The medieval Catholic Church created the feast of All Saints Nov.
1 to honor the blessed people who could not be included in the church's formal
list of saints. In England, the word "hallow" was used to mean the
sacred, and thus there the day was All Hallows' Day.
But also of great importance was the day before it, Oct. 31,
which was a traditional pagan harvest feast day. Trying to counter pagan
beliefs, the English Catholic Church called this day All Hallows' Eve, which
then became Halloween.
The new Christian day took over the pagan harvest festival, and
the saints replaced — but not always — the pagan fertility gods.
Furthermore, the saints substituted for the gods in warding off
all the terrors — sprites, trolls, goblins — that roamed the world on All
Hallows' Eve. This was a popular day for medieval Christians.
But as Halloween moved into the modern era, the feast and the
church had to deal with the earthquakes of the Protestant Reformation and then
English attempts to stamp out the feast of All Hallows' Eve.
Protestants insisted that they would be guided only by what was
in the Bible. They claimed that the cult of the saints was not there. All
Saints' Day and thus Halloween disappeared in many Protestant locales.
Yet people missed the traditional day, so the English created a
substitute festival. Nov. 5, 1605, British authorities arrested and later
executed several English Catholics accused of trying to blow up the Houses of
Parliament.
One was named Guy Fawkes, thus generating a raucous festival
known in England and thus in the British American colonies as Guy Fawkes Day, a
substitute for the "Catholic" Halloween.
This new day was popular in the Colonies, but during the
Revolution, George Washington feared that the celebration's blatant
anti-Catholicism would offend the rebels' French Catholic allies.
After the Revolution, Guy Fawkes Day declined, while Halloween
would triumph in the United States, which officially separated church and
state. Many immigrants had been persecuted in Europe, and so they loved the
freedom to celebrate their own religious holidays.
Halloween was observed by the few Scottish immigrants but
especially by the millions of Irish (most of them Catholic) who came to the U.S.
They kept their traditions but also changed some, for example, carving scary
faces in pumpkins rather than turnips as back in the old country, thus creating
jack-o'-lanterns.
Some American Protestants, especially farmers, also had kept some
of the old traditions associated with the harvest.
The rise of Halloween helped meet America's need for holidays
since the Colonial ones (e.g., feast of St. George, the patron of England) did
not survive the Revolution.
Unfortunately, another tradition, anti-Catholicism, also crossed
the ocean, and Catholic traditions were not always welcome. But as the
immigrants became Americanized, their traditions became accepted.
For example, many conservative Protestants refused to celebrate
Halloween, but as Irish, Polish, Slavic, Italian and Germanic Catholics did so,
more and more of their fellow citizens accepted it. Today, only fundamentalists
oppose the day on the grounds that its focus on witches and ghosts opens
innocent children to demonic influences.
The contemporary church has no official position on the
celebration of Halloween since its religious character is largely gone. Now
people just smile at children dressed as demons and monsters. Rectory doors
have been known to be open for trick-or-treaters, and Catholic schools put up
Halloween decorations.
Church leaders have, however, lamented the holiday's dominant and
relentless commercialization that, as always, takes a toll on impoverished
children whose parents cannot afford costumes or bags of candy to give away.
The clergy stress helping poor children on this day.
Finally, clergy will remind believers that, no matter how secular
it has become, Oct. 31 is the eve of a holy day, and some recognition of that
is not out of place.
Happy Halloween.
Kelly is professor emeritus at Jesuit-run John Carroll
University in Ohio.