Why does Halloween give all stripes of Catholics the heeby jeebies? Given the diversity of opinion among "Catholics" on fundamental matters like sexuality, doctrine, and the Sacraments, I am surprised never to have met in person a Catholic in favor of Halloween.
We know Trads do not like Halloween, given the absence of it (All Hallows' Eve) in the 1962 kalendar. Other Catholics do not like it either. I remember in October of 2010, when I was acting as a friend's Confirmation sponsor at University, the feminist who favored female "ordination" who taught RCIA gave everyone a copy of some biweekly flyer as a means of instruction (this was the method of instruction every week.... a four page pamphlet....). That particular week's was about how Catholics should reclaim Halloween by dressing up at St Thomas More and holding a fake head under one's arm!
Personally, I could not care less. Unlike other pagan practices such as Yoga and Hindu meditation, the non-Christian religious aspects of Halloween have gradually disappeared, at least here in the United States. Hindu meditation requires one to get in touch with one's inner "chakra." Dressing up as the Headless Horseman does not. Some stranger practices, like the Mexican Día de los muertos, do retain pagan aspects of ritual. In the Mexican ritual, one builds altars for the deceased and offers them food. This goes much further than lighting votive candles.
Were I married with children, I am not sure I would be trick-or-treating with my children, but I doubt I would be very bothered by others doing so.
M.J. used to go trick or treating with his kids in a small town in Maine. While they went door to door, M.J. and his friend would stand back in the street smoking cigars, drinking beer, and talking, while the wives critiqued the different costumes and house decorations.
ReplyDeleteThe kids wore costumes his wife made; it was all just good fun in the fall
I'm a Catholic and I love Halloween. Let's have a beer so you can say you met one in person.
ReplyDeleteExactly! It's just a fun little thing.
DeletePumpkin beer?
I really don't see the Even of All Hallows to be any different to any other vigil; except those of the three Great Feasts which have each their proper traditions.
ReplyDeleteMy family and I went trick-or-treating every year, and we were in the $$PX. We just didn't bring it up in church the next day.
ReplyDeleteI will not "celebrate" Hallowe'en this year, but first of all because it is not a Spanish tradition - it is horrible to see how my country's culture is been fagocited by the mainstream consumist-anglo-saxon psudoculture (with all my respects towards Anglo-Saxon people).
ReplyDeleteK. e.
...the feminist who favored female "ordination" who taught RCIA gave everyone a copy of some biweekly flyer as a means of instruction (this was the method of instruction every week.... a four page pamphlet....). That particular week's was about how Catholics should reclaim Halloween by dressing up at St Thomas More and holding a fake head under one's arm!
ReplyDeleteThis is rather odd, since the women's ordination types tend not to be the sort that obsess with dressing up the kids as St Thomas More or Catherine of Siena on Halloween, or driven by the kind of antipathies that cause conniptions with Halloween costumes at all.
There is an interesting article about the "smear campaign" against Halloween by some extremists in the Eastern orthodox Chruch here: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2009/10/orthodoxy-and-halloween-seperating-fact.html
ReplyDeleteAnd this is hilarious: a "fake" statement written by a revered Serbian Saint Nikolai Velimirovich to suppirt the views of extremists. http://www.daimonologia.org/2014/11/did-st-nikolai-velimirovich-write.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Daimonologia+%28DAIMONOLOGIA%29