11/03/2019

Hallowtide

The sequence in Disney's Fantasia from Night on Bald Mountain to the Ave Maria remains the most beautiful portrayal of this triduum from Halloween to All Saints to All Souls I have ever seen depicted in art.

I envy the Mexicans who never lost sight of the holiness of these three days in their Day of the Dead tradition. The French Catholics in Louisiana retain some of the sacred trappings that ought to distinguish Halloween from the secular perversion that exists today.

Why didn't we do a better job of this in the northern hemisphere? I suspect the weather is to blame. Nobody is thrilled to visit a cemetery generally speaking, nonetheless in bleak and bitter November.

We owe it to Halloween to do it right: to celebrate it as the holy day that is truly is and not the satanic zombie fetish our culture of death has allowed it to become. *Sigh*

Like so many things in our calendar, when you remove the Christ part it loses all its value and becomes an empty sequence of days bereft of meaning, driven by consumerism. It encourages non-Catholic Christians to avoid trick-or-treating because they think Catholics are bizarre and they think Halloween is satanic. It is my least favorite consequence of original sin the prince of this world has wrought: to take a holiday intended to help us ponder mortality and the souls in purgatory and celestial flights of fancy and turn it into a horrow show. Now we are left with generations of Catholics who haven't the slightest notion what Purgatory actually means.

In Heaven, there will be a liturgical cycle finally done properly. I really hope I can get there to see it. Enough of this world and its lame ennui and its agnostic apathy and puritan poo-pooing. I want a Catholic afterlife with all the trimmings!

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