What We Lose by Losing Our Christian Faith

 

Jesus exorcises the Gerasene/Gadarene demoniac

The latest column by my left-wing friend Xerxes was unremarkable. But I found some of the reader comments on a previous column most interesting, and concerning. They illustrate the current prejudice against ethical monotheism.

“It's easier to hate a monolithic category of people (‘Christians’) than to admit that many people in the category actually believe in much of the same liberties and freedoms these anti-religious folk do.”

That is an attempt to play nice with Christianity, but it is pretty off base. Our concepts of human rights and personal freedoms come from Christianity. Christians necessarily believe in them more than non-Christians. John Locke based his philosophy of human rights on the Bible and the story of creation in Genesis; the Declaration of Independence argues that our rights come from God. Human rights and human dignity are based on the concept of free will as the divine spark in mankind.

The decay in belief in Christianity is the great threat to our liberties. 

Note how well human rights were observed in Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, or Nazi Germany; all anti-Christian regimes.

On paganism—condemning missionary activity in the Americas as cultural imperialism:

“All the people whom they encountered, who had a different belief system, were deemed to be pagan.  The word pagan is a word that is used to demean, belittle, and negate the value of the other.  By labelling these people as ‘pagan’ it enabled the colonizers to abuse, enslave, and slaughter these newly encountered humans.  By calling them pagan it took away their humanity.”  

 To which Xerxes responds: “I apologize. ‘Pagan’ was a shorthand way of saying ‘other,’ and I should have been more careful.”

“Pagan” is a critically meaningful term. Christians do not refer to Muslims or Jews as pagans; nor do Muslims refedr to Christians or Jews as kaffirs, the equivalent Arabic term. “Pagan” refers to the older, more primitive shamanic practices which have been supplanted by the great universalist religions.

And polytheism/shamanism is as unlike religious faith as darkness is to light, magic is to science, or madness is to sanity. Asians, still familiar with both, will immediately insist that shamanism is not a religion; Buddhism or Christianity are.

Paganism not only allows, but endorses and requires, such practices as human sacrifice, infanticide, self-mutilation, and slavery. The pagan gods are not morally good; they are at best indifferent to mankind, and usually hostile. Recall the myth of Prometheus, the concept of hubris, and the many rapes of Zeus.

In India, where there is residual paganism (although devotional Vaishnavism is now dominant, and an ethical monotheism) the British had to suppress human sacrifice by sects like the Thuggi, suttee (the immolation of widows), and the caste system. These are things that would be unthinkable under ethical monotheism; but considered a necessary religious observance by pagans.

This is why the ancient Hebrews felt they needed to exterminate the Canaanites, and forbid even dining with them. This is why the Quran says you are supposed to kill a kaffir on sight. Paganism is fundamentally immoral.

And this is why paganism quickly evaporates wherever one of the ethical monotheisms makes contact. The pagan gods are demons; monotheisms exorcise them. So people flock quickly to the new faith; it is their refuge from demons. This is why Christianity, under active repression, spread rapidly to take over the Roman Empire, and then Europe beyond. It was their reputation for successful exorcisms. This is clearly documented in the ancient manuscripts; and in the New Testament. The order of exorcists was larger in the early church than the priesthood. This was indeed Jesus’s commission to the apostles: to go about casting out demons. Which were common, clearly, in the largely pagan society of ancient Palestine. Especially in non-Jewish areas, such as among the Gerasenes.

For the same reason, Christianity spread rapidly in the Americas, with little opposition, once it arrived. It protected against the demons of the night. In South India, Saint Francis Xavier was able to personally baptize 50,000 people in ten years, despite the requirement to first be properly catechized. Today across Africa, exorcisms are common, and Christianity is sweeping the continent.

Unfortunately, with the waning of Christian commitments in North America and Europe, the demons are returning. So we are seeing a rising tide of mental illness, addictions, infanticide, child mutilation, self-mutilation, pedophilia, and suicides. 

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last….

The Burning Times

 

A propos of Hallowe’en, the following appeared yesterday in my Facebook feed, titled “Let’s have fun, but not forget about history”:

“Annual reminder about where the ‘ugliness’ of witches comes from. That ugliness was the result of beatings and torture by animals. This is why I deplore the green face witch caricatures. 

