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Halloween and Catholicism
uCatholic.com ^ | 10-31-13 | Fr. Steve Grunow

Posted on 10/31/2013 10:37:58 AM PDT by mlizzy

I always figured that Halloween had pagan roots, but you are telling me they are Catholic. Huh? How so?

The origin and traditional customs associated with Halloween require no other explanation than that they are examples of the kinds of festivity that served as a means of celebrating the various holy days of the Catholic Liturgical Year. This includes everything from masquerades, feasting, and the associations of a given day of the year with supernatural or spiritual truths.

I would draw a distinction between the violent, macabre imagery that characterizes the modern appropriation of Halloween as a kind of secular celebration and the more traditional customs that are characteristic of a Catholic cultural ethos. The descent of Halloween into the madness of an annual fright fest is a relatively recent development, but the true substance of Halloween belongs to the Church. Halloween (or “All Hallows Eve”) is the festive precursor to the celebration of the Church’s public commemoration of All Saints Day.

There has been an appropriation of the festivities of Halloween by modern pagans, but please understand that modern paganism is precisely modern and should be distinguished from the cults of ancient religions. The origins and practices of the modern paganism do not extend farther back than the late nineteenth century. Also, remember, the term “pagan” is a slippery one. What does it mean? The worship of the gods and goddesses from long ago? Those cults have long since passed away with the cultural matrix that once supported the world views that were the conditions for their possibility. You can’t just reinvent those cults without the culture that supported them.

The paganism that exists today is a romantic and very selective attempt at a re-appropriation of an ancient religious ethos, but it isn’t and cannot be the same thing that paganism was in its original cultural expressions. I think that the practitioners need to justify their beliefs by insisting on an association with what they are doing and ancient forms and styles of worship. This gives the impression that the modern pagan élan has more gravitas (especially in relation to Christianity) but it doesn’t make it the same thing as the ancient cults. The association that modern paganism makes between itself and the forms and styles of ancient culture is more about desire than it is about reality.

I think that the association of Halloween with paganism has much more to do with the Protestant Reformation than anything else. The Protestant reformers were concerned about the practices of medieval Christianity that to them seemed contrary to what they believed the Church should be. They knew that these practices had clear precedents in the history of the Church, but insisted that they represented a corruption of the original form of Christianity that had become degraded over time. The degradation was explained as a regression into cultural forms that the Protestants described as pagan.

I realize popular religiosity is a complex phenomenon and the Church in Europe did intentionally assimilate many cultural practices that were more ancient than it’s own practices, but it did so selectively and with a keen sense of discernment. The end result was not simply that a veneer of Christianity was placed on top of an ancient pagan ethos, but that a new cultural matrix was created, one that was Christian to its core. It is a gross mischaracterization and oversimplification to assert that you can just scratch the surface of medieval Christianity and what rises up is paganism.

And yet this perception endures in contemporary culture. You see it, for example, in works of fiction like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “The Mists of Avalon”, which appropriates ideas from a lot of spurious, pseudo scholarship that permeated British intellectual culture throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Unfortunately, this has become a standard and widely accepted narrative of how Europe became Christian. It is a modern myth born of the prejudices and propaganda of the Protestant reformation that mutated into the secular critique of Catholicism. As an ideological construct it represents the simultaneous fascination and aversion to Medieval culture in general and Catholicism in particular. The reality is far more complex and interesting.

Protestantism was and is proposing what its adherents believe to be an alternative to Catholicism. This means that Protestantism will distinguish itself from the forms and styles of religious life that preceded their own culture and that this culture will be presented as a purified form of Christian faith and practice. One argument that is advanced to justify Protestant distinctiveness is that the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church are pagan.

Placing all this in an American cultural context, the United States set its cultural roots in forms of Protestantism that were keenly aware of the distinction between themselves and a Catholic Europe that they had rejected and whose influence they had hoped to leave behind. Remember, the Puritans left Protestant England for the New World because England wasn’t Protestant enough! The Puritans detested the residual forms of Catholicism that they believed remained in the state church of England.

The arrival of Catholic immigrants to the shores of Protestant America was a source of great cultural consternation. The public festivals of the Catholic Faith were characterized as a corrupting and dangerous form of paganism. Halloween with all its carousing and shenanigans was especially problematic, as it represented the incursion of a specifically Catholic cultural form into a public life that was supposed to be Protestant. Everything associated with these Catholic festivities was caricatured as pagan and the association stuck with even the Catholics internalizing the critique and believing that their own customs were holdovers from paganism.

