I received an email recently from a woman from Spain, who had questions about the practice of Halloween here in the States. In particular, she was concerned the wisdom or permissiveness of this sort of holiday being celebrated by practicing Catholics, and asked me my thoughts. Although Halloween is well behind us (we are almost to Thanksgiving), we Catholics and Christians face a similar dilemma with the upcoming seasons of Advent and Christmas. So the body of my response to her, below, might still be of some value in that regard.
- First, I’m not sure if it’s differently celebrated in Spain vs. the U.S. The two possibilities are:
- The celebration in Spain and the celebration in the U.S. are different; and maybe this makes a difference (that is, perhaps one shouldn’t do whatever is done in Spain, but the U.S. practices under the same name might be ok, or vice versa). Or:
- The idea in Spain and in the U.S. could be basically equal, in which case, it’s either bad to celebrate in both places, or, it’s ok in both places.
- Halloween certainly does have Catholic roots. It is on the eve/Vigil of the Feast of All Saints, whence its name: “All Hallows’ Eve,” that is, “the night before the feast of All ‘Hallows,’ or All Saints.”
- A common explanation for Halloween that I have heard (whether true or not, it is plausible) is this: Among certain peoples over the last few hundred years, there seems to have been the belief that on this evening, the souls of the dead would walk again on the earth causing mischief (“tricks,” as in “Trick or treat!”). People would dress up as ghosts or monsters, etc., in order to protect themselves against the souls of the dead and other evil spirits (like, imagine that you were running around in Nazi Germany and you didn’t want to get caught. If you were able to find the uniform of a German soldier that fit you, you might put it on in order to blend in).
- In my understanding, in the case of Halloween, the dressing-up was a kind of fall festival. The ancients and medievals and even early moderns loved their festivals, and it was all in good fun.
- The view that one shouldn’t participate in Halloween is based, I think, on the fear that it represents a kind of participation in the activity of demonic forces—because people dressed up apparently out of a belief that the souls of the dead and bad spirits walked the earth that night—and so, in the best case scenario (in their mind), dressing up “for fun” would be a failure to take the reality of the demonic seriously (and this is a real problem. For instance, one shouldn’t “play” with a Ouija board, even if one thinks, “It’s all fake and this is just for fun”); and in the worst case (in their mind) dressing up on Halloween is a form of worship of evil spirits, probably along the following lines of logic: (a) To “worship” means basically that we acknowledge something/someone as having power over us; (b) people dressed up in the past to avoid being harmed by evil spirits; (c) the fact that they thought evil spirits could harm them means that they acknowledged the power of the evil spirits over them; (d) therefore, fearing the power of evil spirits and doing something to protect yourself against that power is a kind of “worship.”
- People who object to the celebration of Halloween, then, generally fall into one of two camps:
- They are Christians (Catholic or Protestant) who think that “what kids are really doing” when they dress up as witches or goblins is disguising themselves against evil spirits, and so participating in a pagan form of ritual protection against supernatural beings who are not God.
- They are Catholics who think that “what the day really is” is a feast day—a solemnity, in fact—that is solemn enough to warrant being a Holy Day of Obligation, and so shouldn’t be “trivialized” by being secularized, like Christmas shouldn’t be reduced to incessant ads for toys starting November 1; continuous music on the radio about “holly, jolly Christmas” and “sleigh bells” and “this Christmas, I gave you my heart”; and Santa Claus and his elves.
- I would agree with this “Don’t secularize a holy day” to a large extent. All Saints’ Day is a very holy day. But I disagree with the idea that something that is holy is therefore necessarily not “secular,” in the sense of belonging to the saeculum, the ages, which is to say, to time and to this world. In other words, I disagree with the idea that if it is a holy day, it shouldn’t have “popular” dimensions. One of the largest distinguishing features between Catholicism and Protestantism is that Catholicism has a robust understanding of sacramentality: the realities of this world (the realities of this saeculum), such as water, bread, wine, oil, etc., can become efficacious means of communicating invisible grace. You don’t have sacraments without worldly elements. Along the same principles, the Catholic Church always embraced popular festivals, and showed people the supernatural realities that these festivals implicitly point to, without simply abolishing them altogether (except in the case of genuine worship of pagan gods or demons. In which case, demolish away).
- So my feeling about Halloween, in a nutshell, is that it is a festival of the culture in which we live, and in itself is at least harmless and at most (and this is my inclination) is something good for people to celebrate—not just kids, but adults, also. All societies need established rituals. All cultures need regularly occurring feasts where they do something to mark the passing of the season. In an overly technologized world, where we live increasingly disconnected from the natural seasons, it’s more important than ever that we maintain these festivals of the fall, the winter, the spring, the summer. In a highly divided society, more than ever we need rituals that unite us: Democrats and Republicans and Independents, Christians and Jews and non-believers, Black and White and Hispanic and Asian, all celebrate Halloween. I’m not saying that Halloween will bring world peace or anything, but a society that has nothing that its members do in common will easily fall, from forces without or from forces within.