Each year they parade her about, The traditional Halloween witch. Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, A toothless mouth beneath her disfigured nose. Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw protracting form. A bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs.

Most think this is abject image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature, I disagree, I believe this to be how witches were really seen.

Consider that most witches were women, were abducted in the night and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under secrecy of darkness and presented by the light of day as a confessed witch.

Few, if any saw a frightened normal looking woman being dragged into a secret room filled with instruments of torture, to be questioned until she confessed to anything that was suggested to her, and to give names or say whatever would stop the questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a self-proclaimed witch. As the witch was paraded through the town, in route to be burned, hanged, drowned, stoned, or disposed of in various, horrible ways, all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body.

The jeering crowds viewed the result of hours of torture. The face, bruised and broken by countless blows, bore a hue of sickly green. The once warm and loving smile gone, replaced by a grimace of broken teeth, and torn gums that leer beneath a battered disfigured nose.

The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses. Broken, twisted hands clutched the wagon for support. Fractured fingers locked like cropping claws to steady her broken body.

All semblance of humanity gone. This was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a witch.

I revere this Halloween Witch and hold her sacred. I honor her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of humanity.

Each year I shed tears of respect.”

Author unknown

This post illustrates the general point that most people seem unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Both the poster and comments on the post take this as “history,” while it is clearly speculation. “I believe this…” There is one fact in the entire piece: “most witches were women.” The rest is imagined.

There is not a great deal of documentation, but witches were safer in Medieval Europe than in pagan societies. For the Catholic Church did not believe in witchcraft. Pagan societies, on the other hand, like Canadian “First Nations” before Christian conversion, or pre-Christian sub-Saharan Africa, believed in witchcraft. Sorcerers were commonly tortured to death for cursing. If you believe in witchcraft it follows, just as you must prosecute someone for stabbing another to death with a knife. If cursing works, it is the most serious crime imaginable.

Witchhunting in Europe, a pagan practice, revived with the Reformation, and was more common in Protestant lands. This because, the authority of the Church having been thrown in doubt, folk beliefs resurfaced. In this “anything might be true” atmosphere, the witches of fairy tales, who were imaginary supernatural creatures like trolls or fairies, were taken by many to be real, and possibly in the neighbourhood.

I suspect we are currently at a similar point.

Our Religion

 

Artemis at Ephesus as the all-nurturing "Mother Nature"

While we claim as a society to recognize religious freedom, in fact we have a state religion. We call it, incorrectly, “science,” but it is the thing we commonly know as science; and our god, or rather goddess, is Nature.

It is not tolerant of other creeds. Its rituals of worship, things like rules for recycling, or buying electric cars, are mandatory. It is heavily state subsidized; tithing is not optional.

Unlike the Christian God, but like the other pagan gods, Nature is not well disposed towards man. Her temples, the nature preserves, often ban human beings. Mankind becomes, to quote more than one writer, “a cancer on the planet.” 

She is clearly and commonly personified, and specifically as feminine. She has all the characteristics familiar from Isis, Artemis, and Gaea, previous nature goddesses. She is aka “Mother Nature” or “Mother Earth.”

Gaea or "Mother Earth" at the Montreal Botanical Gardens

The religion also makes no allowance for ethics. Ethics are unnatural; “unscientific.” Instead, we have definite obligations to the goddess, on pain of provoking her wrath and retribution. 

The priesthood dresses in distinctive white smocks. At the same time, because the goddess is feminine, mortal women in her image seem to be given unlimited power over life and death. Child sacrifice, common in earlier pagan periods, has returned. There is no more value to human life, after all, than to that of an animal.

The field of psychology/psychiatry is in effect a permanent Inquisition, seeking out heresies.

This is not going well. This has reached its strongest expressions, so far, in Nazism and in Communism; but we would be naïve to think these cannot be bettered in future.

Pachamama

But, you might protest, science is simply truth. 

So it is; but scientism and nature worship have nothing to do with science.

Or with truth.