As a result, the distinctly Catholic nature of Halloween became more and more muted and it was Catholics pulling back from their own festival that gave rise to the contemporary version of Halloween. The goulish version of the festival that we have today is in many respects a result of Catholic accommodation to a Protestant culture. And in a another strange twist in the history of Halloween, most everything that the devout Protestant detests about Halloween have become all the more pronounced as a result of their protests.

What is the relation of Halloween to All Saints/All Souls? Which came first?

All Saints Day appears to have a more ancient genealogy than All Souls Day.

The practice of a festival day to honor the whole communion of Saints, rather than that just a single saint, seems to happen for the first time in the Catholic Church with the consecration of the Pantheon as a public place for the Church’s worship. This happened in the year 609 (or 610) on May 13th. The Pantheon had been originally dedicated for the use of Roman religion as a place where all the gods would be honored. Boniface displaced the images of the gods from their shrines and gave the building over to the Saints of the Church, particularly the Martyrs. This was a kind of “in your face” to pagan culture. Boniface was saying that the old gods had been defeated and were defeated by the faith of the Church’s Martyrs.

Also, May 13th was a day associated in Roman religion with what was called the festival of the Lemurs or ancestral spirits. It is likely that Boniface’s choice of this day to claim the Pantheon for Christian worship was intentional and it was a way of saying that the Martyrs are the great ancestors of all the baptized and it is their memory and witness that is rightly honored on the day that Romans recalled their ancestors.

How we get from May 13th to November 1st is interesting. The festival of All Saints seems to emerge from the dedication of another Roman church that was consecrated by Pope Gregory III. The church is named St. Peter and all the Saints. It was a subsequent pope, Gregory IV, who extended the annual festival that commemorates this church dedication to the whole Church as All Saints Day. The extension of festivals specific to the Church of Rome is an part and parcel of how the Catholic Faith becomes the underlying cultural matrix from which a new kind of European civilization would emerge.

All Souls Day (celebrated November 2nd) seems to emerge with the growth and spread of monastic communities and the practice of commemorating deceased members of monasteries. This practice gained broad cultural traction and in time was extended to the whole Church.

Halloween is the precursor to All Saints Day and as such is kind of like what December 24th is to Christmas Day. Remember, the calendar of the Church is filled with festival days, all of which were once associated with great, public celebrations. A holy day of obligation has not always meant spending 45 minutes in church for Mass and then going back to work. Holy Days were times for a party and if you look at the Church’s calendar, past and present, with this ethos in mind you will discover that the reasons for a party happened with great frequency..

I know that there are some Celtic or Germanic elements to the holiday that we’ve come to embrace as Halloween. Which traditions are Catholic and which are not?

The festival is not ethnic or nationalistic. It is Catholic. Certainly there were regional appropriations of the festivals of the Church, and Halloween was no exception, but bottom line these festal days belonged to the Church as a whole which meant pretty much all of Europe. You might have some customs that were specific to regions, but the festival itself is a distinctly Catholic practice.

There are some folks that have come to believe that there is some association of Halloween with a pagan festival called Samhain, but this is not really the case.

In terms of customs that are specific to Catholicism, it is all pretty much derivative from the kinds of stuff that you find in the public festivities of Catholic culture. In this regard Mardi Gras is probably the best point of reference. We think of Mardi Gras and its attendant festivities as specific to one day, but it used to be that that kind of festival environment occurred with great frequency throughout the Church’s year. Think of all the customs associated with Halloween as a Mardi Gras before All Saints Day and I think you get a perspective in regards to all the excess and tomfoolery. The party was meant to culminate in Solemn Worship, after which one returned to the routine of life. Unfortunately, the Church has surrendered the party to the secular culture. It has happened with Halloween. It is happening with Christmas.

All this being said, you don’t have to reach into the “Mists of Avalon” to discern the meaning of cultural practices that are associated with the Church that seem unfamiliar to us. The meaning is likely something that is much more straightforwardly Christian than you think— and likely a form and style of being a Christian that is distinctly Catholic.

What do you think of the trend of parents boycotting Halloween on account of it being evil? What would you say to them if they told you such? Not safety or healthy concerns keeping kids indoors, but abject opposition to something believed to be satanic or terrorizing?

I would say that those parents are acting like good Puritans.

