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The
Frightful Truth |
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The question often arises about the celebration of Halloween by Christians. Is it "pagan" to dress up and go about as ghosts and goblins? The question often comes up because many modern Christians believe Halloween has something to do with worshipping the devil and participating in witchcraft. The truth is, the origins of Halloween are rooted deeply in the theology and popular customs of the earliest Christians, dating back to the feast days celebrated during the first millennium. It is a revision of actual history to say our modern celebration of Halloween has origins in "Druid customs". It is true that the ancient Celts celebrated a minor harvest feast on October 31st, but the fact is they celebrated a festival on the last day of most every month. First of all, the celebration of Halloween; i.e., people dressing up in costumes, going to parties, and "begging" for candy, is not un-Christian or "evil". As long as the costumes don't glorify violence or evil, there's no harm to them. Halloween falls on October 31st , plain and simply, because the Feast of All Saints or "All Hallows" falls on November 1st. The feast in honor of All Saints used to be celebrated on May 13th, but Pope Gregory III, in 731AD, moved it to November 1st, the dedication day of All Saints Chapel in St. Peter's in Rome. This feast spread throughout the world, and is still considered a "holy day of obligation" for Catholics - a day they are required to go to Mass. In 998 AD, St. Odilo, the abbot of the monastery of Cluny in France, added a celebration on November 2nd. This was a day of prayer for the souls of all the faithful departed. Therefore, the Church had a feast of the saints, those already in Heaven, and another feast day, All Souls Day, to pray for those in Purgatory. It was the Irish Catholics who came up with the idea to somehow remember those souls who did not live by the Faith in this life. In Ireland the custom came to also include the unfortunate souls in Hell. They apparently thought that if the souls in Heaven were remembered, and the souls in Purgatory were prayed for - then the souls in Hell had better not be left out! So it became customary to bang pots and pans on All Hallows Eve, to let the damned know they were not forgotten. However, the clergy were not terribly open to "All Damned Day", and it never made it into the general Church calendar! In Ireland, then, ALL the dead came to be remembered on October 31st. This, however, is still not exactly like our celebration of Halloween. On Halloween we also dress up in costumes, right? Where did that come from? Well, costumes have always been popular parts of celebration. The particular practice of dressing in costumes of the dead for All Souls Day arose in France during the 14th and 15th centuries. During the horrible bubonic plague, the Black Death, Europe lost half of its population. Artists depicted this on walls to remind us of our own mortality. "From dust we came, to dust we shall return." These pictures and representations are known as the "Dance of Death" or "The Dance Macabre." These figures were commonly painted on cemetery walls and showed the devil leading a daisy chain of dead people into the tomb. Eventually a custom arose of reenacting the Dance, on All Soul's Day, as a living tableau, with people dressed up as the dead. But the French dressed up on All Souls, not Halloween; and the Irish, who celebrated Halloween, did not dress up. The two were brought together in the colonies of North America during the 18th century, when Irish and French Catholics began to intermarry. Thus the two celebrations became mingled, and we began dressing up on Halloween. It is, as we can see, a very "American" holiday, but rooted in ancient Christian beliefs, as well. "Trick-or-Treating" is a very odd addition to Halloween. It is the most American aspect of the holiday, and is the (unwilling) contribution of English Catholics. Guy Fawkes Day became a great celebration against Catholics in England. It celebrated the day a plot to blow up Parliament, and King James I was discovered. This was on November 5, 1605. Guy Fawkes was the rather reckless man guarding the gunpowder. He was arrested and hanged. Although this plot involved only a small group of people, acting on their own initiative, all Catholics came to be blamed. This was a time of great persecution of Catholics in England. It came to be seen as "harmless fun" for bands of drunken revelers to put on masks and visit Catholic families in the night demanding they be given cakes, money, and beer. If they weren't given the "treats" they wanted, they'd play "tricks", such as burning down the person's barn, or home, or beating the person up. Guy Fawkes Day arrived in the American colonies with the first English settlers. Old King James and the Gunpowder Plot had long been forgotten, but "Trick-or-Treating" had become a day for children, who would don masks and go about begging "a penny for the Guy", and was too much fun to give up. Eventually, it moved to combine with the Irish/French Catholic masquerade. This practice of "Trick-or-Treating" was simply moved to coincide with the Catholic celebration involving dressing up. So, we can see how the mixture of various immigrant traditions that we we know now as Halloween had become popular custom in the Unites States by the early 1800s. To this day, it remains largely unknown in Europe, even in the countries from which some of the customs originated! So, now we have All Saint's Day, All Souls Day, All Hallow's Eve, dressing up as the dead, door-to-door begging - but what about witches? Well, they are one of the most recent additions. Guess who brought them in? Not the Christians, certainly! Not the pagans! Nope! It was the greeting card people! Yep! The greeting card industry added them in the late 1800s! Apparently the thought was that Halloween was already "ghoulish," so why not give scary witches a place on greeting cards? The original "Halloween card" didn't do very well, but the image of a witch on a broomstick, flying against a bright Harvest moon has stayed with us, ever since. Oh, and what about Jack o' Lanterns? Another recent invention. Again in the late 1800s, ill-informed folklorists introduced the jack-o’-lantern. They thought that Halloween was Druidic and pagan in origin. In some ancient Celtic harvest festivals turnips were hollowed out, and candles placed in them. Turnips being rather difficult to hollow out, and pumpkins being fairly plentiful, the custom was adopted and translated to the American Halloween celebration. I believe Halloween can still serve the purpose of reminding us that this life is not all there is. It was initially intended to remind us of our own mortality, warn us of Hell and how to avoid it, to remember those who have gone before us in faith, those already in Heaven, and those still suffering in Purgatory. And these are all good things. The next time someone claims Halloween is a cruel trick to lure our children into "devil worship", I suggest you tell them the real origin of Halloween and let them know about its ancient Christian roots and significance. A neighbor recently told my son that they didn't celebrate Halloween because it wasn't "a Godly day". And what I told him was that every day is either a Godly day, or an ungodly day, depending on what you choose to do with it.
Prayer for All Souls in Purgatory Almighty
God, Father of us all, Have mercy on our brothers and sisters who Forgive all their sins and grant them
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Written by Lisa Alekna, October 10th, 1999 |
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