Apologizing to the Pagans

 

Miss Persephone, can you identify the rapist from this lineup?

A recent HuffPo article calls for a Catholic apology for “the destruction and desecration of Greco-Roman polytheistic culture.”

Here are a few reasons why this is absurd:

1. Catholicism did not destroy Greco-Roman culture. Catholicism is Greco-Roman culture as it has evolved. The only thing missing is the polytheism.

2. Accepting the premise that polytheism should have been left alone, none of the polytheists who might have been harmed are still alive.

3. There are not even any remaining Greco-Roman pagans. Who then does one apologize to? Should the Israeli government apologize to the Canaanites and the Philistines? The Italian government to the Etruscans? The Irish government to the Firbolgs? How would this be meaningful?

4. Any actual suppression of paganism was an act by the civil, not the religious, authorities. It may have been done by them on grounds other than religious ones. Constantine and his successors believed in the value of consensus on values, to promote imperial unity, and saw Christianity as most likely to achieve it. All Catholicism did was win an intellectual argument.

5. Worshipping the pagan gods was not a matter of devotion or conscience. The pagan gods were rapists and murderers. They had no love for mankind. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.” Ancient Greeks and Romans sacrificed to their gods out of fear. Conversion to Christianity would not have been a hard sell. It was like being released from bondage.

Accordingly, the modern Catholic Church apologizing for ending Greco-Roman polytheism would be like Britain apologizing for ending the slave trade. Apologizing, that is, to the slaves.

A Modest Proposal

Landscape, unidentified Canadian national park.

The standard line emerging on the left, and among the gilets jaunes of France, is that it is immoral to spend either public or private money rebuilding Notre Dame Cathedral while people anywhere are starving.

They would seem to have a point. Surely any money would be better spent on the basic material needs of those who are poor? 

Starving child. While rich foreigner can apparently afford a camera.

But let’s apply the principle consistently. Odd that it only comes up now, in the case of religious buildings. We should also by that logic sell off all our national, provincial or municipal parks. We can give the money to the poor, and the land can then be put into production. More food for everyone; but this is especially important to the poor and starving. We should also sell off any museums and public art galleries; these are obviously luxuries. Sell all the artifacts to rich collectors, as no doubt we would if we were shutting down Notre Dame, and give the money to the poor. After all, the poor cannot afford the admission to get in to the galleries and museums anyway.

You know the one place the poor can always get to see such things of beauty and significance, though? The one place they are free? Churches.

But the poor apparently do not need beauty in their lives, or meaning, or entertainment, or escape from the unhappy moment. They need only food and shelter.

There is another reason, too, why we should sell off all the parks. Many these days worship nature. They speak of “Gaea,” “the Earth our Mother,” “Evolution did this”; “Nature intended that”; and “Mother Nature.” I attended a live lecture once by David Suzuki; publicly funded with tax dollars, of course. He spent it arguing that nature was sacred, and declaring his lifelong devotion to the “sacred elements.” He meant the old Greek quaternity: earth, air, fire, water. Their purity must be preserved.

Mandala of the four classical elements.

 
Given, then, that nature is a religion now, it is obviously a violation of the separation of church and state to fund public parks. At least if we are not going to fund churches equally.

Just as there are still churches, without government support there no doubt would still be parks and museums. Indeed, on the model of churches, they could and should all be admission free. As it stands, most national parks are, unlike churches, simply not available to the poor.

But even this would not be enough for the left. They are objecting even and specifically to private funds being spent on Notre Dame.

So we must have no parks or museums either, even privately-funded, under any circumstances. We must surely also object to anyone spending money building amusement parks, cinemas, theatres, tourist hotels, or restaurants. All are purely luxury goods. People are starving!

Indeed, even so, there is still a better argument for spending on churches than on any of these other things. Not just that churches, unlike all these other luxury goods, are accessible to the poorest of the poor. Aside from that, it is, after all, at least possible that there is a world and a life after this present one. Those who build churches of course think so. And it is believed to be eternal, while this one is transitory. If so, not having enough money for food right now may be trivial in comparison to preparing for this forever. Since each individual eternal life saved is infinite in length, restoring Notre Dame might be of more value than an infinite number of relaxing weekends in nature here on earth.

