The remarkable feature of an increasingly secular culture is that it tries to replace the cycle of the Church’s year with feasts and fasts of its own. In the case of Hallowe’en it has done so by simply appropriating an element of the Church’s year and making it near-unrecognisable.
Hallowe’en is, as the name tells us, associated with the Feast of All Saints of which it is the vigil, and also the feast of All Souls that follows immediately afterwards. It was hardly surprising then that in Ireland, customs to do with ghosts and divination should be associated with the vigil.
The pastimes were simple, like bobbing apples, or dressing up as ghosts, and the divination was harmless – in a traditional barmbrack, a fruit cake, the recipients might receive a wedding ring to see who would be married first, a matchstick for poverty, and so on; nowadays it’s just a ring. But when the Irish went to the US, they took Hallowe’en with them, and it has returned – even to places where it was unknown, like England – as an unrecognisable revenant, associated with horror and slasher films, hideously grotesque costumes and the consumption of enormous amounts of chocolate. Pumpkins have displaced the traditional turnip, even in Ireland. And, like every contemporary custom, it entails spending enormous amounts of money, whereas the old ways of marking the night were cheap and cheerful.
Catholics should repudiate this hollowing out of an old tradition, and return to simple dressing up, bobbing apples and eating barmbrack, and eschewing the more grotesque excesses. And we should, moreover, remember what Hallowe’en is, the vigil of All Saints’ Day, and go to Mass on the two days following to remember the blessed dead, and all the others besides.
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