Halloween

  • Thread starter Thread starter laurakelly
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laurakelly said:
Hi everyone,

I’m new to the forums here. I hope this is the correct one for this question.

I am struggling with how to explain to other (Catholics) why we do not celebrate Halloween. Is there an offical church teaching on this?

Thanks,
Laura
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If anyone asks, just tell them you’re not comfortable celebrating it. If they ask anymore, they’re just being nosy! I don’t believe there are any official church teachings against it, though. Our church does a “trunk or treat” night for the kids.
 
We don’t celebrate Halloween. We do go to an All Saints Day party. Dressing up is always fun, but I don’t like all the death symbolism.

When I am asked if we celebrate Halloween, I say no, and then tell them we do an All Saints Party. Most people don’t take it any further. I guess I would tell them that All Saints Day is such an important Holy Day that the Halloween celebration distracts too much from that. To closer friends, I might go more in detail talking about the reality of devils and witches and how I just don’t like my family to be involved with that.

I have nothing against dressing up and trick or treating–I don’t like the skeletons, witches, devils, monsters, axe murderers, etc.

Every family has different traditions and I have no judgement about others. I know very good families whom I greatly admire who do celebrate Halloween. This is just the decision we have made for our family. 🙂
 
Nothing wrong with the idea of Halloween, just don’t wear a costume that has an evil/occult theme.

Doesn’t have to be specifically Christian or Catholic either. I’m sure there are plenty of others you can use - superheroes, pirates, characters from books, movies or comics …
 
We brought back an old tradition last year on Halloween. When we went trick-or-treating, we asked each family if they had any deceased family members or friends that they wanted us to pray for. I wrote them down and after we finished our rounds, I placed them on our family prayer table and we prayed for all the deceased, especially those on our list. Then we enjoyed the candy. 🙂 I was amazed how even our non-Catholic neighbors were so pleased with this idea. They were more than happy to add names to our list.
 
AnnaTherese said:
We brought back an old tradition last year on Halloween. When we went trick-or-treating, we asked each family if they had any deceased family members or friends that they wanted us to pray for. I wrote them down and after we finished our rounds, I placed them on our family prayer table and we prayed for all the deceased, especially those on our list. Then we enjoyed the candy. 🙂 I was amazed how even our non-Catholic neighbors were so pleased with this idea. They were more than happy to add names to our list.
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In the middle ages, the poor would go from house to house and offer to pray for the family’s deceased loved ones in return for either food or a soul’s cake. This is the origin of Trick or Treat.

Just as aside…There are many websites that pass on urbane legends about Halloween’s beginnings. Yes, the Celts had some sort of end of summer festival that had something to do with the deceased but we know nothing of their actual practices during this time. Most of the traditions of Halloween are very Christian. A lot of information on Halloween is actually bogus and not backed by archaeological evidence. .

Sorry for the rant. I love Halloween.
 
please check out Catholics united for the Faith at cuf.org as they have a great article on the whole halloween thing.
 
Halloween is fun! CAVITIES!

I can’t wait to give out candy as a priest.
 
We always go trick or treating at the rectory. One year our parish priest dressed up like the Pope. 🙂
 
THIS should be a three day event. 🙂
Halloween is the night before All Saints Day , two great reasons to party. Go trick or treating on the eve, then have a campfire with marshmellows and ghost stories.
Then get up early attend the All Saints Day Mass then home to a feast. Its a great occasion to have pumpkin pie, apple cider a cake covered with everyone’s Saint name.Tell stories why your person became a Saint.
The next day All Souls day go to church again. Take a list of all your deceased family and friends and pray for thir souls and light candles for them.
Enjoy the liturgical Catholic seasons!
 
The three day party is a great idea… I’ve been struggling with finding a way to emphasize All Saint’s and All Souls Days while still having fun with Halloween (to be sure the focus is where it should be). My kids are young but I want to start these traditions now. I remember as a kid we went to Mass on Halloween (in our costumes, no less) and then went trick or treating. I plan on doing that, but wasn’t sure what to do to make All Saints/Souls Days special too. Pumpkin pie is a great idea (I’m pregnant so it doesn’t take much to convince me!). Anybody have any else? I’ve been searching so many sites for ideas on how to bring these feast days into my kids lives and don’t have much to show for it.

P.S. I heard it mentioned that dressing as a pirate, though a classic costume now, is really not that different than dressing as a terrorist when you compare the two in their own time… just a thought.

Thank you!
 
snoot said:
P.S. I heard it mentioned that dressing as a pirate, though a classic costume now, is really not that different than dressing as a terrorist when you compare the two in their own time… just a thought.
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I can see how one would connect that, but I don’t think pirates had a ‘jihad’ against certain boats and that’s why they attacked them. They were just greedy ( and, believe it or not, very democratic about all the happenings on the ship!).
👍
 
snoot said:
The three day party is a great idea… I’ve been struggling with finding a way to emphasize All Saint’s and All Souls Days while still having fun with Halloween (to be sure the focus is where it should be). My kids are young but I want to start these traditions now. I remember as a kid we went to Mass on Halloween (in our costumes, no less) and then went trick or treating. I plan on doing that, but wasn’t sure what to do to make All Saints/Souls Days special too. Pumpkin pie is a great idea (I’m pregnant so it doesn’t take much to convince me!). Anybody have any else? I’ve been searching so many sites for ideas on how to bring these feast days into my kids lives and don’t have much to show for it.
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We explain to our kids that the secular world has no clue about most of the celebrations that they participate in (Xmas, StPat, StVal, Easter, Thanksgiv, and Halloween).

On Halloween we focus on how non Christians are scared of death and the dead so they make up a lot of ‘rituals’ to deal with their fear. We also try to show how comforting the Christian understanding of death can be. We try to go over their saints again and we pray for all our dead relatives especially any the kids may remember.
 
Eileen_T said:
We used to celebrate the Catholic Feast of All Saints. Halloween (All Hallows’ Eve) was instituted to draw people away from pagan practice. .
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wow this is a really admirable activity…something to be proud of, deceiving people in order to control them. AND increase your number…speaking of the “truth”…😛
 
Medbh said:
wow this is a really admirable activity…something to be proud of, deceiving people in order to control them. AND increase your number…speaking of the “truth”…😛
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Dear Medbh,

Nice to see you. what a post! Could you elaborate? How have the Catholics deceived people in order to control them and increase our number?

Other pagans here on the forum (whammy comes to mind here) thought they had such a case agaist the chruch. Yet, they admitted they had overlooked a few things in history about the pagans.
PS why werent you here at halloween? and why would you wish to revive a moribound thread like this one?

Nice to see you here BTW.
 
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