11/04/2022

11/04/2022

Dear Friends in Christ,

This Sunday we will celebrate the Feast of All Saints at Saint Anna's, by reading the names of our dearly departed saints aloud during the prayers. All Saints Day falls on November 1st and is a day set aside to remember and commend the saints of God. While we now understand the term “Saints” to apply to all the faithful elect, at one time it referred only to those whose heroic and noteworthy deeds had earned them a place in history, so a second feast day, All Souls Day on November 2nd was created to remember all those loved and lost. All Saints Day used to be known as Hallowmas, and the day before was known as All Hallows Eve, from which the word Halloween is derived.

Halloween has never been my favorite holiday. In fact, until this year I could safely say it was my least favorite. I pretty much hated it. I didn’t like the emphasis on evil and death and the shadow side of human nature, and even when my children were small, I only participated because I felt I had to. This year, however, with a grandson extremely excited for Halloween I found myself getting excited also, and feeling a little guilty about that, based on my earlier feelings about of the holiday.

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain which marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of dark, cold winter, that was often associated with death. When Christianity arrived in Celtic lands the Church found it easier to convert pagan festivals into Christian ones rather than ban them outright. In 835 Pope Gregory IV moved the Feast of All Saints to November 1st. Later, November 2nd became All souls Day, and this the three-day feast of Samhain became thew Triduum of All Saints and All Souls much as ?? became Christmas and ?? became easter.

It's association with pagan spirituality and the fact that Samhain is now celebrated by wiccans, and druids is enough to make some Christians see Halloween as “evil.” But there is no real association with death or evil. Rather it was a time when the veil between this world and the next grew thin and spirit of the dead were thought to be able to pass over. Almost all Halloween traditions, from carving pumpkins, to dressing up, to going door to door trick-or-treating, can trace their roots back to practices used to ward off evil spirits, not encourage our worship of them.

The reality of our world is that death and darkness are ever present realities. Evil and chaos are all around on any day of the year, and we are called as Christians to be the light of the world. We worship a God who vanquished death and follow a savior who is the light of the world and whom darkness cannot overcome.

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a] and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.’ John 1: 1-5

It is not what we do but in what spirit we do it that matters. I found joy in a tradition in which I previously only saw anxiety through the delight and wonder of a two-year old. The light is all around us. God is always present. In the words of St. Paul,

“If God is for us, who is against us?... neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor

depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8: 31, 38-39

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Jane