Before my daughter was born I swore that I would never do Halloween. I'd do All Saints Day. My kids could dress up like saints or biblical personalities every year and we'd boycott the day of evil and filth. This lasted until my daughter was 3 and didn't want to be Mother Teresa...again. She wanted to be a princess. Every little girl wants to be a princess, and to have a day that gives you an excuse to dress up like one and go out in public, well that's almost every little girl's dream! I saw my Halloween boycott going down the drain. What was I to do?
My daughter and I reached a compromise that year - she dressed up as Queen Esther - in all her regal glory (never mind that her outfit resembled that of a medieval queen, rather than a Bible-times Jewish wife of King Ahasuerus! I still felt as though I had achieved a small victory. ) The next year though, my Queen Esther rebelled, and my St. Francis wanted to be "St. Francis before he got holy." By then I had a pint sized Padre Pio who didn't know any better and thought his fake stigmata was pretty cool. So, I gave in. Again. Queen Ester didn't want to be St. Margaret of Scotland either so we settled for Snow White. I told my 'bad-boy St. Francis' he could pick a costume that he wanted as long as it wasn' t evil. He was very happy with being an astronaut. (I think he liked the jumpsuit.) My pint-sized Padre didn't want to give up his stigmata, so that's how we hit the town that Halloween. It made me do some soul-searching and thinking.
I realized that Halloween in our family seemed to be more about my hang ups than anything. My kids were innocent - they just wanted to dress up like something fun and get candy. How could I allow them to do that without "giving in" to the evil undertones that seem to creep into the day?
I did some research and discovered that Halloween actually comes to us from...drum roll please......the Catholic Church! No, I am not making this up! There is a lot of Halloween lore out there, but the name Halloween comes from the ancient Celts - "Hallow E'en" as it would have been called in Ireland meant "All Hallows Eve" - hallow meaning "to sanctify." It was the eve of one of the greatest Feasts in the Liturgical Year - All Saints Day. In ancient times - before Christianity - this day was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New Year and the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. The druids celebrated a fire festival. Contrary to modern belief, it was not a festival of the dead or evil. It was believed that on this night spirits would come back and try to visit, control or inhabit the Celtic people. So the ancient Celts dressed up in costumes to scare away the spirits. Then they would extinguish the fires in their dwellings so that they could light them anew from the Druidic fire that always burned as a symbol of the start of the new year. When Christianity came to the Celtic lands, the traditions of preparing for Samhain, morphed with the Feast of All Saints, and so it became the practice to dress up to scare away the evil spirits in order to prepare for the Feast of All Saints. It is only since the advent of the neo-pagans and the beginning of what we know as Wicca that Halloween became a "sacred" day for witches and the like. It has also become a big festival for those who worship Satan and who believe they practice "Dark or Black Magic." (Magik). In a way this makes sense. All Saints Day was, for centuries, a Great Feast in the Church. Why wouldn't Satan try to co-opt the day for his own evil purposes?
Learning all this gave me some great food for thought and I decided that instead of boycotting and decrying all things Halloween, I'd take a page out of history! The next year (when we had added a little pumpkin to the brood) I took a few days to teach my kids the history of Halloween. I taught them how Catholics many years ago dressed up to "scare the devil away" to prepare for the Great Feast the next day. Then we discussed what really scares the devil away; namely prayer, Jesus' Holy Name, holiness and all things good and beautiful. I then asked my kids what we should do on Halloween. They decided that their costumes should never be something the devil would like - that they should choose good things to dress up as. Then we decided that we would hand out prayer cards with the candy!
I thought this was a purely inspired idea! This year, we took it one step further and handed out cards to those whose houses the kids trick-or-treated at. Why not? If I've learned anything from the history of the Church its that Catholics don't just slide over and let the devil move in - oh no - we go in and redeem - In Christ's Holy Name! What better way to reclaim this Eve of All Saints? When else do you get such a great opportunity to evangelize your neighbors? What other day of the year do complete stranger open their doors and smile at you as your cute children say "Trick" (and hand them a prayer card) "or Treat" (and hold out their smiling pumpkin buckets)? I've yet to encounter a person who has balked at or turned down the prayer card. Most people smile and seem delighted that these kids are giving something to them before sweetly demanding candy.
The rationale is simple. Its a great opportunity to spread the Love of God to our neighbors - door to door evangelization - the Jehovah's Witnesses don't have to have a corner on that market - us Catholics can just do it undercover! We can move in and sanctify just like the actual translation of the word Halloween suggests!
This year my evangelists in disguise hit the streets dressed as a princess (because, as my daughter said, the devil hates beauty), a train engineer (a holy one, I was told by my train-loving son), a dinosaur (because in 3 year old logic, nothing will scare the devil away like big teeth saying Jesus' Name), and a 1 year old happy pumpkin (because he looks so darn cute and chubby). They are armed with their smiling pumpkin buckets and a supply of Padre Pio prayer cards. They also have a good understanding that this night doesn't have to be about evil and ghosts and scary things. In their own words, "that's just the devil's way to distract us from God and the Saints." They now ignore that part of Halloween and dismiss it as distasteful. Instead, they focus on the fun, the innocent, and the Holy.
They enjoy this Eve of All Saints, without the creepy or the scary. My kids enjoy having a truly Happy Halloween. In our family at least, we have redeemed and sanctified this night, and that makes Mommy pretty darn happy too!
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If you want to be an All Hallows Eve Evangelist, here are some of my favorite prayer cards to hand out, and a few ideas to help you Sanctify the Night:
~Try to hand out cards that are colorful or cool to look at - this gets people's attention
~Try to find ones that have short prayers, this will make a non-Christian, or someone who doesn't like to pray more likely to try it out.
~if you live in a largely non or anti-Catholic area and don't want to come on too strong, hand out "Our Father" prayer cards - almost everyone recognizes that prayer
Other Cards I like to hand out specifically on Halloween are:
~Padre Pio- a man who literally fought with demons
~St. John Vianney (the Curé d'Ars) - he fist-fought with the devil
~A little card with 5 things about the Catholic Church (says stuff like, Catholics don't worship Mary, Confession is Biblical, etc.) Its great if you live in a largely Protestant area
~Anything with a "standard" Blessing on it - folks will be more likely to hold onto something that seems "harmless" and "nice"
For a few years we handed out Bl. Gianna Molla (she was Blessed at the time) cards. I had acquired about 500 of them for free. I figured that the card - which pictured a modern looking Gianna on the front - might make people curious enough to Google "Gianna Beretta Molla" which is what was printed on the front. It was my hope that her courageous and amazing story might inspire and touch some of the people we handed the card to.
I have gone back and forth over the years over whether or not to hand out blessed cards. (cards that have been blessed by a priest) I will leave that up to your judgement. My concern is that if I hand out cards that have been blessed they may end up in the garbage or desecrated in some other way. For this reason I do not have the cards blessed. On the other hand, a blessed prayer card is a sacramental that carries with it a special blessing for the bearer of the card.....so you see my dilemma. I leave it to your judgement.
Make sure to celebrate the Feast of All Saints the next day (it is a Holy Day of Obligation, although when the Feast falls on a Monday you are usually excused from Mass - check with your parish priest to be sure). Have a Saint Party or do something special. After all, All Hallows Eve is the preparation for All Saint's Day!
Have a safe and Blessed All Hallows Eve!
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