HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Despite some misunderstandings out there, it is fine for Catholics to celebrate and participate in Halloween. Enjoy some fun and safe time trick-or-treating with your children or handing out candy. See below….
Vatican News spoke with Dr Marcel Brown, of the Alcuin Institute for Catholic Culture in Tulsa, about the Catholic roots of Halloween. “The feast of Halloween is one of those feasts on the Catholic calendar that is celebrated on the eve of a great solemnity”, he said.
Dr Brown explained that the word Halloween refers to the Feast of All Saints. The word itself is taken an older English term, “hallows,” meaning “holy”; and “e’en”, a truncation of the word evening, in reference to the Vigil of the feast. “So really, Halloween is the feast of the celebration of the feast of All Hallows’”, he said. “So it’s a day when Catholics celebrate the triumph of the Church in heaven, and the lives of the saints on earth”.
The modern focus on the eerie or mysterious also has a Catholic aspect. “When we think of Halloween, I think we often think of ghosts and goblins, and ghoulish faces”, Dr Brown said. “But even these, in the Catholic tradition, are supposed to be reminders of death and of the last things”.
He continued, “So just as we commemorate the feast of All Saints on November 1st, beginning with All Hallows’ Eve on Halloween, we also think about and turn our minds really, to the last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. And really our focus should be, since we all must die and are destined to judgment, how then we to live?”
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Despite some misunderstandings out there, it is fine for Catholics to celebrate and participate in Halloween. Enjoy some fun and safe time trick-or-treating with your children or handing out candy. See below….
Vatican News spoke with Dr Marcel Brown, of the Alcuin Institute for Catholic Culture in Tulsa, about the Catholic roots of Halloween. “The feast of Halloween is one of those feasts on the Catholic calendar that is celebrated on the eve of a great solemnity”, he said.
Dr Brown explained that the word Halloween refers to the Feast of All Saints. The word itself is taken an older English term, “hallows,” meaning “holy”; and “e’en”, a truncation of the word evening, in reference to the Vigil of the feast. “So really, Halloween is the feast of the celebration of the feast of All Hallows’”, he said. “So it’s a day when Catholics celebrate the triumph of the Church in heaven, and the lives of the saints on earth”.
The modern focus on the eerie or mysterious also has a Catholic aspect. “When we think of Halloween, I think we often think of ghosts and goblins, and ghoulish faces”, Dr Brown said. “But even these, in the Catholic tradition, are supposed to be reminders of death and of the last things”.
He continued, “So just as we commemorate the feast of All Saints on November 1st, beginning with All Hallows’ Eve on Halloween, we also think about and turn our minds really, to the last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. And really our focus should be, since we all must die and are destined to judgment, how then we to live?”