There is a lot that is unsavory about the contemporary celebration of Halloween. What does the singular focus on violence, horror and death have to say about our culture? The traditional, Catholic Halloween placed these realities within the context of Christ’s victory over sin, death and the devil. The current secularized version of the festival has no salvific content and has been loosed from its theological moorings. It looks very much like a festival of death for a culture of death and for that reason I can see why parents might be concerned.

But what is the proper response to a culture of death? To lock the Church behind closed doors or to let her out into the world? I think it is time for Catholics to accept the religious liberties that this culture claims to afford them and go public with their own festivals- and to do so dramatically and with a great deal of public fervor. What is holding us back? What are we afraid will happen? The reticence and fear that characterizes Catholics is costing the Church its unique culture and it is allowing the culture of death to flourish.

What does the Catechism have to say about Halloween?

The Catechism has a lot to say about the characteristics of heroic virtue and holiness of life that create the Church’s saints. It also has a lot to say about Christ’s victory over sin, death and the devil. These are the kinds of things that the festivities of Catholic Halloween should be celebrating with great gusto and panache.

One of the appealing elements of celebrating Halloween as a child, aside from the candy and costume stuff, is the spookiness factor — the thrill of being scared without any real risk. From a Catholic perspective, is that important? Is the experience of being fearful or having an awareness of evil an essential element for a Catholic kid to learn?

I think that all cultures employ cautionary tales which are replete with supernatural imagery and use this imagery as a means of teaching boundaries and inculcating a sense that there are dangerous people and situations that they could encounter and should be wary of. Further, I think that stories told to a group will have the ability to evoke a shared emotional experience and as such bond the community together. It is not only Christian cultures that will employ a narrative, even a frightening one, to communicate their worldview and impart values.

I do think that Catholics need to learn from an early age to look at the world realistically and without the blurring lenses of sentimentality. The world is fallen and finite. People will hurt one another. We are sinners. But this darkness is illuminated by the light of God’s revelation in Christ that makes the deepest truth of what it means to be human available to us in the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery of the Lord Jesus. Yes, look honestly at sin and death. Know about the lure and deceptions of fallen, spiritual powers. Realize that greater than all the fallen powers of heaven and earth is the power of God in Christ, which is a love that is stronger than sin, death and the devil. It is this divine power that is given to the believer in a personal way through Jesus Christ. He is victorious over everything that we are afraid of. His love is stronger than death. The power of his divine life dispels evil. Even as we gaze into the shadows we see his light.

I read somewhere that Halloween is seen as the day when the veil between heaven and earth and purgatory is thinnest, hence the presence of souls. That seems like some seriously “new agey” stuff. Is this a Catholic thing or is that where Wiccans and imaginative Hollywood types step in?

I don’t know precisely the metaphysical precedents that one would use to justify the belief that there are on specific days thicker and thinner veils between the natural and supernatural realms. It seems esoteric and speculative.

I do think that the reality that such a perspective represents has great power as a narrative that explains for some folks how they think that the natural and the supernatural interact with one another. Is it true? I don’t know how one would adjudicate such a claim definitively. As such, it remains a supposition or a possibility.

The Catholic Faith describes natural and supernatural realities existing in a relationship of communion or co-inherence that is called sacramental. This means that because of the Incarnation of God in Christ, natural realities can express supernatural realities. Physical realities can truly be bearers of divine grace.

The divine grace that is revealed in the Church’s commemoration of Halloween should be our participation in what is called the Communion of Saints. This Communion of Saints means that this world is not all that there is and that those who have passed through the experience of death continue to love us, care for us and even through God’s permissive will, can interact with us. It also means that that the Christian can hope that God’s power in Christ to save and redeem extends beyond this world to the next and as such we can hope that few of us will be lost causes. The festivities of Halloween should affirm that these beliefs about the Communion of Saints are real and are also the deepest reality of what this world has become because of the revelation of God in Christ.


TOPICS: Catholic; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: allhallowseve; allsaintsday; catholic; catholichalloween; halloween; halloweencatholic
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
Which brings this all to.... how does one "decorate" their home for Halloween? Would tombstones for the saints be appropriate? And who could top blood and gore more quickly than the martyrs of the faith? I could put a model of St. Dymphna up with her head in her hand, that her father so sickeningly removed.

