Halloween

“It was the Irish Catholics who came up with the idea to remember somehow those souls who did not live by the Faith in this life. It became customary for these Irish to bang on pots and pans on All Hallow’s Eve to let the damned know that they were not forgotten. In Ireland, then, all the dead came to be remembered. This, however, is still not exactly like our celebration of Halloween.

On Halloween we also dress up in costumes. This practice arose in France during the 14th and 15th centuries. During the horrible bubonic plague, the Black Death, Europe lost half of her population. Artists depicted this on walls to remind us of our own mortality. These pictures and representations are known as the ‘Dance of Death’ or ‘Dance Macabre.’ These figures were commonly painted on cemetery walls and showed the devil leading a daisy chain of people into the tomb. Sometimes the dance was re-enacted 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 Catholic as well.”

Fascinating, isn’t it? Read more here if you want to learn about the connection between Halloween and that most anti-Catholic of celebrations, Guy Fawkes Day.

We’ve pretty much abandoned the trick-or-treating, opting instead to participate in St. Stephen’s grand All Saints Party. Many of the moms plan ahead for this event: LeXuan has already made the costumes for our little saints. Anyway, you’ve got to experience one of these parties — if only so you can tell your fundie Protestant friends that your Halloween activities include gathering in a circle around a gigantic bonfire in the middle of the night while chanting in Latin.