One cannot under any generally accepted premise say the same for parks. Even the nature worshippers see no path blazed from them to eternal life.

Hands Off Our Solstice!

Los Angeles's celebrated Kwanzaa parade, 2014. From Newsbusters.

Is Christmas really a makeover of a pagan holiday?

Everybody now seems to think so. It is an element of conventional wisdom. I’ve written myself, years ago for the Toronto Star, that it is, but now I have my doubts.

First, there is actually good reason to believe that Jesus was born on or about December 25. Count back nine months. You get March 25. What is March 25? The Feast of the Annunciation. That is, it commemorates the conception of Jesus. Nine months—a reasonable period for a pregnancy.

The time of the Annunciation can in turn be dated, from scriptural references, to six months after the conception of John the Baptist. And the conception of John the Baptist can be dated, by scriptural references, to the Jewish New Year. Which happens on or about the autumnal equinox, or on or about September 25.

So no, it ain’t random or unscriptural. Estimated, maybe.

It is true that there was a Roman holiday, the Saturnalia, which took place from the 17th to the 23rd of December, just before Christmas. Fine; no doubt some traditions have crossed over. But that’s a problem, actually. The usual claim is that Christmas was dated as it was to correspond with Saturnalia, so as not to attract attention to the Christian feast. But Saturnalia ends before Christmas begins, and both run for a number of days. No cover at all. And while the Roman version of the feast, Saturnalia, was held in December, the Greek version of the holiday, the Kronia, was held in July-August. So even if Saturnalia in Rome did take place at the same time as Christmas, it would have been little cover for half the Christian world, which lived in the Greek-speaking East of the Empire.

Both Saturnalia and Christmas seem to owe something to the symbolism of the winter solstice—the rebirth of the light in the heavens. Fair enough—but the winter solstice is the common experience of mankind, not something of special interest to pagans. Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the light"; surely the symbolism is obvious. Pagans everywhere actually seem to have taken much less notice of the winter solstice than Christians do. The original Roman New Year was closer to the spring equinox, in what is now March. It crept back to modern January only in the time of Christ, not because that time of year was now especially significant to the Romans, but to fit in two extra months in honour of emperors. In Northern Europe, the pagan New Year was, like the Jewish High Holidays, in autumn. The Hindu New Year is in April; the Chinese New Year is in late January or early February, halfway between solstice and equinox. The closest Western equivalent would be Groundhog Day.

Not an elf -- St. Nicholas of Myra.

The solstices and equinoxes in general are more important in the Christian calendar than in the various pagan ones. The Christian Gregorian/Julian calendar is uniquely solar, so that the solstices and equinoxes will fall on the same date every year. Everyone else’s calendar seems to be either lunar or lunar-solar, so that equinoxes and solstices are not tracked directly, and are harder to determine.

People why try to avoid the Christianity of Christmas by wishing “Happy Hanukkah,” or “Happy Kwanzaa,” or “Happy Diwali,” or indeed “Happy Solstice,” as if the holiday were not really Christian but shared, are simply a delusion to themselves and others. Hanukkah, unlike Christmas, is resolutely a second-tier Jewish holiday, not mentioned in the Talmud. Much of its current popularity can be traced to a modern tendency—largely since the 1970s--to promote it as a Jewish alternative to Christmas. Kwanzaa was invented out of whole cloth in 1965, and has never really been more than a minority interest even within the black community in the US. Diwali is a harvest festival which corresponds closely to the date of Hallowe'en. Only the Christians really make a big fuss over the winter solstice.

Merry Christmas. Deal with it.

The Truth about Paganism

A "pagan" wedding ceremony.

Here's a nice article from The Atlantic debunking modern “paganism” and “goddess worship.” A few choice quotes:

“The evidence is overwhelming that Wicca is a distinctly new religion, a 1950s concoction.”

 Contrary to the common claim, it bears no relation to any religion that preceded Christianity.

“…[S]cholars generally agree that there is no indication, either archaeological or in the written record, that any ancient people ever worshipped a single, archetypal goddess.” 

