Posted on 10/30/2024 10:14:30 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
The medieval Catholic Church created the feast of All Saints Nov. 1 to honor the blessed people who could not be included in the church’s formal list of saints. In England, the word “hallow” was used to mean the sacred, and thus there the day was All Hallows’ Day.
But also of great importance was the day before it, Oct. 31, which was a traditional pagan harvest feast day. Trying to counter pagan beliefs, the English Catholic Church called this day All Hallows’ Eve, which then became Halloween.
The new Christian day took over the pagan harvest festival, and the saints replaced — but not always — the pagan fertility gods.
Furthermore, the saints substituted for the gods in warding off all the terrors — sprites, trolls, goblins — that roamed the world on All Hallows’ Eve. This was a popular day for medieval Christians.
But as Halloween moved into the modern era, the feast and the church had to deal with the earthquakes of the Protestant Reformation and then English attempts to stamp out the feast of All Hallows’ Eve.
Protestants insisted that they would be guided only by what was in the Bible. They claimed that the cult of the saints was not there. All Saints’ Day and thus Halloween disappeared in many Protestant locales.
Yet people missed the traditional day, so the English created a substitute festival. Nov. 5, 1605, British authorities arrested and later executed several English Catholics accused of trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
One was named Guy Fawkes, thus generating a raucous festival known in England and thus in the British American colonies as Guy Fawkes Day, a substitute for the “Catholic” Halloween.
This new day was popular in the Colonies, but during the Revolution, George Washington feared that the celebration’s blatant anti-Catholicism would offend the rebels’ French Catholic allies.
After the Revolution, Guy Fawkes Day declined, while Halloween would triumph in the United States, which officially separated church and state. Many immigrants had been persecuted in Europe, and so they loved the freedom to celebrate their own religious holidays.
Halloween was observed by the few Scottish immigrants but especially by the millions of Irish (most of them Catholic) who came to the U.S. They kept their traditions but also changed some, for example, carving scary faces in pumpkins rather than turnips as back in the old country, thus creating jack-o’-lanterns.
Some American Protestants, especially farmers, also had kept some of the old traditions associated with the harvest.
The rise of Halloween helped meet America’s need for holidays since the Colonial ones (e.g., feast of St. George, the patron of England) did not survive the Revolution.
Unfortunately, another tradition, anti-Catholicism, also crossed the ocean, and Catholic traditions were not always welcome. But as the immigrants became Americanized, their traditions became accepted.
For example, many conservative Protestants refused to celebrate Halloween, but as Irish, Polish, Slavic, Italian and Germanic Catholics did so, more and more of their fellow citizens accepted it. Today, only fundamentalists oppose the day on the grounds that its focus on witches and ghosts opens innocent children to demonic influences.
The contemporary church has no official position on the celebration of Halloween since its religious character is largely gone. Now people just smile at children dressed as demons and monsters. Rectory doors have been known to be open for trick-or-treaters, and Catholic schools put up Halloween decorations.
Church leaders have, however, lamented the holiday’s dominant and relentless commercialization that, as always, takes a toll on impoverished children whose parents cannot afford costumes or bags of candy to give away. The clergy stress helping poor children on this day.
Finally, clergy will remind believers that, no matter how secular it has become, Oct. 31 is the eve of a holy day, and some recognition of that is not out of place.
Happy Halloween.
Remember Remember the fifth of November…
Interesting. Yes, in Catholic school, we were taught that Halloween (All Hallows Eve) was the Eve of All Saints’ Day. We celebrated Halloween on Oct. 31, and then we went to Mass for All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1.
Do you remember
The 21st night of September?
Love was changin’ the minds of pretenders
While chasin’ the clouds away
Another aspect that the Catholic church adopted from other beliefs/peoples to make things more palatable to the masses they wished to control.
English attempts to stamp out the feast of All Hallows’ EveKey word, "stamped." Anyone befuddled by modern Britain's totalitarian nature should take a look at the 16/17th centuries "stamping out" of the people's religious heritage and practices, called "the stripping of the altars."
1 Corinthians 15
51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
The Mysterious Origin of Halloween - Randall Carlson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucn175R8WgY
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