Halloween

I wanted to share an article from First Things that I saw linked on Melanie Bettenelli's blog.

Another Catholic homeschooling mom and I were talking about this very thing just before All Hallow's Eve. Our experience here is so different from the U.S. The base is flooded--literally: my friend went through 20 bags of candy in under an hour at one piece per child--with local Japanese children who want to trick-or-treat. Our evangelical protestant friends participate in church activities. Lutheran friends shared that they spent the day singing hymns in celebration of "Reformation Day". The chapel offers an alternative to Halloween "Harvest Party" on the 31st during the on-base trick-or-treating hours of 6-9 p.m.

Back in the U.S., we trick-or-treated at the homes of friends and celebrated with a big All Saints' Day party with our homeschool co-op. Our former pastor here invited the kids wear Saint costumes to the All Saints Day Mass for a couple of years, but the new pastor hasn't carried on the tradition. So the only emphasis on that will come from our own efforts. I miss the support we received from our parish back home in our efforts to infuse the Faith into our children's lives by celebrating the events of the liturgical year.

My only quibble with the First Things article is that I do think the connections between Halloween, All Saint's Day, and All Soul's Day are more clearly made if the children's Halloween costumes are somehow connected to a Saint. I admit that we apply that principle pretty loosely around here, but it is still the undercurrent of the feast. This year, for example, Katie was a baker (connection: St. Elizabeth of Hungary, patroness of bakers), Joseph was Luke Skywalker (St. Joseph of Cupertino, patron of pilots), and Matthew was a robot (St. Martin de Porres, servant in his monastery, as robots are servants of the people who use them--a stretch, I know, but there isn't any St. Roboticus...). Meghan was easier--she wore the baby angel costume I made for Patrick back when we lived in Turkey and the kids trick-or treated at the various offices on Ankara Air Station.

Anyway, the article expressed so many of my thoughts on the subject so well that I don't really feel the need to write anything else. But I wanted to share with you "The Drama of Hallowmas".