All Hallow's Eve

Happy Halloween!

The growing hysteria over Halloween has become a tiring seasonal issue. I sometimes wonder how many of the well-meaning Christians that seek to excommunicate Halloween also rail against Harry Potter. Bet there's a lot of overlap there. Like in their struggle against the Potter series, these zealous--but perhaps imprudent--soldiers of Christ that shoot at Halloween take aim at the enemy and hit only their own feet.

The trap of the enemy in Halloween remains not it's pagan roots, or even it's (gasp!) Catholic sensibilities (As All Hallow's Eve) but rather in it's contemporary celebration of secular materialism. In short, this is the problem with Halloween. And this. And this. Note the common thread with them all? They're all twisted celebrations of ourselves and our lives, here and now. These twisted displays reference no life beyond the pleasure to be found in the moment--even perverse pleasure. Today's Halloween has become a collective cry of society, "Light up the fires, Bacchus! 'Cause their ain't nothing left!" The trouble is not that we take death and the macabre too seriously. The trouble is that we do not take death seriously at all.

'Twas not always thus. But to understand what Halloween truly is, we must understand how it came to be celebrated, both as the pagan Samhain and the Christian All Hallow's Eve. Our more impassioned brothers of the Faith that see it strictly as a Satanic instrument don't see the entire picture. Not all things Pagan are of the Deceiver, however. Were that the case, then St. Thomas consorted with Satan when he wrote his Summa Theologica, beholden as he was to that noted pagan, Aristotle. "Well then", some might ask, "If it doesn't celebrate Satan, what does that pagan holiday celebrate?"

Why, Death, of course.

More precisely, the pagen festival Samhain comemmorated the dead:

Many of the ancient peoples of Europe marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter by celebrating a holiday in late autumn. The most important of these holidays to influence later Halloween customs was Samhain, a holiday observed by the ancient Celts, a tribal people who inhabited most of Western and Central Europe in the first millennium bc. Among the Celts, Samhain marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next. It was one of four Celtic holidays linked to important transitions in the annual cycle of seasons.

Samhain began at sundown on October 31 and extended into the following day. According to the Celtic pagan religion, known as Druidism, the spirits of those who had died in the preceding year roamed the earth on Samhain evening. The Celts sought to ward off these spirits with offerings of food and drink. The Celts also built bonfires at sacred hilltop sites and performed rituals, often involving human and animal sacrifices, to honor Druid deities.

Imagine the time of year, and the place: The light of the summer now fades from the sky. The Earth gives off the fruits of her bosom no longer. The leaves kaleidescope and fall away. The Harvest yields the grains that must carry people through the long, cold winter to come. Nights lengthen. Is it any wonder that, at such a time, and in such places as the British Isles and Brittany, people would focus their attention on their own mortality? On those that had died? On death itself?

Now, being a people that took spirituality seriously, even if they lacked a full understanding of God, they interpreted their mortality spiritually. They interpreted the seeming mortality of their world spiritually. Thus, they believed that the spirits of the dead could move among them freely at the Summer's End. Thus, they appeased their dead with offerings of food. They hid from the vengeful and evil spirits by disguising themselves as one of them. They responded to the awareness of their own mortality with the vain attempts at overcoming it.

The Church understood the need of people to make sense out of their own end. The early Church Fathers certainly observed the same Autumns, and may have reflected on their inevitable deaths, as well. However, the Popes that transformed Samhain into All Hallow's Eve did so not simply to supress or to divert Pagans from a false celebration. They redeemed Samhain so that people could address death through the only successful way any man ever did: through Jesus Christ. Through his death and ressurection, Christ mastered death. Thus, those that lived their lives on earth in fidelity to him shared in his victory. The Church Militant could experience this victory through prayer in communion with the Church Triumphant. We no longer needed to appease or disguise ourselves as the dead in order to cope with our mortality; we faced death by Christ's side, and thus took our place with his saints. We could offer our prayers and join them with the saints in intersession to our Lord and Savior. Thus, our understanding of our own mortality. Thus, Samhain becomes All Hallow's Eve:

The Solemnity of All Saints is celebrated on November 1. It is a holyday of obligation, and it is the day that the Church honors all of God's saints, even those who have not been canonized by the Church. It is a family day of celebration — we celebrate the memory of our family members (members of the Mystical Body, the communion of saints) now sharing eternal happiness in the presence of God. We rejoice that they have reached their eternal goal and ask their prayers on our behalf so that we, too, may join them in heaven and praise God through all eternity.

The honoring of all Christian martyrs of the Faith was originally celebrated on May 13, the date established by the fourth century. Pope Boniface IV in 615 established it as the "Feast of All Martyrs" commemorating the dedication of the Pantheon, an ancient Roman temple, into a Christian church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs. In 844, Pope Gregory IV transferred the feast to November 1st. Some scholars believe this was to substitute a feast for the pagan celebrations during that time of year.

By 741, the feast included not only martyrs, but all the saints in heaven as well, with the title changing to "Feast of All Saints" by 840. Pope Sixtus IV in 1484 established November 1 as a holyday of obligation and gave it both a vigil (known today as "All Hallows' Eve" or "Hallowe'en") and an eight-day period or octave to celebrate the feast. By 1955, the octave of All Saints was removed.

(snip)

The feasts of All Saints and All Souls fall back to back to express the Christian belief of the "Communion of Saints." The Communion of Saints is the union of all the faithful on earth (the Church Militant), the saints in Heaven (the Church Triumphant) and the Poor Souls in Purgatory (the Church Suffering), with Christ as the Head. They are bound together by a supernatural bond, and can help one another. The Church Militant (those on earth still engaged in the struggle to save their souls) can venerate the Church Triumphant, and those saints can intercede with God for those still on earth. Both the faithful on earth and the saints in heaven can pray for the souls in Purgatory.

All Hallow's Eve becomes the opening feast of a trinity of celebration in which we reflect on our own limited lives. How have we lived? How will we face our death? Have we lived for the Lord with the fullness of our heart, soul, mind and strength? How have we lived the dramatic tension between who we are and who we ought to become? These are questions all of us need to confront.

Both Samhain and Traditional Halloween demand that we take death seriously. When we refuse to do that, we cut ourselves off from the truth that we live on God's borrowed time. When we secularize Halloween, so that it's merely a time of amusing diversions and aquisition of yet more needless pleasures (come on! how many Hershey's Kisses do we really need?), we pretend we don't need God. That's the true risk of celebrating Halloween this year.

The answer is not to ignore it or refuse to participate in it. The answer is to celebrate All Hallow's Eve as the redeemed Day of the Dead it was created to be:

Instead of just suppressing the whole celebration of Halloween and leaving a gaping hole, the Church gives a replacement focus. The Church has the mindset of "How can this be turned into good, with the focus on the one true God and His Church?" Since All Saints and All Souls feasts are together, we can shift the focus of Halloween to a focus on the Communion of Saints in action. We combine honoring the saints in heaven, remembering our loved ones and then directing the destiny of our own souls by prayer and actions. Through this we see the Mystical Body all in action.

We live in the full communion of God when we experience him through his Mystical Body, the Church--and that includes the Saints who've received his glory. The proper celebration of Halloween helps us to live this sacred reality. Can we truly afford to pass it up? Or pass it off?