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E_7
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Not meaning to be a party pooper, but personally speaking, we see no reason to dress up in costumes and give/receive candies on the 31st of October. 
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bitterhope
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We love Halloween. We dress up for trick or treating and then have an all saints day party. We also celebrate day of the dead and have an altar. We trick or treat, go to mass, visit cemetery and remember our loved ones. Part of the reasons I love Fall so much. They all pave the way for Thanksgivingâmy favorite holiday.
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PhiloMed
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Most adults donât. When your son gets closer to school age you may be stuck with the tradition.Not meaning to be a party pooper, but personally speaking, we see no reason to dress up in costumes and give/receive candies on the 31st of October.
After about age 13 I completely lost interest in Halloween and couldnât understand all the fuss.
Finished school, got married, moved into a Halloween-heavy neighborhood so even if your lights are off you are going to get kids knocking on your door. Nobody wants to be THAT house with the âSorry, we donât do Halloweenâ sign. Thatâs a sure fire way to get T-Pâd.
Now itâs fun. The kids love their costumes and I get to eat the peanut butter cups because my son is allergic!
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EasterJoy
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It is a reason to have fun and there is chocolate involved, so why pass that up? Honestly, there needs to be a reason not to, such as unnecessary expense that handicaps our capacity to offer charity or some risk of giving scandal to the weak already prone to a near occasion of sin:Not meaning to be a party pooper, but personally speaking, we see no reason to dress up in costumes and give/receive candies on the 31st of October.
*Now in regard to meat sacrificed to idols: we realize that âall of us have knowledgeâ; knowledge inflates with pride, but love builds up. If anyone supposes he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one loves God, one is known by him.
So about the eating of meat sacrificed to idols: we know that âthere is no idol in the world,â and that âthere is no God but one.â Indeed, even though there are so-called gods in heaven and on earth (there are, to be sure, many âgodsâ and many âlordsâ), yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things are and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and through whom we exist. But not all have this knowledge. There are some who have been so used to idolatry up until now that, when they eat meat sacrificed to idols, their conscience, which is weak, is defiled.
Now food will not bring us closer to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, nor are we better off if we do. But make sure that this liberty of yours in no way becomes a stumbling block to the weak. If someone sees you, with your knowledge, reclining at table in the temple of an idol, may not his conscience too, weak as it is, be âbuilt upâ to eat the meat sacrificed to idols? Thus through your knowledge, the weak person is brought to destruction, the brother for whom Christ died. When you sin in this way against your brothers and wound their consciences, weak as they are, you are sinning against Christ. Therefore, if food causes my brother to sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I may not cause my brother to sin.* 1 Cor. 8:1-13
We must admit that what applies to meat also applies to chocolate. If we have a concrete reason to believe that our participation in Halloween might lead someone else to be more prone to sin, we ought to refrain, out of concern for our brother or sister in Christ.
Having said that, we donât do anything special on New Yearâs Eve. Itâs nothing more than a part of the Octave of Christmas to us, and no reason to lose any sleep. If something everyone else likes is no fun to you, there is no reason you canât let their party pass you by. They struggle on bravely without us!!
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EasterJoy
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Someone needs to tell St. Cinderella about the real queens who have been named among the saints and blesseds:Our pastor encourages the children to come to Mass on All Saints dressed as Saints, but the very youngest can come as storybook characters. ( we do a big picnic and Trunk or Treat after the 11 AM Mass annually)
Iâll never forget the time he asked a 4 yr. old during his homily, which saint she was, and she proudly proclaimed âSaint Cinderella!â
St. Clotilde, queen of King Clovis I, king of the Franks
St. Adelaide, queen of King Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor
St. Elizabeth of Hungary
St. Margaret of Scotland
St. Elizabeth of Portugal (who I am told took after her aunt and namesake, St. Elizabeth of Hungary)
St. Jadwiga of Poland (also known as St. Hedwig, according to the German form of her name)
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EasterJoy
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All this is very true, although we should not go so far as to make All Souls Day a day of obligation when the Church has not done so.
When we pray for the dead, we ought to remember that although the Holy Souls in Purgatory can no longer win merit for themselves after death, they are still capable of praying for us, and we ought to ask them to do so. Of course they need our prayers, too, and not just our willingness to remember them fondly or to talk about them with respect!!
Of the Holy Souls, it has been said:
They are unable to pray or merit anything for themselves, yet, when they pray for others, they are heard by God. âSt. Alphonsus
If it were but known how great is the power of the good souls in Purgatory with the Heart of God, and if we knew all the graces we can obtain through their intercession, they would not be so much forgotten. We must, therefore, pray much for them, that they may pray much for us.
-** St. John Vianney**
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EasterJoy
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GreyWings
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Halloween is very misunderstood. Perhaps itâs my Irish blood, and Iâve researched it with great interest, but Halloween itself, historically anyway, is actually Catholic. I find myself smiling when Christians go to âHarvest Festivalsâ instead of celebrating Halloween (All Hallows Eve) because Samhain was, to the Druids, a harvest festival. 
