HALLOWEEN

Facing the altar and tabernacle of the Ossuary chapel

beneath the Catholic Cemetery Church of All Hallows in Sedlec
image copyright Nick Moulds

November First is the Solemnity of All Saints. It is the day that Catholics celebrate The Church Triumphant. That is to say, the part of the Church made up of all of those who have died and now live in the presence of God. Those who now celebrate the eternal Heavenly Liturgy, the same liturgy we celebrate every day at Mass right along side of them. We call those members of The Church Triumphant "Saints."

The day before All Saints Day is called "All Saints Eve." Another word for "Saint" in our culture is "Hallow." So the day before The feast of All Saints is also known as "All Hallows Eve." The word Halloween is a contraction of these words. Literally, it means, "The Vigil of All Saints Day." In Catholic culture it is common for a big festival to be held the day before a major feast. These have commonly included activities like parties and masquerades and so-on. The same basic elements you see in your secular Halloween celebration. Mardi Gras literally comes from the same tradition which is why you see some obvious similarities between the secular celebrations of Mardi Gras and Halloween. Mardi Gras being the day before Ash Wednesday. Although, these days are traditionally observed in the Church with a Vigil Mass.

The night before the Feast of All Hallows marks the beginning of Allhallowtide, a triduum of feasts by which Catholics honor all the Saints and also pray for the souls in Purgatory (also known as The Church Suffering.)

The day after All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day (or All Hallows) All Hallows Day is a Holy Day of Obligation, which means that all Catholics throughout the world (The Church Militant) are obliged to attend Mass in order to celebrate the Church Triumphant.

The day after that, All Souls Day, is a day of prayer and fasting for the The Church Suffering. The souls in purgatory.

It is common to wonder why a Christian would celebrate a holiday that is so overrun with the imagery of death. Skeletons, graves, tombs and so-on. What is interesting to me is that, historically and currently, throughout the world, the Catholic tradition surrounding Allhallowtide could be seen as consistently even more morbid than the secular tradition of Halloween. Take, for example, these examples:

-The famous ossuary chapel inside the Cemetery Church of All Hallows in the Czech Republic which is furnished almost entirely with the bones of the faithful departed.

-The use of skulls and bones as common imagery concerning the saints.

-The famous "gilded saints." Skeletons arrayed in resplendent decoration as veneration of the Saints.

To an outsider, it is obvious that Allhallowtide revolves around those of our ranks who have died. But the meaning is deeper. We do not believe that the saints are dead. In Christ, they live forever. They are more alive even than us. They see the face of God. And, just as in one sense, we use the crucifix, the image of the crucified Christ, as simultaneously a reminder of Christ's suffering and death as well as a mockery of our persecutors and of death itself as it is now conquered by Christ, so we also embrace the imagery of death and decay in our veneration of the saints. In a sense these things are  simultaneously a reminder of and a mockery of that which Christ has conquered through His life, Death and Resurrection: nothing less than suffering and death themselves. By uniting our lives, our sufferings and our deaths with those of Christ, we may also become Saints.

Some will tell you that modern Halloween traditions come from the ancient pagan tradition of Samhain. While it is true that that Catholic Church, at its best, down through the ages has assimilated what is true and good in the customs and traditions of all the cultures that have joined her and that Christ is prefigured in the histories, customs and mythologies of many pre-Christian cultures,  it is important to recognize that the customs of All Hallows Eve emerged independently of these pagan traditions. All Hallows Day, the primary feast of the triduum, also doesn't take place on the same day as Samhain, but the day after, All Hallows Eve being the Vigil of All Hallows Day.

So the next time someone tells you that Halloween was "once known as 'All Hallows Eve'" you can tell them that, in the lives of one seventh of the world's population, it never stopped being that.

Happy Halloween.

See also:
The Worship of Saints
The Intercession of Saints