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AtomSaturday, October 31, A.D. 2009
All Hallows’ Eve
Happy Halloween to you Western Christians who remember all the saints tomorrow and to you descendants of the pagan Celts who celebrated the autumn feast of Samhain.
There are aspects of the American celebration of Halloween that I really like. The holiday period preceding Halloween until the American feast of Thanksgiving marks our own cultural harvest festivities, and many Halloween customs feature this generic celebration of autumn and the harvest.
As a good Ohioan, I delight in everything pumpkin—actual pumpkins and all the goodies that are made from pumpkins. What Cincinnatian doesn’t relish the taste of Frisch’s pumpkin pie? Servatii’s pumpkin cookies do not even contain pumpkins, but their lemony goodness brings back memories. When I was home a couple of weeks ago, I made sure to buy some of these treats. United Dairy Farmers even had pumpkin ice cream as a seasonal flavor. Long live the commercialization of homey cultural tastes!
I also enjoy some of the traditional pagan practices that have survived. After extinguishing all the fires in their community, the Celts would build a large communal bonfire that burnt harvest offerings to their gods. The Celts carved gourds to transport this fire back to their hearths, which they would maintain for the entire year. The Christian Greeks and Arabs have a similar practice today with the holy fire of Pascha. The symbolism of new life and rebirth is quite powerful. Our tradition of jack o’ lanterns seems to have originated in this ancient pagan practice. I make sure to carve a pumpkin every year, preferably while watching the Peanuts’ It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and munching on candy corn. It’s my own Halloween season ritual.
There are, however, elements of the American celebration of Halloween that make me uneasy. I am fine with the cultural remnants of a superseded paganism, but the glorification of the occult and an aesthetic suggestive of satanism make the condemnations of Halloween by Christians pretty understandable. There might be something cathartic about the gore and horror of Halloween, where children overcome their fear of monsters and ghosts. In this, Halloween might serve some of the same psychological purposes as the day of the dead traditions in Latin America—though the secular power of American Protestantism has largely removed the religious dimension from a fundamentally religious holiday. Still, I find the proliferation of haunted houses and the celebration of witchcraft and demons a bit troubling.
I thus propose a middle way with a purified Halloween, where the focus is on the harvest festival aspects of the feast. Western Christians can focus on the traditional relation of the feast to the feasts of All Saints and of All Souls, as well. Furthermore, as children love to dress up and to receive and to eat goodies, let kids celebrate by dressing up as animals, fantasy characters, or pretend professions—and leave the goblins, witches, and monsters to the heathen. Take what is good from Egypt, and leave what is rotten.
on Saturday, October 31, A.D. 2009
Religion | Paganism • Roman Catholicism • Permalink
Comments
I am a new visitor to your site and have been reading many older entries. What an amazing treasure trove! The breadth of the references is exhilarating: Auster-Orthodoxy-Douthat-Coulter and more.
However,I have noticed that most of the links to articles or sites referred to in entries don’t actually link to the link. Some do. Is there something more I should be doing?
So this is not a comment on a particular entry, but a request for better access to those entries’ referents.
If you can help I’d appreciate it. Thanks for producing an interesting and thought provoking site.
Blessings, Kathy
from St. Paul, MN
on Monday, January 3, A.D. 2011
Thank you for your kind words!
I am sorry that you are finding bad links. I was aware that old videos often cease working, but I did not know that many normal links were broken. A problem with older blog entries is that they link to articles that were current when the blog entries were posted, but then the net evolves. For example, National Review Online transformed its web system during this past year. The article address system that it had been using became obsolete, and so any links to those old addresses also became obsolete. Imagine if the American phone system suddenly required every phone number to be ten rather than seven digits long. We would all have to update our phones’ address books. That is not as feasible with blogs. I periodically update my “side links,” but I do not go through old posts to update “in post” links.
When I encounter bad links on other pages, I copy the linked article’s name and search for it on Google. Almost always, Google will provide the updated address.
Again, thank you for your words, and best wishes in the new year.
Posted by Joseph
from Arimathea
on Monday, January 3, A.D. 2011
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Next entry (Religion): Klavan on Euphemism
As the name implies, All Hallows Eve is the beginning of the Feast of All Saints. I think it is important for Christians to see these two and a half days as a group, not as separate events. The over riding theme of this multi-day event is the Communion of Saints, the Church Militant here on earth, the Church Expectant in Paradise, and the Church Triumphant in Heaven. If we teach this well, there is no time, no place for goblins, ghosts, haunted houses, etc. There is much theological significance to this time period, and it can be a time for real Christian insight, renewal, and growth, but the Church must make use of it and not simply yield the time to the secular culture. This is one of the few times in the Kalendar when we get to focus specifically on the Communion of Saints, and we really need to strengthen that important teaching among our people. Too many people have very little appreciation or understanding of the significance of this concept, and yet this is the Church, all of those in union with Jesus Christ, but the quick and the dead. We are in danger of losing this understanding with many people, I fear.
Posted by Dr.D