Bishops say celebrating the "scary" aspect of Halloween is a sin?

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Ben_Sinner

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Halloween will be coming up in two months. I came across an article that is saying there were a conference of Bishops from different countries basically banning anything “scary” about Halloween. The Bishops said kids can’t dress in scary costumes and can only listen to “Contemporary Christian” music during the Halloween dances…

catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/10/13/bishops-halloween-advice-dress-children-up-as-saints-not-witches/

At first I wasn’t sure if this was satire or not because some of the things mentioned:

Nor should pumpkins have menacing or scary faces carved into them, according to a website link provided by the bishops’ conference, but must wear smiley expressions and have crosses cut into the foreheads.

Party games during the October 31 revelries should also have a distinctively Christian theme, parents are told, with musical statues, or chairs, danced to music by “contemporary Christian artists”. Trick or treat pranks are definitely discouraged,

and the weirdest of all…
*
The suggestions for a Christian-style Halloween end with the idea that children each take a wrapped present from a box plastered with such slogans as “Jesus is our light”, “Jesus is our king”, “Jesus loves me” and “Jesus is the biz!”.*

Is any of this actually binding for Catholics to not celebrate the “scary” aspect of Halloween?

This seems to contradict what apologists like Jimmy Akin said about the holiday.
 
No, none of this is binding.

It sounds like thoughtful suggestions instead of mandates. My kids dress up for Halloween, but they also dress up for All Saints Day.

(Here’s some fun suggestions on how to get two-for-one costumes. :D)

A lot of people think Halloween originated as some pagan holiday or that it’s about the devil, but it’s not. It’s Catholic in origin and it’s not wrong for us to claim it that way. Some ways are, however, more tone deaf than others. 😉
 
I wonder if the bishops would prohibit little girls from dressing up as Queen Elsa for Halloween since they urge kids not to dress up as occult figures.:hmmm:
 
It’s just a fact that little kids like being scared, as long as they’re not scared too much. What grandfather has not “become a bear” to chase screeching, laughing children around a living room? Of course, the “bear” has to be careful not to get too scary, and has to never quite be able to catch a child. And sometimes the “bear” has to turn tail and run himself unexpectedly or fall asleep so children can approach, giggling, and maybe even dare to touch him, whereupon he jumps back up and chases them again.

What little kid doesn’t get a thrill from watching “Peter and the Wolf” or some old Disney cartoon in which ghosts appear and scare Goofy into doing something hilarious?

No, Halloween needs to have some “scariness” to it, as long as it isn’t too scary to be fun.
 
Sounds like the “Put the Christ back in Christmas” campaigns but aimed at Halloween. It’ll likely be even less successful. Particularly given Halloween in it’s modern guise pulls more from Samhain, the original holiday on the day, than the Christian All Hallow’s Eve. That’s the risk the Church ran trying to co-opt a Pagan holiday, the Pagan aspects never went away and have now been secularized and adopted by the modern world.
 
Padres1969 said:
Sounds like the “Put the Christ back in Christmas” campaigns but aimed at Halloween. It’ll likely be even less successful. Particularly given Halloween in it’s modern guise pulls more from Samhain, the original holiday on the day, than the Christian All Hallow’s Eve. That’s the risk the Church ran trying to co-opt a Pagan holiday, the Pagan aspects never went away and have now been secularized and adopted by the modern world.
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But we don’t offer sacrifices to gods and spirits anymore, nor do we pray to anything other than the One and Only? Halloween is a secularized holiday that can be celebrated by all people of their own conscience in America, at least as far as we should go.

It can be fun for children and adults alike, so long as we remain within our everyday morality.
 
Hatikvah said:
But we don’t offer sacrifices to gods and spirits anymore, nor do we pray to anything other than the One and Only? Halloween is a secularized holiday that can be celebrated by all people of their own conscience in America, at least as far as we should go.

It can be fun for children and adults alike, so long as we remain within our everyday morality.
Click to expand...
In general I believe you’re correct. It’s so secularized, that Halloween as it stands today is all but meaningless as a religious holiday, Christian or otherwise. Even at Catholic schools I’ve been to over the years it has no religious connotation what so ever. It’s simply a dress up ang get candy or bob for apples day, nothing more. It seems unlike Christmas, which clearly still has a religious as well as a secular aspect, that the bishops are a few centuries too late to try and revive the patient in this case. Christian religious All Hallow’s Eve is a patient whose not only flatlined on the table, he’s been through the morgue, had a funeral, and been buried for a very long time now.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
Halloween will be coming up in two months. I came across an article that is saying there were a conference of Bishops from different countries basically banning anything “scary” about Halloween. The Bishops said kids can’t dress in scary costumes and can only listen to “Contemporary Christian” music during the Halloween dances…

catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/10/13/bishops-halloween-advice-dress-children-up-as-saints-not-witches/

At first I wasn’t sure if this was satire or not because some of the things mentioned:

Nor should pumpkins have menacing or scary faces carved into them, according to a website link provided by the bishops’ conference, but must wear smiley expressions and have crosses cut into the foreheads.

