Sat 10-31-20
Subj: Honoring Hallowe’en
Since
my piano teacher being exposed to COVID-19 (and me being exposed to her) has
put the kibosh on my birthday plans this year, I thought I’d write. And since
my birthday is Halloween, I thought I’d write about Halloween, or rather
Hallowe’en as it was originally named as it is a contraction for its real
meaning which is “All Hallows’ Eve” In Christian tradition All Hallows’ Day is
the day that the saints come down to earth to take recently departed souls to
heaven. Hallowe’en got started as a serious belief system that the eve of All
Saints is the most dangerous day of the year for recently departed souls.
But the
belief system really goes way back to ancient pagan times, which sort of proves
that many modern Christian practices really evolved from pagan traditions. It
was the pagan belief that the date midway between the autumn equinox and winter
solstice, which was also harvest time, was the one time of the year when the
barrier between the underworld and our world became the thinnest. So thin it was that this was the one day that
demons and goblins from the underworld could easily enter our earthly realm and
claim souls. Modern tradition states that it started with the ancient Celtics
in pre-Christian Ireland but historians believe the practice actually went back
much further than that. Harvest time was
a time of celebration, a time when food was at its most abundant before the
dark and difficult months of winter set in. Even the pagans believed that there
was an underworld, a life after death, a hell, and the harvest was the time to
take the precautions to protect the recent departed from it. There was thus the belief that by dressing up
in ghoulish outfits, wearing demonic masks and basically putting on the guise
of being either monsters or corpses, that it was possible to deceive whatever
evil spirits entered your earthly realm on that one critical night. The very
serious belief was that by practicing this grotesque deception, that it would
fool the evil spirits into thinking that your soul had already been claimed by
the underworld and they would thus pass you by.
The
Christian world in Europe later adopted the belief and the Church declared the
eve of All Saints as the day that the barrier between hell and earth would be
the thinnest. This was coupled with the
strong belief that the spirits of loved ones who had departed that year would
return to their homes for protection against the demons. So Christian families would customarily have
meals prepared for their dearly departed and perch jack-o-lanterns (today we do
carved pumpkins) outside their door which were believed to ward off evil
spirits. Ghoulish costumes and satanic decorations would complete the picture
so that evil spirits would pass by the house.
The whole idea was to protect the departed souls until November 1st
when the saints would come and take their souls to heaven.
This
was not a tradition; it was a belief that was strongly clung to until about the
17th century. For whatever
reason, Hallowe’en got abandoned for two centuries and then resurrected as a
secular tradition in the early 20th century. Now it’s just a real
fun party night though there remains no shortage of novels and movies that
attempt to resurrect the original superstitions that this is indeed the most
dangerous night of the year, and not just for the dearly departed but for the
living. The Halloween fictions portray anyone who fails to take the existence
of demons seriously as being in mortal jeopardy and meeting terrible fates
where they either end up dead and in hell or, if they convert, barely escape
both but not without a lot of trauma.
The
1970’s horror film “The Sentinel” is a pretty good illustration of this. The
then very popular actress Christina Raines plays a young woman in Brooklyn who
rents an apartment in an old historic brownstone. “Historic” is the key word;
this building has been there forever. She is soon informed that the old woman
who lived in her apartment before her passed away but that she was a guardian
of the gateway to hell and that that gateway is in her apartment. Of course
she’s a non-believer and dismisses this as a silly superstition. She is told she must be the one to stand
guard now or the demons will get through the gateway and create havoc in the
world. You can guess the rest. All sorts of horrible things happen and she is
almost sucked into hell herself saved only by the fact that she finally becomes
a believer and thus a warrior at the gateway fighting off the demons and ghouls
trying to gain an entry. Her punishment for not initially believing is that she
must now become the new guardian. The film ends with her many years later as an
old woman spending all her days sitting in her room, as she has her whole life,
guarding that gateway and keeping the demons at bay. She is the only thing standing between earth
and hell, the only person who can save earth from utter destruction.
But
these fictions are all based upon a real belief system that was deeply
ingrained in human civilization for many centuries until a short time ago. In
the modern world it’s considered superstition and has simply become the biggest
party day of the year. But for most of human history it was treated as the most
important day of the year. In Christian
tradition, especially in the Middle Ages, it was considered one of the most
important days on the liturgical calendar, second only to All Saints. I haven’t
written about Hallowe’en for a long time but I think every now and then it’s
appropriate to serve up a reminder of where this big party day actually came
from. And to the Christian Evangelicals who so strongly object to celebrating
Halloween as akin to devil worship, you’ve got it all wrong. Study before you
preach because it is exactly the opposite.
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