Hallowed Eve & All Saints Celebration

For the last nine years, rather than celebrate Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night, the Holy Family Guild and our parish have come together for an ‘All saints Celebration Day’ where great fun is had by all.

3 pm: ‘Parade of Saints’ In Church. Children –and occasionally adults- dress up as a favoured saint and one by one, present themselves to the gathering with a reading about the saint they represent. Here are some of this year’s saints (faces deliberately distorted for safeguarding reasons).

4. pm: Benediction with the Most Blessed Sacrament.

4.30 pm ‘Help Lord, the souls that Thou hast made’ during procession to the miniature grotto for Prayers for the Holy Souls. Here is a picture of a few of us gathered at the grotto.

5. pm: Bonfire, Fireworks and BBQ in the parish garden.

A great day is had by all, and not a nod to the glorification of evil anywhere.

I know many see Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night as harmless fun but they provoke questions for me, for while Halloween may not glamorise evil, it certainly minimises its dangers by making the occult seem harmless fun. And the occult is anything but harmless. I also wonder why we encourage the children to dress up as witches and goblins -we wouldn’t encourage the kids to dress up as Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, Nannie Doss or John W. Gacy, so why, if we have the sense to stop them dressing up as figures of human evil, do we allow them dress up as the very legions of hell? 

As for Guy Fawkes Night, why is it that we celebrate and mimic the burning of a Catholic as a Traitor? To me, we have fallen into a secular mindset when we celebrate these festivals. We need to recover All Saints as a Major Feast, and to Celebrate Bonfire Night as a reminder that while Christ alone is light of the world, He sets others on fire with His Love.