Party games during the October 31 revelries should also have a distinctively Christian theme, parents are told, with musical statues, or chairs, danced to music by “contemporary Christian artists”. Trick or treat pranks are definitely discouraged,

and the weirdest of all…
*
The suggestions for a Christian-style Halloween end with the idea that children each take a wrapped present from a box plastered with such slogans as “Jesus is our light”, “Jesus is our king”, “Jesus loves me” and “Jesus is the biz!”.*

Is any of this actually binding for Catholics to not celebrate the “scary” aspect of Halloween?

This seems to contradict what apologists like Jimmy Akin said about the holiday.
Click to expand...
One has to remember two things:
  1. This is an article for Catholics in the UK.
  2. Halloween is an American tradition begun by Irish Catholics.
The U.K. is very new to Halloween in many respects. Guy Fawkes night is the big celebration there, landing on Novemeber 5. It has to do with past tensions between the English and Catholics, and an effigy or “guy” gets burned to memorialize the execution of this “Catholic rebel.” The Protestant reformation all but left All Hallows’ Eve celebrations limited to Catholic Ireland.

With the large migration of Irish Catholics to the U.S., Halloween became a staple in America. Recently the holiday has become more and more associated with the occult and horrific displays, and this is what has crossed back the Atlantic to the U.K., not the American Halloween.

I must admit, at 50 years of age, Halloween decorations have become quite macabre. Last year I went into a “Halloween shop” to purchase die cut decorations for a party and found NONE. All there were was zombie figures and dead body parts and things that spewed blood. The only Jack o’latern had a bleeding skull inside, and all the costumes looked like costumes for men and women who were planning to go parading as strippers.

But I did manage to find the decorations I was looking for at another store and Halloween is still very much sweet fun for children, even now here in the United States. We still do things with children very much in mind all over the country when we celebrate the holiday.

This is not what has returned across the ocean. The bishops there are trying to get people to put “smiling faces” on pumpkins. That is a trademark here in America, but apparently the British have yet to learn that this is a family holiday.

Because Mexico is to the south and because we have a large Latino population, the festivities here in the USA also have a strong relgious overtone that leans heavily Catholic. Again, this is not what returned to the UK. Mexican-Americans remember their dead during this time of year. With their own customs, associated with Day of the Dead fiestas, it is hard to imagine the Catholic fling to it all to disappear.

Again, this is not the same in England. So they are having to be taught this celebration from scratch.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
Halloween will be coming up in two months. I came across an article that is saying there were a conference of Bishops from different countries basically banning anything “scary” about Halloween. The Bishops said kids can’t dress in scary costumes and can only listen to “Contemporary Christian” music during the Halloween dances…

This seems to contradict what apologists like Jimmy Akin said about the holiday.
Click to expand...
There is no contradiction. The paraphrase above is an exaggeration of what was actually said. That conference of bishops is implementing a specific push in their area. While I hope the Catholics there participate and serve as a Christian witness, such a gesture would fall flat if done by and individual here or there. i would like to see such an organized gesture here, but until then, there is not reason to follow what is done in Wales. No one would understand it.

There is no moral teaching here, just a program for that country.

On a related topic, scary and saintly are not exclusive. A couple of years back, my son went to All Saints Day dressed as St. John the Baptist, or as his head, anyway. He wore a white cloth over his body and a platter around his neck with copious amounts of red paint, topped off with a beard and scruffy hair.
 
pnewton said:
On a related topic, scary and saintly are not exclusive. A couple of years back, my son went to All Saints Day dressed as St. John the Baptist, or as his head, anyway. He wore a white cloth over his body and a platter around his neck with copious amounts of red paint, topped off with a beard and scruffy hair.
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Fun! 😃
 
By the way, to show how NEW Halloween is to the UK, note this quote from a recent BBC article:

“For much of the 20th Century Halloween languished in obscurity in Britain. It was outshone and overshadowed by Guy Fawkes Night bonfires and fireworks. In the past two decades, however, Halloween has experienced a renaissance. Between 2001 and 2010 British retailers reported a surge in UK Halloween related spending from £12M to £280M pounds. The costume market alone grew by a factor of 30.”–http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/0/24623370

