Happy Halloween and All Saint's Day

I promise the Hinterspace podcast is coming. I had some technical difficulties, but now that those are resolved, I’m looking forward to sharing with you the conversation I had with Gene Rowley of Jumpmaster Press.

But today, I thought I’d share some thoughts I had on Halloween because I see a lot of pagan lies regurgitated by both zealous Protestants and Catholics about the holiday.

If you're like, yeah, I’m not here for this, you should probably stop reading because there's a lot of stuff unrelated to SFF below (but seriously, thanks for having read so far!)

Halloween: Can you celebrate it?

Yes. It's a secular holiday, like Thanksgiving or Veteran’s Day. The only reason it has any religious significance is because it was originally associated with All Saint’s Day, the following day.

But yes, the answer is yes. Catholics have been celebrating Halloween (All Hallows Eve - the day before the day of All the Holy People - the feast of All Saints) across Europe since 700 AD.

Yes, you read that right. We've been celebrating, anticipating, the feast day, one of the biggest in the Catholic Church, (like most people anticipate Christmas with a joyous Advent full of expectation) since the 8th c. Only about 500 years before any recorded pagan celebration of Samhain in an obscure Irish village.

Just because pagans unsurprisingly make stupid, ahistorical pagan claims to support their false religion, doesn't mean you have to believe them.

I don't believe in conceding any other holidays to them, no matter what they claim. Why would I cede Halloween?

In our modern day and age, the American tradition of this celebration has turned into a big costume party geared toward kids where they get candy. It's heavily commercialized so businesses can capitalize off it.

As pagans spread their lies and antiCatholics echoed the refrain (because Halloween originated with Catholics), the demonic aspects of it were inflated with outfits and decor that were geared toward an admiration of evil. Instead of poking fun at evil, proverbially thumbing our nose at the devil because we, as Catholics, know the battle has already been won - God triumphs and triumphed because He is the Alpha and the Omega. There is no contest. Instead of recognizing that, they succumb to either believing it's meaningless to pretend to the demonic or actively celebrating evil, perversion, or demonic activity (e.g. witchcraft, etc.)

Regardless of the pagans (and what they do is literally meaningless to me), the battle remains for our individual souls, but we're talking about the big picture - the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, hell. How appropriate that All Saints follows on the Feast of Christ the King.

We just celebrated the reign of Christ in our nations and lives, and in this feast day, we see the affects of such a reign, the heroically virtuous lives of the Saints. Glory to God in His angels and in His saints!

Our experience trick or treating

I haven't seen kids doing innocuous kids stuff all together out on the streets in a long time. Of course I would love it if they would celebrate All Saints Day, but just because they aren't doesn't mean we can't celebrate Halloween.

I find it sad that so many Catholics are willing to reject an American pastime and "holify" it in a sort of puritanical, jansenistic spirit. Stop believing the pagan lies, or giving them power by spreading them as legitimate. Pagans are going to pagan. We're not pagan, so what does that have to do with us?

That doesn't mean everything has to be religiously oriented either. It's a secular celebration ahead of the feast day and can be celebrated how you like (we have the freedom to choose between goods).

We don't have to have it religiously oriented more than anything else we do needs to be expressly religiously oriented (e.g. birthdays, Thanksgiving, or Memorial Day.) Or how about anything else you enjoy that isn't specifically and expressly religiously oriented? Or do you only read religious books and watch religious movies?

It's not demonic just because it's not expressly Catholic in orientation. It can be passively Catholic (that is, not opposed to the Faith).

I thoroughly enjoyed our full, family outing. All the older kids paired up with a younger kid and made sure the kids were polite and not bratty.

It was encouraging to see all the kids out in droves, many of them wearing unique and original, modest home made costumes. Parents were all over the place.

Some of our kids wore their All Saints Day costumes, while others didn't.

We had one of the martyred Sisters of Compiegne, St. Francis of Assisi, and Blessed Isabel of France (sister to St. Louis). Tomorrow, we will also have St. Dominic Savio, St. Peter in Chains, St. Germaine Cousins, and St. Catherine of Sienna.

I hope all of you have a happy and holy triptych of the dead. We'll be back to the regular programming next week!

Christ is King!