While the Druids are an enigma, Samhain is also an enigma. Samhain was basically a time of transition. The Druids had practices, though, that alarm, such as human sacrifice, but keep in mind that very few info is written about the Druids, and most of what we have is from Romans such as Julius Caesar. The Romans felt superior to many other cultures, including Carthage, another culture that participated in human sacrifice, and this was very taboo to the Romans. Why do you think the Romans hated Christians so much? Answer: they equated Christians with the human sacrifice of our Lord.
Anyway, the concept of Trick or Treating is from the medieval practice of âSouling,â when people would go door to door asking for bread in exchange for prayers.
Halloween as we know it today has become commercialized, but is still, to me, a day of remembering the dead and the following All Saints Day, and I also enjoy the candy and snacks, and dressing up. I also donât like the sleazy costumes marketed towards women, but you donât have to go that route. I dressed up as a video game character last year and it was a blast.
While the Druids are an enigma, Samhain is also an enigma. Samhain was basically a time of transition. The Druids had practices, though, that alarm, such as human sacrifice, but keep in mind that very few info is written about the Druids, and most of what we have is from Romans such as Julius Caesar. The Romans felt superior to many other cultures, including Carthage, another culture that participated in human sacrifice, and this was very taboo to the Romans. Why do you think the Romans hated Christians so much? Answer: they equated Christians with the human sacrifice of our Lord.Anyway, the concept of Trick or Treating is from the medieval practice of âSouling,â when people would go door to door asking for bread in exchange for prayers.
Halloween as we know it today has become commercialized, but is still, to me, a day of remembering the dead and the following All Saints Day, and I also enjoy the candy and snacks, and dressing up. I also donât like the sleazy costumes marketed towards women, but you donât have to go that route. I dressed up as a video game character last year and it was a blast.
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Trident_H
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Wow. You guys are neat. I wish Iâd grown up around you guys.Our family loves Halloween!! Ever since my children were very small, we have always had a huge neighborhood party. My husband and I would buy 50+ pumpkins, hollow them out (wellâŚthat was my husbandâs job), buy or print up a lot of patterns and tools, fix food and invite anyone who wanted to attend. Over the years, our tools have expanded as have our patterns. My husband even bought a pumpkin cleaning power tool. The party is usually held 3 days before Halloween. All of the neighborhood kids and parents carve pumpkins- and we put them out all down the street on orange buckets that I obtained from a home supply store. Every night, we put the pumpkins out- then bring them in around 10:00. My husband and I stay outside with them, keeping them lit- and neighbors join us. We all sit outside talking while our kids compare pumpkins. It is a season of fun and friendship for us. On Halloween night, we have a lot of Trick-or-Treaters who enjoy the pumpkin art show. And, of course, the kids all bring their friends by to see their âartworkâ on the street. As we have grown older, it has become more of a pumpkin aerobic class for us but we love it. Our kids are now grown and married with their own children- but the tradition continues in our neighborhood as well as theirâs. Weâve even been on TV! Iâm always saddened when I read about people who donât let their children dress up, get candy and just be kids for the night. The devil has way more stealth ways to come at people than Halloween celebrations. And God is always here to defeat these attacks on His followers. So have faith and have fun!
Mind you. We werenât allowed to do the whole Halloween thing. Mom was pretty strict on that score.
Of course I wasnât Catholic then. And I didnât convert until my twenties. And since Iâve never had any kids Iâve never been out trick or treating. But Iâve given out candy. It seems like a lot of fun.
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Trident_H
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Ha. I would have loved to see that.Halloween is very misunderstood. Perhaps itâs my Irish blood, and Iâve researched it with great interest, but Halloween itself, historically anyway, is actually Catholic. I find myself smiling when Christians go to âHarvest Festivalsâ instead of celebrating Halloween (All Hallows Eve) because Samhain was, to the Druids, a harvest festival.
Anyway, the concept of Trick or Treating is from the medieval practice of âSouling,â when people would go door to door asking for bread in exchange for prayers.
Halloween as we know it today has become commercialized, but is still, to me, a day of remembering the dead and the following All Saints Day, and I also enjoy the candy and snacks, and dressing up. I also donât like the sleazy costumes marketed towards women, but you donât have to go that route. I dressed up as a video game character last year and it was a blast.
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GreyWings
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Well said, Easter. Iâm agreeing with you⌠this isnât often
:thumbsup:Trident H:
A Nintentdo character, specifically.
Once I dressed as Charlie Chaplin, now that was fun.
