Update about my halloween

[Blessed_is_He]

Awhile ago I posted about how I would think I would have a hard time dealing with Halloween. Well, my family went to vital Mass for All Saints. It was so beautiful! After We took our son trick or treating in the churches parking lot. To my surprise they had the Blessed SAcrament exposed. So instead of wresting with the idea of letting my son go trick or treating or making it a holy night I had the best of both world’s. I was worried for nothing. It just felt like another night too.

 

[LittleFlower378]

Yea no reason to worry it doesn’t help anything. If you look up the history of haloween you will find it was originally a Catholic holiday. Yes some people.may have turned it around and it is a good opportunity to remember that evil exists but no reason not to celebrate and hallow the day before all saints with some wholesome fun and good brotherhood with your neighbors by trick or treating. Of course remember not to take it too far either. I am not hot on the skimpy costumes or the overly gory stuff.

 

[SpidersfromMars]

Yea no reason to worry it doesn’t help anything. If you look up the history of haloween you will find it was originally a Catholic holiday. Yes some people.may have turned it around and it is a good opportunity to remember that evil exists but no reason not to celebrate and hallow the day before all saints with some wholesome fun and good brotherhood with your neighbors by trick or treating. Of course remember not to take it too far either. I am not hot on the skimpy costumes or the overly gory stuff.

I think it also stems from Celtic pagan beliefs - an example of religious syncretism, like the Mexican Day of the Dead (Meso-American pagan and Catholic beliefs combined).

 

[Aelred_Minor]

I think it also stems from Celtic pagan beliefs - an example of religious syncretism, like the Mexican Day of the Dead (Meso-American pagan and Catholic beliefs combined).

I’m not an expert on the subject, but from what reading I’ve done I think the idea of Halloween being “Celtic” (rarely a useful term except regarding languages) or specifically Irish is largely a myth. The holiday itself comes from the rededication of the Pantheon in Rome as a church of All Saints. The newer date of November 1 (and therefore beginning the evening of October 31) seems to come from England and later Germany rather than from Ireland. Both the Celtic (there I go using the word myself) and Germanic peoples observed the beginning of the old-school “winter” about that day, and ritualized it of course (in Ireland this was the famous festival of Samhain, but again the immediate connection is probably to the English version of the first day of “winter”). Moving All Saints Day to that date allowed the Catholic Church to subvert and replace the pagan festivities, similar to how some Protestants have replaced All Saints Day with Reformation Day.

Secular practices like costumes and trick-or-treating, despite myths to the contrary, have Catholic and then post-Catholic roots, much more recent than any inculturation with pagans. Any real pagan influence was via 19th and 20th century imaginations.