Celebrating Hallowe'en

Just discovered that singer/songwriter Steve Bell has a blog.  And if the quality of this post on “Keeping Christ in Hallowe’en” is any indication, he is worth tracking with.  He explores the pagan origins of the event, and how Christian Celts added to it and enriched it when St Patrick came to Ireland.  (And you need to click on that post to view an amazing pumpkin carved by his wife.)

He says:

It’s true that the  origins of Halloween come from a dark, Celtic pagan festival called Samhain. The Celts believed there was a night every fall where the veil between the living and the dead became very thin and indeed, the souls of the dead could cross over to the land of the living.  This was frightening as it meant that besides the souls of departed loved ones, the souls of one’s enemies might also come by with evil intent.  To ward off the malevolent ones, the Celts would cut up gourds into frightening faces, and themselves would dress in costumes so as to be unrecognizable to the restless, roaming spirits.   It was a long and frighting night to be endured.

According to legend, things changed when St. Patrick came to Ireland.  He was aware of and saddened by the annual terror the Celts had to endure and so started to teach that as Christians, not only are we not afraid of the dead, but we celebrate the saints who have gone before; those who, still alive in  Christ, are always near and dear to us.  Patrick started the practice of going out on Samhain with a bag full of sweet cakes and knocking on doors,  cheerfully giving them to his cowering friends and neighbors.

Somewhere in there, and I’m not sure of the dates, the practice of cheerfully going out in generous neighborliness, instead of cowering in caged fear, became attached to the church’s celebration of All Saint’s Day. And Halloween,  All Hallowed Evening, came to be celebrated on the night before the Church celebrates all the saints who, though invisible to us, continue to pray for and root for those of us who have not yet completed our journey.

Final thought from Steve:

For we do not draw from a shallow well,  but the inexhaustible Christ who gave himself entirely so that all would know that the organizing and redeeming principle of the cosmos is not self-securing fear, but  self-donating love.