com/news/hallow…
http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/loca…

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034003_face_paint_heavy_metals.html#ixzz1cNiMTdEy”

Halloween: Pagan or Christian

The following article is from the Jeremiah Project:

“History traces Halloween back to the ancient religion of the Celtics in Ireland. The Celtic people were very conscious of the spiritual world and had their own ideas of how they could gain access to it – such as by helping their over 300 gods to defeat their enemies in battle, or by imitating the gods in showing cleverness and cunning.

Their two main feasts were Beltane at the beginning of summer (May 1), and Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween) at the end of summer (Nov. 1). They believed Samhain was a time when the division between the two worlds became very thin, when hostile supernatural forces were active and ghosts and spirits were free to wander as they wished.

“During this interval the normal order of the universe is suspended, the barriers between the natural and the supernatural are temporarily removed, the sidh lies open and all divine beings and the spirits of the dead move freely among men and interfere sometimes violently, in their affairs”
(Celtic Mythology, p. 127).

The Celtic priests who carried out the rituals in the open air were called Druids, members of pagan orders in Britain, Ireland and Gaul, who generally performed their rituals by offering sacrifices, usually of crops and animals, but sometimes of humans, in order to placate the gods; ensuring that the sun would return after the winter; and frightening away evil spirits.

To the Celtics, the bonfire represented the sun and was used to aid the Druid in his fight with dark powers. The term bonfire comes from the words “bone fire,” literally meaning the bones of sacrificed animals, sometimes human, were piled in a field with timber and set ablaze. All fires except those of the Druids were extinguished on Samhain and householders were levied a fee to relight their holy fire which burned at their altars. During the Festival of Samhain, fires would be lit which would burn all through the winter and sacrifices would be offered to the gods on the fires. This practice of burning humans was stopped around 1600, and an effigy was sometimes burned instead.

October 31, Halloween, is one of the more popular holidays for children. What child wouldn’t want to dress up as a monster or fairy and score a bag of candy in the process?When Christianity spread to parts of Europe, instead of trying to abolish these pagan customs, people tried to introduce ideas which reflected a more Christian world-view. Halloween has since become a confusing mixture of traditions and practices from pagan cultures and Christian tradition.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. During their rule of the Celtic lands, Roman festivals were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The Romans observed the holiday of Feralia, intended to give rest and peace to the departed. Participants made sacrifices in honor of the dead, offered up prayers for them, and made oblations to them. Another festival was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of “bobbing” for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

As the influence of Christianity spread into Celtic lands, in the 7th century, Pope Boniface IV introduced All Saints’ Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs, to replace the pagan festival of the dead. It was observed on May 13. In 834, Gregory III moved All Saint’s Day from May 13 to Nov. 1 and for Christians, this became an opportunity for remembering before God all the saints who had died and all the dead in the Christian community. Oct. 31 thus became All Hallows’ Eve (‘hallow’ means ‘saint’).

Sadly, though, many of the customs survived and were blended in with Christianity. Numerous folk customs connected with the pagan observances for the dead have survived to the present.

In 1517, a monk named Martin Luther honored the faithful saints of the past by choosing All Saints Day (November 1) as the day to publicly charge the Church heirarchy with abandoning biblical faith. This became known as “Reformation Day,” a fitting celebration of the restoration the same biblical faith held by the saints throughout church history.”

(Source: http://newgenevaacademy.wordpress.com/)
(Read more here: http://www.jeremiahproject.com/culture/halloween.html)