Holiday Hysteria (a Christian defense of Halloween)

Catholic Exchange ^ | October 31, 2008 | Rod Bennett

[AnAmericanMother]

1st Corinthians 3:15.

[Jaded]

Halloween: The Real Story
By Father Augustine Thompson, O.P.

http://www.4marks.com/articles/details.html?article_id=2379

We’ve all heard the allegations. Halloween is a pagan rite dating back to some pre-Christian festival among the Celtic Druids that escaped Church suppression. Even today modern pagans and witches continue to celebrate this ancient festival. If you let your kids go trick-or-treating, they will be worshiping the devil and pagan gods.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The origins of Halloween are, in fact, very Christian and rather American. Halloween falls on October 31 because of a pope, and its observances are the result of medieval Catholic piety.

It’s true that the ancient Celts of Ireland and Britain celebrated a minor festival on Oct. 31 — as they did on the last day of most other months of the year. However, Halloween falls on the last day of October because the Feast of All Saints or “All Hallows” falls on Nov. 1. The feast in honor of all the saints in heaven used to be celebrated on May 13, but Pope Gregory III (d. 741) moved it to Nov. 1, the dedication day of All Saints Chapel in St. Peter’s at Rome. Later, in the 840s, Pope Gregory IV commanded that All Saints be observed everywhere. And so the holy day spread to Ireland. The day before was the feast’s evening vigil, “All Hallows Even” or “Hallowe’en.” In those days, Halloween didn’t have any special significance for Christians or for long-dead Celtic pagans.

In 998, St. Odilo, the abbot of the powerful monastery of Cluny in Southern France, added a celebration on Nov. 2. This was a day of prayer for the souls of all the faithful departed. This feast, called All Souls Day, spread from France to the rest of Europe.

So now the Church had feasts for all those in heaven and all those in purgatory? What about those in the other place? It seems Irish Catholic peasants wondered about the unfortunate souls in hell. After all, if the souls in hell are left out when we celebrate those in heaven and purgatory, they might be unhappy enough to cause trouble. So it became customary to bang pots and pans on All Hallows Even to let the damned know they were not forgotten. Thus, in Ireland, at least, all the dead came to be remembered — even if the clergy were not terribly sympathetic to Halloween and never allowed All Damned Day into the Church calendar.

But that still isn’t our celebration of Halloween. Our traditions on this holiday centers around dressing up in fanciful costumes, which isn’t Irish at all. Rather, this custom arose in France during the 14th and 15th centuries. Late medieval Europe was hit by repeated outbreaks of the bubonic plague — the Black Death — and she lost about half her population. It is not surprising that Catholics became more concerned about the afterlife. More Masses were said on All Souls’ Day, and artistic representations were devised to remind everyone of their own mortality.

We know these representations as the “Dance Macabre” or “Dance of Death,” which was commonly painted on the walls of cemeteries and shows the devil leading a daisy chain of people — popes, kings, ladies, knights, monks, peasants, lepers, etc. — into the tomb. Sometimes the dance was presented on All Souls’ Day itself as a living tableau with people dressed up in the garb of various states of life. But the French dressed up on All Souls, not Halloween; and the Irish, who had Halloween, did not dress up. How the two became mingled probably happened first in the British colonies of North America during the 1700s when Irish and French Catholics began to intermarry. The Irish focus on hell gave the French masquerades and even more macabre twist.

But, as every young ghoul knows, dressing up isn’t the point; the point is getting as many goodies as possible. Where on earth did “trick or treat” come in?

“Trick or treat” is perhaps the oddest and most American addition to Halloween, and is the unwilling contribution of English Catholics.

During the penal period of the 1500s to the 1700s in England, Catholics had no legal rights. They could not hold office and were subject to fines, jail and heavy taxes. It was a capital offense to say Mass, and hundreds of priests were martyred.

Occasionally, English Catholics resisted, sometimes foolishly. One of the most foolish acts of resistance was a plot to blow up the Protestant King James I and his Parliament with gunpowder. This was supposed to trigger a Catholic uprising against their oppressors. The ill-conceived Gunpowder Plot was foiled on Nov. 5, 1605, when the man guarding the gunpowder, a reckless convert named Guy Fawkes, was captured and arrested. He was hanged; the plot fizzled.

Nov. 5, Guy Fawkes’ Day, became a great celebration in England, and so it remains. During the penal periods, bands of revelers would put on masks and visit local Catholics in the dead of night, demanding beer and cakes for their celebration: trick or treat!

Guy Fawkes’ Day arrived in the American colonies with the first English settlers. But, buy the time of the American Revolution, old King James and Guy Fawkes had pretty much been forgotten. Trick or treat, though, was too much fun to give up, so eventually it moved to Oct. 31, the day of the Irish-French masquerade. And in America, trick or treat wasn’t limited to Catholics.

The mixture of various immigrant traditions we know as Halloween had become a fixture in the Unites States by the early 1800s. To this day, it remains unknown in Europe, even in the countries from which some of the customs originated.

But what about witches? Well, they are one of the last additions. The greeting card industry added them in the late 1800s. Halloween was already “ghoulish,” so why not give witches a place on greeting cards? The Halloween card failed (although it has seen a recent resurgence in popularity), but the witches stayed. So, too, in the late 1800s, ill-informed folklorists introduced the jack-o’-lantern. They thought that Halloween was druidic and pagan in origin. Lamps made from turnips (not pumpkins) had been part of ancient Celtic harvest festivals, so they were translated to the American Halloween celebration.

