Conspiracies & Catholicism: Halloween

Foxfier 2

All Hallow’s Eve, when ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night, are all out in force….

Well, I already dealt with some monsters back in the demon, vampire and Frankenstein articles, but there are still a lovely bunch of little Halloween things to look at.

Pag-again?

Like pretty much every other big Catholic thing, it’s supposedly Pagan to have a party during the vigil before All Saint’s day. There is a long history of having a sort of harvest festival in pretty much any culture that can produce more than they can store (frequently it’s when you harvest fruits or slaughter the animals before winter) and there was one called Samhain in Ireland. There’s another one coming up in the US, called Thanksgiving. Since becoming Catholic didn’t suddenly make it so they had modern means of storing food that spoils quickly the parties would have kept happening, and when centuries after the pagan practices were gone the feast of All Saints was instituted there was nothing there to “steal.”

The trick-or-treating is believed to have grown out of gathering food for the vigil feast, plus hospitality, sort of like carolers traditionally get figgy pudding and something to drink; there is no specific support for this theory, but it does have more support than claims of pagan origins for the vigil of All Saint’s! Parties on feast days are traditional, priests (and their helpers, which at feast time would likely be small children) would likely be in charge of setting them up. There’s also the tradition of soul cakes, which were a food donation in exchange for a promise to pay for the dead. (Amusingly enough, a lot if Catholic customs have been taken by pagan groups from the UK area– if it’s not protestant, it must be pagan!)

Many American Halloween customs are most likely taken from Guy Fawkes’ day, November 5th– it’s entirely possible that they shifted over from the prior All Hallow’s Eve celebrations of the English, just as the harvest feast got hooked to the Feast and its vigil. People are very good at finding a reason to have a party and have fun, and fire is fun, food is fun, candy and costumes are fun.

Black Cats and Jack of the Lantern

You’ve probably heard something about black cats– or cats in general– being condemned by the Vatican and thus killed as associates of witches? Specifically, by Gregory IX, in the Papal Bull Vox in Rama? I’m sure you’ll be just shocked, shocked to find out that no, he didn’t. That claim can be traced to a book from the ’70s that was supposedly about witchcraft in the Middle Ages. The only Papal Bull we’ve got record of that Pope issuing was to canonize St. Francis of Assisi, and it’s after records are rather good. Startlingly enough, Gregory the IX did actually write a letter which started with the supposed title of the Bull, which does mention black cats… but that’s because it describes the supposed rituals of witches in Germany. (Kissing the cat’s posterior; I can’t read Latin, or even enough German to find the Latin text of the letter, but those snippets of translation I’ve seen suggest it was not a natural cat.) There is no claim before the ’70s that it was a Bull, nor does the letter say something to the effect of “hey, wipe out (black) cats, they’re satanic.” If there was actually such a strong connection, especially with official documents, it should have been showing up frequently during the witch craze; as it was not, I’d theorize that any connection was exactly the other way around– there was already a superstition about cats being witchy in various ways.  I know I’ve heard enough stories about devils taking on the form of a black animal.

Jack-o-lanterns have a traditional sort of legend with many variations that can be summed up as ‘once there was a man who the devil couldn’t take and Heaven would not, who now wanders the world with a light in a carved container’ (the first part should sound familiar–it’s very popular for everything from fairies to the Wandering Jew). I know that swamplights, witchfires, will’o’wisps or foxfires are often associated with walking spirits, probably because a strange light from a non-human source at night is scary. The Irish carved turnips, the English carved beets, and here in America we carve squash- each year I’m startled that nobody has made some really impressive bottle gourds— that’s the hard, dryable variety of gourds; pumpkins are the soft type. If anyone wants to take the idea, do so with my blessing!

Random Bits:

The Vatican Condems Halloween! This was several years ago, but it is probably still floating around.
Here is a great summary of where that came from:A quote from a priest in Spain reported in an Italian newspaper read by an Englishman who then reported it as fact that the Vatican condemns Halloween.
Basically, some Spanish youth thought that the rather gruesome, dark, “magic” soaked American Halloween they’d seen on TV looked like fun and were being poorly behaved in news-making bad ways; Father Joan Maria Canals of the Spanish Bishop’s conference said that’s bad. Shocking, you know, a Catholic official saying that he thinks people shouldn’t glorify death and he doesn’t like a Church Holiday being hijacked for occult purposes.

A lot of information can be found at this Catholic Answers podcast has a bunch of information, but it’s very hard to link to specific bits; although I linked earlier, this pdf also has a wide range of information.

None of this article should be taken to mean that you have to celebrate Halloween in any way, shape or form, and in fact my family doesn’t do costumes that glorify evil, or even that are gruesome. We just have fun, and the adults are more likely to cosplay or have an outfit that complements the kids’. My husband made a very dashing Harry Dresden, Wizard Detective. Joy, laughter, and fun.

Happy Halloween, and All Saint’s Day!

Footnote:

Surprise! Another delay on the Crusades article, because EWTN is doing a series on it, I got to see about five minutes of the first episode, and I don’t want to waste anybody’s time by poorly phrasing what is already elsewhere. (You can search for Crusades here, sorry I can’t link directly to the show’s page; hopefully I’ll actually get to watch the whole thing.) Prior articles in the Conspiracies and Catholicism series can be found here, and I apologize for the wait. Hopefully it will be worth while, although I’m now officially not saying “next month.”

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8 thoughts on “Conspiracies & Catholicism: Halloween”

  1. Pingback: From nothingness to a growing group of followers of Jeshua 3 Korban for God or gods – Jeshuaist

  2. Pingback: Autumn traditions for 2014 – 4 Blasphemy and ridiculing faith in God | Stepping Toes

  3. Christ Jesus clearly stated not to be of the world. We do live in it but should take care not to go with the world celebrating heathen feasts or doing activities which are not directly in line with God’s commandments.

    1. The Catholic Church is not heathen, so the first objection doesn’t apply; if you’d like to make an argument that some aspect of having a celebration for the vigil of All Saints is violating God’s commandments, please do so, but please read the article first.

    2. You are right in saying the Catholic Church is not heathen, but you must recognise the many heathen elements in took over from the local pagan population. wherever you go in the world you can see how the Roman Catholic church adapted itself to the local customs and traditions, instead of keeping to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

    3. I am familiar with the accusation, but the claim that the teachings of Christ are edited– rather than the means of communicating them, just as you’d change language to be understood by locals– is not.

      This article is on a specific set of those claims, and demonstrates that the accusation is false.

      Please respond to the actual article in this forum; further attempts to talk about something else entirely will be deleted as spam.

      If you would like to find out more about the broader subject of “heathen elements” and supposed loss of Jesus’ teachings, here are some resources:
      http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/paganism-prophecies-and-propaganda
      http://www.catholic.com/tracts/is-catholicism-pagan
      http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/how-do-we-know-it%E2%80%99s-the-true-church
      http://www.catholic.com/radio/shows/dogma-doctrine-discipline-7956#
      http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/what-can-i-say-to-my-husband-to-convince-him-that-christmas-and-easter-are-not-pagan-

  4. Pingback: Activists Tell Europe: Help Persecuted Christians - Big Pulpit

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