Wiccan altar.

Feminists, of course, believe that all pre-literate societies worshipped “The Goddess.” Conveniently, these are also all the societies for which we have no written records.

“Hutton effectively demolished the notion, held by Wiccans and others, that fundamentally pagan ancient customs existed beneath medieval Christian practices. His research reveals that outside of a handful of traditions, such as decorating with greenery at Yuletide and celebrating May Day with flowers, no pagan practices—much less the veneration of pagan gods—have survived from antiquity. Hutton found that nearly all the rural seasonal pastimes that folklorists once viewed as ‘timeless’ fertility rituals, including the Maypole dance, actually date from the Middle Ages or even the eighteenth century. There is now widespread consensus among historians that Catholicism thoroughly permeated the mental world of medieval Europe, introducing a robust popular culture of saints' shrines, devotions, and even charms and spells. The idea that medieval revels were pagan in origin is a legacy of the Protestant Reformation.”

Hear that? No, Hallowe’en, for example, is not a pagan festival. It is All Soul’s Night. It is purely Catholic, as are Mardi Gras and St. Valentine’s Day. I used to buy all that stuff about pagan survivals myself, only a few years ago. I think most people still do.

Witch burning; from The Hammer of Witches.

Witch trials were not a feature of medieval Europe, or of Catholicism, but appeared with Protestantism, and only in parts of Europe affected by it. It was also a fairly rare phenomenon.

“…[M]ost of them took place during a relatively short period, 1550 to 1630, and were largely confined to parts of present-day France, Switzerland, and Germany that were already racked by the religious and political turmoil of the Reformation.”

The Salem witch trials.

Total casualties were something like 40,000, no more.

“…[N]one of the accused witches who were found guilty and put to death had been charged specifically with practicing a pagan religion”

In other words, this was not a persecution of pagans. It was a trial for the crime of sorcery, as still occurs in non-Christian parts of Africa or in the Muslim world today. If you believe that sorcery works, you logically must prosecute it as a crime.

The Real Pandora

Paganism is currently all the rage, and the Judeo-Christian (or more accurately, Judeo-Christian-Muslim, or ethical monotheist) tradition is openly opposed among the cocktail crowd. The noble savages of Avatar are thought models of what human society ought to be.

But are we really ready to take on board all that paganism entails? In Nepal, recently, I picked up a local book on Nepali mythology ("Gods, Goddesses, and Religious Symbols of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Tantrism"). The authors are themselves Nepali and Hindu, so one assumes this is a sympathetic portrait.

Yes, there are depictions of kinky sex positions on the temples; all to the good, no doubt. But that's not all. A celebration of the cycles of time rejoices not just in procreation and birth, but also death. There is usually a dancing skeleton there somewhere as well. Consider this, PETAphiles: animal sacrifice. Hundreds of animals sacrificed annually in the Hanuman Temple in Kathmandu; one hundred and eight of each species; the temple steps red with blood. There's your pagan respect for nature, eh? You eat 'em, you worship 'em, you murder 'em for your sport. Isn't pristine nature, after all, itself rather rose-tinted in tooth and claw?

And why not? I quote from the local experts: "As sacrifices were considered to be the harbinger of salvation to the sacrificer and the sacrificed, the ardent advocate of sacrifice was asked to sacrifice his own parents."

Hmm; I was wondering why there seemed to be no old or infirm people on Pandora. The British managed to suppress human sacrifice in India, through a long campaign against the Thuggi. But in closed Nepal, the British resident, the only foreigner allowed in the country, personally witnessed ritual human sacrifice in downtown Kathmandu as late as 1877.

Blood sacrifice, our authors explain, is specifically tied to worship of female deities: "The worship of female deities or Saktis has always been connected with bloody rites." Female deities like, say, "Nature" or "Gaia." "Mother Nature"--"nature," literally, is "that which is born": the cycle of birth and death. Comments, Greenpeace?