The next time someone claims that Halloween is a cruel trick to lure your children into devil worship, I suggest you tell them the real origin of All Hallows Eve and invite them to discover its Christian significance, along with the two greater and more important Catholic festivals that follow it.

[Churchillspirit]

When I was a kid, my school's idea of celebrating Halloween was to put on a performance of the witches' scene from "The Scottish Play".

Oh, the excitement!!

[djrakowski]

If there’s no universal church, then what does Matthew 16:18 mean? Or 1 Timothy 3:15? What about the fact that God wills all men to be saved? If there’s no universal church (in whatever manner you define it - visible and institutional, or invisible and spiritual, or both at the same time), then how is that accomplished?

[TheGunny]

You dont have to answer the question, I was just wondering...

[demshateGod]

I wouldn’t say the evidence is “absolute”.

The only person I can count on to help me interpret scripture is the Holy Spirit, I’ll take it. There still is a possibility I might make an error in interpretation but It’s far better than listening to the Pope(s).

Have you sat down and examined what Rome teaches in light of the whole Bible?

[Philo-Junius]

"Have you sat down and examined what Rome teaches in light of the whole Bible?"

Why is it, do you suppose, that the Holy Spirit guides you adequately, but not the Pope?

[djrakowski]

I have. And what the Church teaches is entirely, thoroughly, undoubtably Biblical. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have joined.

How do you settle disputes between believers who have different interpretations? And how do you determine which if the varied interpretations are the ones truly inspired by the Holy Spirit? How can you rule out anyone if it’s just you and your claim of being led by the Holy Spirit?

I could say the same thing about myself - that the Holy Spirit guided me to the Catholic Church. How, using your criteria, could you possibly dispute that, since you’ve just admitted that you could be wrong?

[Pudding Biafra]

December 25th was also chosen as the day to celebrate Christ's birth because it was a pagan holiday, so we have all participated in this inculturation. Or will someone argue that Christ actually was born on or near December 25, despite the evidence to the contrary?

[Philo-Junius]

There’s as much evidence to suggest that Dec. 25 was chosen for the pagan holiday to compete with Christmas as the contrary hypothesis.

Most people think Christmas was set to pre-empt the Saturnalia, but that ran from Dec. 17-23—not much of a preemption, then. In fact the freethinking attempt to make Christmas an overlay hinges on the declaration of Dec. 25 as the fest of Sol Invictus, but that wasn’t declared until the third century A.D., which, coupled with the old tradition assigning the Feast of the Annunciation to the original date of Easter, suggests that Dec. 25 was observed by Christians well before the declaration of the pagan feast of Sol Invictus.

[Philo-Junius]

But most people who hold to the anti-Hallowe’en tradition, when you get to it, think Christmas in its modern form is a pretty Romish event in need of significant Reformation as well.

Oliver Cromwell would be so proud to see his heirs soldiering on...

[TheGunny]

Um, the Apostle is speaking of loss of rewards, it has nothing to do with purgatory which is a figment of the catholic church.

[TheGunny]

You are correct, I should have said “catholic denomination” and all of its “traditions”.

[AnAmericanMother]

No, St. Paul discusses works and rewards, and fire will test the quality of each man's work, but THEN, even if his works are not worthy and are therefore destroyed, the man himself will be saved, yet so as through fire - de wV dia puroV .

That's plain as plain can be.

[djrakowski]

Christ’s death and blood is what makes us clean in purgatory, so I’m not sure why you’re drawing the distinction, as though it’s either Christ or purgatory. Rather, it’s Christ, through the means of purgatory.

[djrakowski]

The Trail of Blood is a load of hooey. Your denomination does not date back to the days of Christ, and the Catholic Church has not been at work suppressing the supposed truth of your particular sect of Protestant Christianity.

I’ve encountered too many people who buy into this Trail of Blood nonsense, and it provides convenient cover for their beliefs, as it insists that the Catholic Church battled against the true faith, then destroyed all the evidence. Thus, you’re able to duck out of actually addressing real history, since it’s supposedly unreliable and slanted toward Catholicism. How conveeeenient!

[Pudding Biafra]

Thank you for the information. So, does the celebration of Dec 25 pre-Sol Invictus mean that Christ was born on that day? Perhaps the more important question is: does it matter?

[netmilsmom]

Honestly, I never intended to answer.
Just laugh about it.

[Philo-Junius]

"So, does the celebration of Dec 25 pre-Sol Invictus mean that Christ was born on that day? Perhaps the more important question is: does it matter?"

The likely precedence of Christmas on Dec. 25 has no bearing at all on the date of Jesus' actual birth, of course. More likely it is indeed an outgrowth of the old proto-Talmudic belief that prophets were conceived and died on the same day. The whole issue only matters because it is used by atheists to embarass the child-like faith of some, when in fact, upon investigation, their own certitudes are usually even more naive and less thoughtfully considered.

[Skooz]

Does EVERY thread in Religion have to morph into a Catholic vs Protestant slug fest?

Geesh, it gets nauseating.