Happy Holy Days! (Part Four)

Cataloging Catholicism's Contributions to the Calendar (Concluded)

HALLOWEEN

Souls in Purgatory, for whom we are called to pray during Allhallowtide (via Wikimedia Commons)

Also known as All Hallows’ Eve if you’re Catholic (and Hallowe’en if you’re pretentious), here we have the strange case of an eve being more popular than its event—All Saints’ Day—a holy day of obligation in which Catholics honor the saints in heaven (known and unknown), which is then followed by All Souls’ Day, where the dearly departed in purgatory are offered prayers for a swift release from their postmortem sojourn.

Collectively known as Hallowtide, the purpose of behind these three days helps to explain the Halloween holiday’s association with all things spooky.

The ghost—a classic costume choice for trick-or-treaters everywhere since someone first had the idea to cut eye holes in a bedsheet—is a horror because it’s unnatural. Man is meant to be a union of both body and soul, so to see a separation of the two (in the form of either a corpse or a ghost) causes us existential dread.

Death is unnatural, a consequence of original sin, which is why we continue to “look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

Indeed, memento mori—the reminder that we all will die—is itself a very Catholic concept. The most important thing we can strive for in this life is to have a good death—that is, to make it to heaven and become a saint, so that we too can be prayed for come early November.

The devil can’t stand to be mocked, so its fitting that we make fun of the author of death and the prince of this present darkness by wearing the garb of his many minions—the goblins and the ghouls, the witches and the werewolves—and have fun doing it.

All of Halloween’s most morbid imagery—the skulls and bones, the graveyards and tombstones, the coffins and crypts—can just as easily be found inside a Catholic catacomb or near a saintly shrine as in your neighbor’s haunted funhouse. Not to mention the all-too gory details of so many saints’ violent martyrdoms, when the enemies of the church acted worse than any slasher movie villain.

So don’t feel guilty setting up those fog machines and Party City cobwebs and jack-o’-lanterns around the house in October—just remember to say a prayer for the dead while doing it.

THANKSGIVING

Catholic convert Squanto of Thanksgiving fame carrying a Pilgrim child across a river in St. Christopher-like fashion (via Wikimedia Commons)

To Catholics, a feast is a special day set aside to celebrate a specific saint.

But to Americans (and indeed many American Catholics) nothing says “feast” quite like the belt-and-button-busting gobble down that occurs every last Thursday in November.

Surely it’s a stretch longer than a turkey wattle to suggest that the quintessential Puritan party in WASP America has even a hint of Papal provenance?

Well, since I’ve already given credit to the New World-conquering Catholics in the entry on the 4th of July—and in the interest of not squabbling about bragging rights on a day all about thanks and giving—I’ll just pass the gravy on to the Catholic World Report and let them explain all the ways in which we have Catholicism to thank for Thanksgiving Day.

But whether you’re a pilgrim, a pagan, or a papist, I say that Thanksgiving is as good a day as any to put aside our differences¹ and enjoy a good meal together, just like our ancestors did ‘round that mythical dinner table all those years ago.

Saint Squanto, pray for us!

CHRISTMAS

St. Nicholas of Myra by Jaroslav Čermák (via Wikimedia Commons)

Is it just me, or does it seem like St. Nick’s stock has risen in recent years?

The real St. Nick, that is. As much as we love the portly old gift-giving elf painted on the Coke can, the real St. Nicholas—he of (also) gift-giving and Arian-slapping fame—has become far more interesting of late, at least as far as Catholics who know their history are concerned.

But how mortified would the Bishop of Myra be to learn that a mythical version of himself has taken the reins (sleigh pun intended) of Christ’s Mass and flown out of sight with it?

A recurring theme on this list has been the caveat that the secular, commercialized trappings of various Catholic holidays are harmless if enjoyed in moderation, and you’d have to be a real Scrooge to find no enjoyment in all the lights, trees, carols, bells, wrapping paper, and everything else that makes the red-and-green season so pretty to look at.

But “the reason for the season” is more than just a catchy rhyme—it’s a reminder that the joy found in Joy to the World has a name, and His name is Jesus.

For all the faults of Christmas commercialization, it’s still better than the “Happy Holidays!”² Grinches determined to take Christ out of Christmas, and not just in an abstract way.

There is indeed a War on Christmas—a notion mocked not because it’s isn’t real, but because Christians care that it is—and it’s been going on since the beginning of time.

While Lutherans (surprisingly enough) get to claim credit for traditions like the Christmas tree and Advent wreath, it’s fitting that it’s solely for the sake of The Nativity that otherwise iconoclastically-inclined Protestants allow themselves to enjoy a carved image of Christ.

Thanks, St. Francis!

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By way of conclusion, I think a few final words on syncretism and the pagan influence on the holidays are in order.

Materialist skeptics can’t help but try to trace every single Christian holiday, practice, or belief back to a prior pagan source. But just because pagans have the benefit of being first in chronology, it does not follow that they can say the same in theology.

No, any pagan influence, co-opting, or rehabilitation-for-Christian-purposes that is alleged to have occurred must be judged strictly on a case by case basis.

Wedding rings, for example, were originally a pagan practice that was blessed and approved by the Church when it was added to the sacrament of Holy Matrimony—while accusations that the historical Jesus was just a syncretistic combination of Horus and other resurrection-related deities only confuses coincidence with correlation.

But even if we were to debunk that the word “Easter” was really the name of a Saxon goddess, or prove that Christmas has just as much in common with Saturnalia as a toddler’s birthday party does with the funeral for a convicted criminal, this would all be beside the point.

For anything that is good, true, and beautiful in the world comes from Christ in the first place, for in Christ all of history is subsumed and recapitulated, for He is the Alpha and the Omega, the point of, well, everything.

So enjoy tossing your Yule logs in the fireplace, and don’t feel weird calling the Pope pontifex maximus, because the Son of God was in heaven long before there were sun gods for whom the heathen raged.

1. In retrospect this is ironic considering that Thanksgiving has become almost as synonymous with family members bickering about politics as it is about cranberry sauce and capotains.

2. The other holidays being Hanukkah and Kwanza, and while Kwanzaa is fake, Hanukkah is not just Jewish, but Catholic too, insofar as Catholicism is the fulfillment of Judaism (the Maccabees were martyrs and only Catholic bibles contain the Deuterocanon)