The excesses of Halloween....

....increase each year.

Friday's Daily Telegraph carried a report that the multi national stores and major employers are censoring (good word that) all Halloween costumery that might cause offence.

We all know what that means. No more wild eyed arab masks, no more "gay" outfits and no more butch gear for the....you know who types.

Standard Halloween costume....
.....who cares about offending Catholics?

But, believe me, that censorship will not include any mad monk outfits or saucy nun habits.

Commercial censorship is only concerned with giving offence to Muslims, Homosexuals and Lesbians (and the in-betweeners).

I know of one parish where the priest has made valiant efforts to encourage parents to revive Halloween as a Catholic event where the children dress up as their favourite saints.

No interest from the parish.

Not ghoulish enough, not zombie enough, too "holy" and we mustn't have that!

But, if you do wish to hold a Halloween party, and why not? you can do it with a Catholic (and original) theme.

Here is how one commentator and friend (Mommymayhem) and her family celebrate All Saints' Eve......

Thank you GM.

How to have a Catholic Hallowe'en

Halloween is not a festival of ghouls and witches and horrible corpses with blood coming from their nostrils, although, you might be forgiven for thinking so when you walk around the stores and see the weird mix of costumes and masks on sale.

                                Cut a cross shape in your pumpkin and leave Freddy K to RIP

What are we thinking of? We howl and scream at Jimmy Savile's alleged abuses of young girls and then we shove our children out on to the streets to trick or treat or to some macabre party. Ugh!

Hallowe'en is really All Hallows Eve as I am sure all readers of this blog know too well.

It is All Holy Eve, the night before we celebrate one of the great feasts of the Church, All Saints' Day.

So dress the little dears up as saints, have plenty of fun by all means (though adults might wish to fast and do penance in readiness for the following Feastday), eat sausages round the fire and cut potatoes into halos, stars and crosses - that's all good, clean fun.

Thanks to Gail for the picture.

What will you be doing tonight?



                                               Burning a Catholic.....

or......

                                       .....dabbling in the occult?

May the Saints preserve us!

Yes, it's that time of year again when Catholic bloggers look in their diaries to see if there is anything of calendar importance to blog about and - bingo! Out leaps the 31st October at them.

Halloween is with us yet again and likely to be even more satanic in its excesses and its spread.
Back in 1990 I happened to be on a study programme in Concord, Massachusets at this time of year and was both shocked and fascinated by the range of devilish costumes, masks, sweets etc that was available in the shops (stores).
This did not, as far as I was aware, exist in Great Britain, we only had the jolly old pumpkin faces and a lit candle.

But rapidly, over the intervening years, as is so often the case, we have caught up with America's lead in excesses of the satanic kind.

"Aaah", I hear "But it's only a bit of fun". Well if you believe that dressing a 3 year old up as a corpse or putting a zombie outfit on little Johnny is fun, please don't invite me round to Sunday lunch.

The means and manner in which the world laps up this grotesque perversion of a perfectly good Catholic feast is manifested by Marks and Spencers shop assistants dressed as witches with theatrical blood seeping from their nostrils. Jolly good fun! What next? Police officers parading as Chuckie? Traffic Wardens as Dracula? Well they are half way there aren't they? The traffic wardens I mean.

Satan and his demons must be laughing their socks off. There they were, labouring away for centuries with temptation and sins of the flesh and all the time the answer was staring them in the face.
"Make them think that it's all a joke and, bit by bit, soul by soul we will harness them" It's positively Tolkienesque.

So, Catholic parents, now is the time to regain the lost ground and reject the way of the world. Recreate the proper feast of All Hallows Eve, the eve of All Saints Day. Throw parties, dress up your children in the garb of the saints, yes, even light a bonfire - flame is cleansing and flame is light.

Not eternal fire, just a bonfire for the feast!

Remembering the Holy Souls in Purgatory is also part of All Hallows Eve festivities and, if you wish, you may flavour the evening with these suggestions, courtesy of Fisheaters:

From the English Catholics we get begging from door to door, the earlier and more pure form of "trick-or-treating." Children would go about begging their neighbors for a "Soul Cake," for which they would say a prayer for those neighbors' dead. Instead of knocking on a door and saying the threatening, "Trick-or-treat" (or the ugly "Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat"), children would say either:

A Soul Cake, a Soul Cake,
have mercy on all Christian souls for a soul cake!

or

Soul, soul, an apple or two,
If you haven't an apple, a pear will do,
One for Peter, two for Paul,
Three for the Man Who made us all.

While Soul Cakes were originally a type of shortbread, it is said that a clever medieval cook wanted to make Soul Cakes designed to remind people of eternity, so she cut a hole in the middle of round cakes before frying them, thereby inventing doughnuts! Fresh plain cake doughnuts would be a nice food to eat on this day.

And,  instead of occult imagery employ the holy imagery of Mother Church.
Dress the children as their patron saints, enjoy good wholesome food, that is potato crisps shaped like potato crisps rather than pentagram shaped, light candles but around a blessed statue of the faith. And please tell this to your Catholic Primary School Headteacher and your Parish Priest.

In brief, have a good time rather than a bad time!