Diwali

[SaxonPagan]

Diwali

Diwali, Deepawali or Dipavali is the Hindu festival of lights, which is celebrated every autumn in the northern hemisphere (spring in southern hemisphere). One of the most popular festivals of Hinduism, Diwali or Deepavali symbolises the spiritual "victory of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance". During the celebration, temples, homes, shops and office buildings are brightly illuminated. The preparations, and rituals, for the festival typically last five days, with the climax occurring on the third day coinciding with the darkest night of the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika. In the Gregorian calendar, the festival generally falls between mid-October and mid-November.

In the lead-up to Diwali, celebrants will prepare by cleaning, renovating, and decorating their homes and workplaces. During the climax, revellers adorn themselves in their finest clothes, illuminate the interior and exterior of their homes with diyas (oil lamps or candles), offer puja (worship) to Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and wealth, light fireworks, and partake in family feasts, where mithai (sweets) and gifts are shared. Diwali is also a major cultural event for the Hindu and Jain diaspora from the Indian subcontinent.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali

I am informed by friends and relatives that Leicester, a Hindu town in the East Midlands, is like a battle zone right now with rockets going into the air at a rate of 3.000 per minute. No expense is spared by Leicester City Council to make this a far bigger event than Christmas in order to please their clientele voters.

[Alice]

This is celebrated where I live, too, but (thankfully) on a much smaller scale and many, if not most, of the local Nepalese restaurants close during this time. I imagine being in Leicester or Coventry right now is akin to experiencing the Siege of Beirut, eek.

[Wolgadeutscher]

I am informed by friends and relatives that Leicester, a Hindu town in the East Midlands, is like a battle zone right now with rockets going into the air at a rate of 3.000 per minute. No expense is spared by Leicester City Council to make this a far bigger event than Christmas in order to please their clientele voters.

And your problem with that is...? Since you are one of those individuals who celebrate and encourage the demise of Christianity in Europe and Germanic countries, you shouldn't be surprised when the result is the promotion of pagan religions.

[jonaby]

If Hinduism was still a White religion, it would be my religion. Way better than Christianity, by far.
[Besides that, I'd probably be a Orthodox Jew, except Jews are ugly and trying to genocide Western Civilization, so that can't work, but Jewish Mysticism and Zionist literature really speaks to me.]

[John Smithwick]

If Hinduism was still a White religion, it would be my religion. Way better than Christianity, by far.
[Besides that, I'd probably be a Orthodox Jew, except Jews are ugly and trying to genocide Western Civilization, so that can't work, but Jewish Mysticism and Zionist literature really speaks to me.]

I haven't read much of Jewish mysticism and zionist literature, but I certainly like how they have a religion revolving around themselves and their own country and am impressed with how they dominate our societies. We have next to nothing by comparison. I'm a member of the asatru folk assembly but it's pretty small and the old folklore only appeals to me so much.

https://www.chabad.org/library/artic...to-Judaism.htm

Should I become Jewish?

Jewishness is…

To be Jewish means to belong to an ancient tribe, either by birth or by adoption (a.k.a. conversion). It's a strange and unique tribe, because it is the only one to have survived into modernity while retaining most of the characteristics of a Bronze Age tribe.

Anthropologist Jared Diamond describes in his book, "Guns, Germs and Steel," how a New Guinea tribesman, when visiting a nearby village of the same tribe, will immediately start the conversation with an investigation of, "So, who are you related to? Do you know so-and-so?" to establish tribal relations.

Well, that's exactly what Jewish people do today when they meet one another all over the world. Because, whether living in Manhattan or Joburg, Tel Aviv or Vladivostok, we are still all one tribe.

And for good reason: To preserve the teachings of an ageless, G‑d-given Torah for the world, the Jewish People themselves need to be ageless, remaining outside of time, as it were, even while traveling within it.

Tribes have rituals. So do Jews. Many Jewish tribal rituals were divinely ordained by the Torah as it was given to us in Sinai. Others are based upon those rituals, embellishing or enhancing them. But they are tribal rituals nonetheless, in that they are specific to the Jewish tribe.

Males of the tribe wear particular items of clothing, such as tzitzit and kippot. Women keep a certain mode of modest dress and married women cover their hair. Men also wrap leather boxes containing parchment scrolls on the heads and arms every morning, while robed in woolen sheets with more of those tzitzit tassels. In our services, we chant ancient Hebrew and read from an ancient scroll.

We have holidays that commemorate our tribal memories and establish our identity as a whole. Certain foods are taboo and other food is supervised and declared fit-for-the-tribe.

Nope, you can't get much more ancient-tribal than any of that. It seems G‑d wanted us to remain tribal and distinct forever.

https://reformjudaism.org/why-join-reform-congregation

Perhaps you’ve been thinking about joining a synagogue. Maybe you’ve just been waiting for the right time to actually do it:

• when you are ready to find a community…

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/i...5092020AAgRcjE

And tell me more about the barmitzfa.

I'm very envious of them and had I been born Jewish I'd probably be a multimillionaire.

Wish I was born in an alternative universe where what I advocate in my signature came about long ago.

[Uwe Jens Lornsen]

Diwali is being celebrated in major cities in the UK .

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style...ali-celebrated

Main celebration according to express.co.uk is on
Trafalgar Square in London :

Diwali is a Hindu festival symbolising the victory of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance. The event is also known as the Festival of Lights and is one of the most popular festivals in Hinduism. Diwali takes place every autumn in Ashwin, the seventh month of the Hindu lunisolar calendar.
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That means people who observe Diwali will begin celebrating on Friday, October 25 and end on Tuesday, October 29.
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The third day of the festival - the main Diwali night - takes place on the darkest night of the lunar month, which is when there is a new moon.
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London’s main Diwali celebration is in Trafalgar Square, this year on November 3.

More than 30,000 people are expected to attend the event.

[Coillearnach]

The timing of these festivals seems quite bizarre to me because India doesn't, for the most part, share our seasonal progression (they have multiple crop seasons, there is no winter drop-off). Maybe the monsoon season seems dark to them like our actual winter does to us? Diwali seems more like a spring festival to me, it's associated with things we do in the spring like "spring cleaning"...well, except for the fireworks. Holi is their official "winter is over" spring festival, that ends up like something we'd do in the middle of July (squirt guns, dancing, drinking, vibrant colors).

Needless to say, I resent it being celebrated in the UK for many reasons and wouldn't want to see it here either, they're too busy trying to ram Dia De Los Muertos down our throats here though.