But maybe gore [even of the martyrs] is not proper for Halloween?! How about one of these gemmed skeletons? Would they be appropriate by our front door? :) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2413688/Incredible-skeletal-remains-Catholic-saints-dripping-gems-jewellery-dug-Indiana-Bones-explorer.html

[Note to small voice or jodyel; if you're around, as per your previous request of me, don't look at these.]
21 posted on 10/31/2013 1:18:47 PM PDT by mlizzy (If people spent an hour a week in Eucharistic adoration, abortion would be ended. --Mother Teresa)
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To: A CA Guy

I had heard on the news today that stuff of that horrible nature, putting poison and razors were nothing more than “urban myths” or legends.


22 posted on 10/31/2013 1:26:59 PM PDT by Biggirl (“Go, do not be afraid, and serve”-Pope Francis)
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To: mlizzy

Indoors, heat regulated, place for kids to play and the shops give out candy and small Obamacare waver coupons for a dollar.


23 posted on 10/31/2013 1:32:59 PM PDT by A CA Guy ( God Bless America, God Bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: mlizzy
And who could top blood and gore more quickly than the martyrs of the faith?

Ha ha!! True enough. :) I think the blood and gore of the saints is perfectly appropriate. Because that blood and gore was their gift to God. "Greater love hath no man than this: that he give up his life for his friends."

We decorate with pumpkins, jack o lanterns, & fall stuff of course. We don't do skeletons or witches or anything like that..although I could see some purpose for the macabre if you were doing a "Last Judgment" theme or something.

Tonight we will put all our icons and statues on the home altar over a white cloth in preparation for All Saints. Maybe light some candles or something. Those will be out all day tomorrow. Then for All Souls Day we will clear the home altar again, put a black cloth down, and fill it with photos of our departed.

24 posted on 10/31/2013 1:50:42 PM PDT by Claud
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To: Biggirl

I was living in that time and that was indeed true happening.
Now, if you do not want to go out and do that then a lot of stores get stuck with product, so they push the happenings as a tall tale, but it happened all the time starting in the 70s.


25 posted on 10/31/2013 1:50:52 PM PDT by A CA Guy ( God Bless America, God Bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: A CA Guy

This was what was on the morning news today. Not surprised.

http://www.woai.com/articles/woai-local-news-119078/urban-legend-of-poisoned-halloween-candy-11785778/

Try telling that to those who lived through that time.


26 posted on 10/31/2013 1:57:40 PM PDT by Biggirl (“Go, do not be afraid, and serve”-Pope Francis)
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To: Biggirl

There was drugs, razors and various things found in candy here in California and elsewhere. The urban legend is legend but true.


27 posted on 10/31/2013 2:00:56 PM PDT by A CA Guy ( God Bless America, God Bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: mlizzy; Tax-chick; GregB; Berlin_Freeper; SumProVita; narses; bboop; SevenofNine; ...

Catholic ping!


28 posted on 10/31/2013 2:07:26 PM PDT by NYer ("The wise man is the one who can save his soul. - St. Nimatullah Al-Hardini)
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To: A CA Guy

I too, was around at that time and I was really taken aback by that news story this morning. Whoever put that news report should have talked to someone who was a kid back in the 70’s.


29 posted on 10/31/2013 2:19:23 PM PDT by Biggirl (“Go, do not be afraid, and serve”-Pope Francis)
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To: Claud
Tonight we will put all our icons and statues on the home altar over a white cloth in preparation for All Saints. Maybe light some candles or something. Those will be out all day tomorrow. Then for All Souls Day we will clear the home altar again, put a black cloth down, and fill it with photos of our departed.
That's very good; more great ideas! I was out looking for an altar just yesterday.
30 posted on 10/31/2013 2:54:18 PM PDT by mlizzy (If people spent an hour a week in Eucharistic adoration, abortion would be ended. --Mother Teresa)
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To: mlizzy

It really start a pagan holiday then Vatican realize that just Celts become Christians they try Christiize call it All Hallov eve would be all Saint EVE Then November 1 all Saint Day

Then Latino culture in SO CAL has Day of the Dead festival to pray for souls of people who dies in last year


31 posted on 10/31/2013 3:28:11 PM PDT by SevenofNine (We are Freepers, all your media bases belong to us ,resistance is futile)
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To: mlizzy

The practice of a festival day to honor the whole communion of Saints, rather than that just a single saint


We had an all school Mass this morning at our parish, and the 5th grade students each dressed as a different saint. In place of the homily, each student came up to the lectern and talked about the saint they were representing. By way of introduction, the first student talked about how individual saints are honored on different days in the liturgical year, but this day was in honor of the whole communion of saints. Then she mentioned that the church has several requirements for someone to become a saint, but God makes it easier for the rest of us; if we try to act in a way that is pleasing to God and we love other people, we can all be included in the communion of saints. When they finished, the pastor told them about when he was their age, he dressed as St. Peter and still remembers how he held the key to the kingdom. He said that in 60 years, he hoped they would be telling their kids about what they remembered from today.


