I suppose by now, everyone has heard at least once that, contrary to the grotesque urban legends promulgated by fundamentalist websites, Hallowe'en is a Christian holiday, the eve of All Saints Day, a Principal Feast. As such it ranks among holy days after only Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost. While Hallowe'en's date may be influenced by a pre-Christian pagan commemoration, that theory is based on fragmentary evidence pieced together by social anthropologists, and may or may not be true. In contrast, the Christian historicity of Hallowe'en is indisputable.
All Saints honours the great cloud of witnesses with whom we have communion through Christ our Lord. In New Testament writings, the word "saint" is used to refer to all believers who have turned to Christ: a person doesn't have to have their name formally enrolled on a calendar of Saints to be a Witness whom we can commemorate at All Saints. We've recently lost two great ministers and encouragers from our church congregation, so they are particularly in my mind. As always, I remember Saint Anne the mother of Our Lady, Saint Elisaveth of Thuringia, Saint Faith, Saint Arianne, and the holy Matriarchs Ruth and Rachel: the Saints whose names are borne by my children. And my own patroness Saint Martha, who in Canada is honoured as the patron saint of Engineers.
Just what we do to honour the saints changes from year to year. I've never been able to convince the girls to choose Saints for their Hallowe'en costumes, though Martha and the Dragon would make a lovely pair of costumes, I think. But Rachel wants a belly-dance costume (sigh). The old sewing machine has to get going on that, I suppose: as though I didn't have enough projects on the go.
Actually, the custom of dressing up properly belongs to Michaelmas (the feast of Michael and All Angels, which celebrates the casting down of the Beast from heaven, as told in the Book of Revelation). But as Anne quite rightly pointed out recently, we're the only family she knows who regularly celebrates Michaelmas, so it's not quite the same thing as dressing up at Hallowe'en when all your friends are doing it too.
A couple of crafts we've done in past years are making votive candles, and making paper-craft icons. I got books with stories of the Saints, or told the stories from memory, or read them from the Bible (depending on which Saints and which stories). Then we glued tissue-paper to the outside of large glass votive cups in the shape of symbols or pictures from the stories. With a candle in them, they illustrated the metaphore that "Saints are people whom the Light shines through." This year, the girls are a little more sophisticated in their artistic inclinations. But, they've been dabbling in faux-stained-glass artwork. I have some nice durable and nearly-transparent baking parchment. I've suggested the girls try drawing stained-glass outlines with a heavy black marker, and then colouring them in with transparent markers. If they don't make them too big, we can tape them up on either side of the dining-room windows and they will add a nice coloured light to the room without making it too dim.
Whether we get our visit in to the heritage graveyard, to take flowers to some of the long-neglected graves, will of course depend on ballet-school schedules and the weather. Between one and the other we haven't been that lucky in past years.
Anybody else have any plans for the upcoming holidays of Michaelmas and/or Hallowe'en?
