Happy Halloween & All Saints’ Day
Happy halloween & all saints’ day
Today is a memorable day for me.
It’s both of parents’ birthdays, born in 1937 and 1935. Tomorrow, November 1, is traditionally All Saints’ Day, celebrated by Catholics, Anglicans, and Orthodox believers. Basically, it’s a day to remember anyone who’s followed God, not just the saints canonized by organized religion.
November 2 is “All Souls’ Day,” the third day in Allhallowtide. This day gave living believers a day to pray for those who had already died and were in purgatory, according to Catholic doctrine. This feels like a lot of superstition to me, and no surprise. Halloween began as Samhain, a Celtic belief that the spirits of the dead returned to earth on Oct. 31, thus merging the worlds of the living and the dead. Irish and Scottish dressed in ghoulish costumes and danced around bonfires to protect the living from the ghosts. Jack-o-lanterns became a tradition. Halloween grew from there. When the Irish and Scotch immigrated to America, they brought Halloween traditions with them.
I’m not a fan of anything related to witchcraft or ghosts, even in the spirit of fun. But making costumes is a blast. I only sewed clothes for my boys at Halloween, and I loved doing it. I made some awesome costumes for them: army fatigues, superheroes, armored knights, ninjas, Civil War soldiers, Peter Pan (they were babies for this one, so I could get away with it!). So much fun.
Today, I revived my last-minute costume-making skills and pulled together a duo-costume for my husband and me–Ted Lasso and Rebecca. (Now I’ve got to stop eating brownies so I can squeeze into a cocktail dress.)
The irony of Allhallowtide is not lost on me. Our fear of mortality is haunting. We struggle with the concept and security of an eternity. And in an attempt to cover our spiritual bases, we distort truth and indulge in fantasy. Is it harmless?
Maybe. Maybe not.
In the words of the character Ted Lasso, “Security isn’t about predicting the future perfectly — it’s about doing the right thing, even when you don’t know how it will turn out, and trusting that it will all work out.”
The real secret of managing anxiety about the future–and the obvious answer in Scripture–is that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Rom. 8:28).