Halloween got a boost in England with the writings of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. In the books and subsequent film adaptations the students of Hogwarts celebrate Halloween annually. Thus the books and movies helped to reintroduce Halloween in this fashion not many years ago.
 
pnewton said:
There is no contradiction. The paraphrase above is an exaggeration of what was actually said. That conference of bishops is implementing a specific push in their area. While I hope the Catholics there participate and serve as a Christian witness, such a gesture would fall flat if done by and individual here or there. i would like to see such an organized gesture here, but until then, there is not reason to follow what is done in Wales. No one would understand it.

There is no moral teaching here, just a program for that country.

On a related topic, scary and saintly are not exclusive. A couple of years back, my son went to All Saints Day dressed as St. John the Baptist, or as his head, anyway. He wore a white cloth over his body and a platter around his neck with copious amounts of red paint, topped off with a beard and scruffy hair.
Click to expand...
Genius!!!
 
Hatikvah said:
But we don’t offer sacrifices to gods and spirits anymore, nor do we pray to anything other than the One and Only? Halloween is a secularized holiday that can be celebrated by all people of their own conscience in America, at least as far as we should go.

It can be fun for children and adults alike, so long as we remain within our everyday morality.
Click to expand...
People do that on Halloween.
 
CeelosDeznos said:
By the way, to show how NEW Halloween is to the UK, note this quote from a recent BBC article:

"For much of the 20th Century Halloween languished in obscurity in Britain. It was outshone and overshadowed by Guy Fawkes Night bonfires and fireworks.
Click to expand...
I forgot about that. It is like the British equivalent of the Confederate flag. If any Catholic here does not know about Guy Fawkes Day, check it out. You will be shocked as to how this is still a thing.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
Halloween will be coming up in two months. I came across an article that is saying there were a conference of Bishops from different countries basically banning anything “scary” about Halloween. The Bishops said kids can’t dress in scary costumes and can only listen to “Contemporary Christian” music during the Halloween dances…

catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/10/13/bishops-halloween-advice-dress-children-up-as-saints-not-witches/

At first I wasn’t sure if this was satire or not because some of the things mentioned:

Nor should pumpkins have menacing or scary faces carved into them, according to a website link provided by the bishops’ conference, but must wear smiley expressions and have crosses cut into the foreheads.

Party games during the October 31 revelries should also have a distinctively Christian theme, parents are told, with musical statues, or chairs, danced to music by “contemporary Christian artists”. Trick or treat pranks are definitely discouraged,

and the weirdest of all…
*
The suggestions for a Christian-style Halloween end with the idea that children each take a wrapped present from a box plastered with such slogans as “Jesus is our light”, “Jesus is our king”, “Jesus loves me” and “Jesus is the biz!”.*
**
Is any of this actually binding for Catholics to not celebrate the “scary” aspect of Halloween?**

This seems to contradict what apologists like Jimmy Akin said about the holiday.
Click to expand...
If the Catholic Bishops request this, out of obedience to the Church, I would go along with it. It’s a small thing for them to ask, in the scheme of things, and so easy to comply with.

Remember that Halloween, despite any Catholic origins, has become one of the satanists’ two of its major holidays. So, I can see why the Bishops say that. They want Halloween to be celebrated as a good thing, not a bad one.
 
JB_Brother_4446 said:
People do that on Halloween.
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Yes, maybe Wiccans and Neopagan reconstructionist, but a Christian or a non-Christian common person probably would not. We do not celebrate it as a religious holiday (unless if it’s as All Hallow’s Eve?); it is more secular than religious nowadays.
 
I disagree with all the witches and devils part of Halloween. That’s not what All Hallows Eve is about, and I only celebrate the Catholic holiday - I don’t do trick or treating or anything with witches etc. There was an event at my parish where kids dressed up as their favourite Saints.
 
I’ve always loved Halloween. It’s probably my favorite holiday. The scary aspect has always fascinated me, from my childhood to now.
 
Monica4316 said:
I disagree with all the witches and devils part of Halloween. That’s not what All Hallows Eve is about, and I only celebrate the Catholic holiday - I don’t do trick or treating or anything with witches etc. There was an event at my parish where kids dressed up as their favourite Saints.
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Wise lady.I see no valid reason or excuse for dressing like that and pestering people for sweets you do not need, Some of the decorations etc are plain ugly and yes evil. Why go near darkness at all?
 
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