32 posted on 10/31/2013 3:32:56 PM PDT by rwa265 (Compete well for the faith, lay hold of eternal life (1 Timothy 6))
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To: rwa265
He said that in 60 years, he hoped they would be telling their kids about what they remembered from today.
Beautiful! Very cool... Sounds like you have a great parish.
33 posted on 10/31/2013 4:28:21 PM PDT by mlizzy (If people spent an hour a week in Eucharistic adoration, abortion would be ended. --Mother Teresa)
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To: Jack Hydrazine
Hmmm... Well the deified rabbi worshiped by Christians celebrated Jewish holidays. If Christians really wanted to follow the example of their rabbi they’d probably celebrate Sukkot (Festival of Booths), Chanukah (this year it’ll be Thanksgivikah because it and T-day run together; next one in 79,000 years.), and at least all of the other major ones, but probably not the minors.

Chanukkah is a minor holiday. It's a big deal in America because it usually occurs somewhere around Xmas time and because the Chanukkah story has unfortunately been torn from its original Theocratic context into an alien one where Antiochus is turned into a "bigot" and the Chashmonayim into a sort of American Civil Liberties Union.

Did anyone notice the major Jewish holidays last month? Very few. Does Purim ever upstage St. Paddy's Day? No (Purim is actually the same class festival as Chanukkah but you never hear about it). And of course Shavu`ot is unknown to practically everyone.

The "major Jewish holiday of Chanukkah" is strictly an American phenomenon.

34 posted on 10/31/2013 4:37:50 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (The Left: speaking power to truth since Shevirat HaKelim.)
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To: miss marmelstein
As someone who has been researching the liturgical calendar of Medieval England, I mourn the loss of so many beautiful Catholic festivals, holidays and feast days. All uniquely English right down to special foods and clothing. At least the Southern European Catholics keep up some really wonderful Catholic holidays. Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.

Protestant opposition to Catholic holidays is merely the logical conclusion of early Catholic opposition to Jewish holidays. And unlike Catholic holidays, Jewish holidays are actually in the Bible, but Catholics have always been forbidden to observe them (until recently).

Catholic/Orthodox chrstianity was, after all, the first Protestantism.

35 posted on 10/31/2013 4:41:41 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (The Left: speaking power to truth since Shevirat HaKelim.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator

Let the goyim celebrate the Big Three!


36 posted on 10/31/2013 4:43:20 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, I'm a Conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator

How do you figure that the Chashmonayim were like the ACLU of today? They’re the ones who rebelled against that Syrian-Greek idiot.


37 posted on 10/31/2013 4:44:40 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, I'm a Conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: mlizzy
Halloween and Catholicism
Traditional Catholic Sacrifice of the Holy Latin Mass on Halloween Night
Faith Facts: All Hallows' Eve
Be Not Afraid: The Surprisingly Holy Origins of Halloween

Hallowe'en (with facts and recipes)
How Halloween Can Be Redeemed (from Catholic Update)
History of Halloween
Bishops’ Halloween Advice: Dress Children Up as Saints, Not Witches
Halloween (CNA Video)
All Hallows' Eve
Celebrating 'All Hallows Eve' and the 'Feast of All Saints' in a Pre-Christian West
Halloween Prayers: Prayers and Collects for All Hallows Eve
Holiday Hysteria (a Christian defense of Halloween)
Hallowe'en - Eve of All Saints - Suggestions for Reclaiming this Christian Feast

38 posted on 10/31/2013 5:16:17 PM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: GreyFriar

Thanks for the ping. I thought this was a pretty good article. I especially like and agree with the last paragraph.


39 posted on 10/31/2013 9:10:37 PM PDT by zot
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To: Jack Hydrazine

“So what do the Christians do?”


Sacrifices and offerings to Janus would be a good start....


40 posted on 10/31/2013 9:40:28 PM PDT by S.O.S121.500 (Case back hoe for sale or trade for diesel wood chipper....Enforce the Bill of Rights. It's the Law!)
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