Halloween does not really end with October 31. November 1 is All Saints Day. In the calendar of the Catholic Church, every day has a saint, often more than one. November 1 commemorates them all, as a sort of catch-up for any failures to properly worship any saint on his or her given day. This may not sound very important, but medieval saints were far more terrifying and formidable than the ghosts of any average sinner. They could haunt, harass, wound, kill and/or damn any one who crossed them. A single day to commemorate and placate them all therefore seemed appropriate, just in case one felt left out. Established as a local Roman festival on May 13 to the Virgin Mary by Pope Boniface IV in 609, All Saints Day was moved to November 1 by Pope Gregory IV in 835 who extended its celebration to the entire Western Church.
November 2 is All Souls Day. St. Odilo of Cluny established the festival c.998 to pray for those souls trapped in Purgatory (which was itself invented around this time to give ordinary medieval Christians some hope of avoiding Hell). Medieval Christians believed that most of even the faithful would go to Hell and that most of the saved would have to work out their sins in Purgatory before reaching Heaven. Therefore, a festival that encouraged prayer for their souls that might shorten their stays was as important as one that honored the saints. It appears that neither Boniface, Gregory nor Odilo was aware of the near juxtapositioning of these two new holidays with the ancient one of Samhain (the subject of this week's blog).
Many theories, both sociological and theological, have gone into explaining why people in the Northern Hemisphere have tended to celebrate their own unrelated versions of major festivals at about the same time. The simplest explanations revolve around the seasons. Popular festivals congregate around the winter and spring solstices, for example, as do many superstitions and customs around the summer solstice. Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day all occur a month and a half after the fall solstice, but they all reflect an anxiety about coming winter and fears that the harvest would not last until the following year. If one were afraid of joining the dead by winter's end, one would want to get into their good graces by the time that season began.
Ironically, the Puritans, who were obsessed with witches and the darkness of an evil world, frowned upon Halloween as a pagan festival. The syncretic elements (i.e. pagan elements that were later adopted by Christianity) were of course, obvious for the October 31 festival and the other two days were too popish in tone. They therefore suppressed it in England and North America until their descendants in the 19th and 20th centuries tamed the holiday into one big party. But the three-day festival has survived with its intent mostly intact in Catholic countries and especially Mesoamerica, where it has incorporated elements of old Aztec celebrations for the dead.
Paula Stiles - I'm an American who's traveled all over the place, including working for the Peace Corps for two years in Cameroon. Until recently, I was ...