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EasterJoy
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As one of my friends sometimes tells me, even a blind pig finds an acorn, once in awhile.Well said, Easter. Iâm agreeing with you⌠this isnât often
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gtaliente
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I havenât posted in a while but I have some serious issues with these posts. Halloween is not an innocent feast. We are celebrating a day that Satanic cults are using for heretical actions, evil actions (sacrifices, denegration of the Eucharist). They are performing these acts BECAUSE it is Halloween, and we are giving tacit approval by going out and having parties. IMHO, I equate it to being OK with pro life people going to Planned Parenthood for pregnancy tests or other OBGyn issues. If this is OK then so is Halloween. Please help me see where I am wrong. Exoricists all over the country are warning Catholics not to celebrate it. In our Diocese, the only exorcist we have is having a Mass and Adoration for reparation of all the atrocities being committed on this day.
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Bruised_Reed
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The credibility of this is dubious. First, I havenât heard of exorcists all over the country saying anything about Halloween. Can you point to any diocesan papers that are promoting this? One article I found when I looked was about Pope Francis praising exorcists and suggesting changing âHalloweenâ of âHolyween.â I hope this isnât true because it makes Catholics sound like dopes. What part of âhallowâ doesnât he understand? Yikes. (And unless there is a recording of him saying this, I wonât believe it. The secular media does distort things like this.)
And about those calls the exorcists get come from parents who are afraid their child is involved in the occult: just because the parents call doesnât mean t the kids are involved in anything Satanic. They are just freaked out about something. Funny how we donât hear how many turn out to be something of actual concern.
Some Christians think Halloween is some satanic holy day when it really isnât (to Satanists oneâs own birthday is the highest holy day so parents better cancel birthday parties).
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EasterJoy
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Planned Parenthood is a singular organization with separate-but-connected services offered to the general public. Halloween is not. It was not invented by Satanists and it certainly hasnât reached its present-day form as a benefit to them. Modern-day Satanism is just as much an invention of 20th century imagination as modern-day paganism is.
The way the Satanists use Halloweenâor even the way neo-pagans such as the Wiccans use it, which is a separate matterâhas nothing whatsoever to do with trick or treating and jack oâlanterns on the porch. Whether or not some little kid dresses up like a princess in order to charm her neighbors out of a bag of candy or stays home is going to have zero effect on them. You may as well say, as some Protestants do, that the feast of Christmas is so tainted by secular greed that weâre better off not celebrating it at all. That, too, is a slippery slope. Have the Jews quit celebrating Passover because of what the Christians did with it? No. Has the Church ditched Christmas because of what the department stores have done with it? No, using Christmas as an excuse for greed is not taking Christmas off the calendar. St. Patrickâs Day, off the calendar? No, not even with all the drunkenness it is used to excuse.
Having said that, it is far preferable to celebrate Dia de los Muertos, which celebrates the communion of the saints. As for making reparation for atrocities, the number of people obliviously using a Saturday-night Halloween as an excuse for debauchery, flippant sacrilege, and drunkenness that âmeans no harmâ to the Church will undoubtedly inflict far more spiritual harm than the small number of people already so given over to deliberate service of the Evil One that they dedicate that evening to purposefully blasphemous rituals.
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PhiloMed
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Well said, EJ!
I was going to use the same analogy that we donât abandon Christmas simply because retailers have made it about Santa Claus nor have we given up Easter because some celebrate the Solstice with pagan rituals and others think it is nothing more than a day for bunnies and marshmallow Peeps.
We keep holidays in perspective, both secular and religious.
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EasterJoy
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Her point that the night will call forth activities that cry for reparation is well-taken, however. There are some who use it as one more night to abandon all morals and openly attack religion, and many prefer to pursue that end in the most shocking ways possible. They may not be Satanists, but many are blithely blowing a raspberry at the end thingsâeat, drink, and be merry, for God is a myth and tomorrow, we die! That kind of thinking and that kind of behavior deserves some prayers of reparation, even more than for those neo-pagans who at least believe they are doing honor to some good force in the universe, even as they deny the plain truth that has been preached to them. (That rejection, after all, is sometimes rooted in scandal taken at how far we Christians fall short of what the Gospels say: these people didnât necessarily stray all by themselves, but stray because we ourselves are so lukewarm.) We would like to see all these souls in Heaven some day, after all, as we hope we will be accepted for eternal bliss in spite of our blind faults. The Lord surely thirsts for each one of us, pities us in our blind pursuit of what is deadly to our souls, and hopes that we each will pray for each other out of both fear of plain justice and filial care for our neighbors.
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Andre1000
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The best thing about Halloween for me is that Halloween basically eradicated Reformation Day in Germany. No one talks about this anymore. This is good because Reformation Day is surly the most satanic day ever existed.
Also I want point out that Society perverted Halloween because Catholic donât celebrate it the proper way anymore. So we have to take Halloween back and show the world the true value of it.
Also I want point out that Society perverted Halloween because Catholic donât celebrate it the proper way anymore. So we have to take Halloween back and show the world the true value of it.
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JoyToTheWhirled
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Reformation day is a big thing amongst some of my protestant friends. Used to celebrate it myself.
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