Halloween, All Saints & All Saints

To my understanding, there are three Church festivals that we celebrate grandly, far from knowing what is being genuinely celebrated. They are Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. Out of these three festivals, the most misunderstood and distorted feast is Halloween.

We are still fortunate that the world associates Christmas with the birth of Jesus. Easter is not directly related to the resurrection of Jesus. Of course, it is associated with new life, bunnies, and eggs. Still, every association falls far short of what the resurrection of Jesus means for humanity.

Come Halloween, the associations are entirely disjointed.

Two sets of children and teens from the neighbourhood dropped into our home yesterday afternoon. Because of the COVID protocols, I paid extra attention to what the kids were wearing, how they had painted their faces and other bits and pieces they were carrying with them. Of course, the child in every adult gets a bit excited about what kids and adults do on Halloween.

Once that excitement wears out, we also wonder how on earth Halloween had come to be associated and preoccupied with witches, ghouls, the macabre, and death.

To humour me, I asked the kids how they planned to celebrate Halloween in the evening. The older kids said they would have a boozy Peanut Butter cocktail, play Halloween music non-stop, go Hocus Pocus Crazy, order takeaway food from Pizza Hut or Maccas and have a scary movie marathon.

I smiled and half-heartedly handed out pre-packed candy bags. I was half-hearted because I’d noticed the younger kids had already eaten a lot of candy and that they would have a huge insulin spike and crash before they could enjoy the evening.

Much later last evening I went for a short walk around the neighbourhood and found some of the adult children who had come to our place sitting outside their homes and doing what they said they were going to do. They were enjoying their Peanut Butter cocktail and food. The kids’ parents, whom I know very well from the neighbourhood, too, were out celebrating Halloween.

Taking the opportunity to start a conversation, I asked them who the saints they would remember on Sunday. They looked utterly blank and asked whether I was kidding.

The parents invited me in to join them for a drink. Seeing an opportunity to rehearse my sermon for today, I said to them, “I will join you on one condition.” Jovially, the parents said, " Whatever you ask, Father.” I responded, " As we celebrate Halloween, allow me to tell you about Church Militant and Church Triumphant.”

“Church what?” they asked. I said again, “Church Militant and Church Triumphant.” Amused, I said, “Something like Islamic Jihad and President Trump, Father?” They asked. “Nothing like that, but something to do with why we are celebrating Halloween,” I said.

By this time, I had already been sitting on a chair and being served a glass of wine. And then, although Halloween music was in the background, I could tell them all about the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant.

Today, we join the Church in remembering and giving thanks to God for the Church Triumphant. The Church Triumphant are those who lived among us, served Christ in the world, showed unshakable faithfulness to God in life, died, and are now crowned with glory in Heaven.

The Church Triumphant are the ones we call saints. The first batch of the Church Triumphant was the faithful Christians from the Church's first three centuries. They were the ones who did not compromise their faith, suffered because of persecution and then were put to death.

When the Christian faith was officially recognised by Emperor Constantine in the year 313, the Church wanted to remember and honour all the Christians who were put to death because of their faith and witness to Jesus Christ.

The number of Christians who were put to death was so great in numbers that it was impossible to remember each by name for each day of the year. And the Church had wanted to dedicate a single day to remember all the saints who had died for their faith. This is how All Saints Day came to be. Of course, Ist November had not been the day from the beginning marking All Saints. Until the ninth century, it had different dates across the Christian world,

When I visited Tunisia in 2018 (for the Anglican Interfaith Commission), I had the opportunity to visit an arena where the Christians were fed to lions and several burial grounds of the early Christians. At one point in the Church's early history, Tunisia had the largest number of Christians.

By about the seventh century, All Saints Day developed as a way of including and honouring any of the Church's saints who had attained “the full status of heaven.” Attaining “the full status of heaven” is also called the “beatific vision.”