Human equality? Human rights? Forget about ethical monotheism, and you can forget about all that stuff too. In the Vedas, the different castes were created out of different parts of the primordial man. Brahmans come from the brain; sudras from the feet. No question of equality there: brains think; feet just stink. South African apartheid or Jim Crow in the US South had absolutely nothing on the apartheid traditionally practiced in India, and legally enforced in Nepal up to 1964. There is no brotherhood of man, without one Father. Tantric Hindus consider themselves "siddas," "perfect ones," and all other mortals "pasu," "beasts." Slavery was ended in Nepal only in the Twentieth century. The king is understood to be an incarnation of God.

You can see here a bit of the connection--the real, historical, connection--between Hinduism and Nazism. Hitler took the swastika, after all, and the term "Aryan," from this subcontinental context.

To be fair, Hinduism is more than paganism. Devotional Vaishnavas, for example, are not that different from ethical monotheists in the West. But Hinduism, by its inclusive nature, also still contains its full pagan context. It still features the heathen elements that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam determined to root out from their midst.

And to be fair, Nepal is a wonderful place for a tourist, filled with kind, friendly people.

But Pandora, don't open that box.

The Christmas Tree

Everyone knows that the Christmas tree is a pagan symbol, right? Indeed, one web site notes “It is well recognized by all educated people today that the practice is purely and simply a retention of pagan doctrines in the Christian home.” Just like Hallowe’en…

Staring at the Christmas tree as a child, the symbolism of the night sky seemed obvious. And that’s what I always understood the tree to mean: the night sky over Bethlehem, with a big Star of Bethlehem decorating the top. The other flashing lights were the twinkling stars of the sky; the hanging balls were the planets; and the silver streamer spiraling down the tree was the Milky Way. The stern straight trunk of the fir tree was the North Pole, around which the heavens revolve, just as the branches of the tree radiate from it, in expanding orbits. One properly placed the nativity scene, the manger, as I understood it, at the foot of the tree. The infant Jesus appeared in the manger on Christmas Eve, after Midnight Mass.

I’ve never liked icicles on a Christmas tree, for the simple reason that they did not seem to fit with this symbolism.

It all seems to make good sense as purely Christian symbolism. So why resort to a pagan explanation?

It is true, of course, that the tree, and the evergreen tree, is a sacred symbol all over the world. Even in Japan, there is a tradition of pulling an evergreen indoors at winter solstice. But so what? This very universality means it is not “pagan”; its significance is universal. It might just as easily have developed independently among Christians, without similarities to pagan customs making it essentially pagan in origin. Or, even if it did not, its significance seems to go deeper than any one religious tradition. Why can’t Christianity adopt such symbols?

Sure, it is also obviously relevant to the time of the solstice—the tree representing the annual cycles of the seasons at the time of greatest dominance of the night. But that symbolism is obvious, and deliberate—Jesus’s appearance as savior of mankind is metaphorically the reappearance of the sun, of life and fertility, at the solstice. The fall of man is represented by the darkness, represented in turn by the tree. Salvation comes with the birth of Jesus at midnight, the solstice of the day.

It all works as a beautiful metaphor, and the symbolism of the solstice is just as appropriate for Christianity as for paganism. For European paganism was never, as it is commonly thought, a “religion of nature.” The pagans were somewhat less interested in nature than we Christians are.

Some, fundamentalist Protestants, insist it cannot be Christian, because it is not Biblical. But isn’t it? After all, there are some important trees in the Bible, aren’t there? The tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of Jesse, the “tree” on which Jesus was crucified. Taken together, they make the image of a tree absolutely central to salvation history, as fundamental a Christian image as there could be. Why seek elsewhere for the meaning of a tree?

Indeed, while no clear link can be found between the modern Christmas tree and any pagan practice, the modern Christmas tree seems to have developed from a German custom of the 16th century, in which it plainly represented the Tree of Paradise. The occasion was not actually Christmas, but the Feast of Adam and Eve, held on December 24th. The tree was called the paradeisbaum—the “tree of paradise.” It was originally decorated, probably in reference to Eden, with apples.

And the trees pf paradise were indeed, like the Christmas fir, “evergreens”--they bore fruit in all seasons. The appropriation of a fir tree to represent this is no more anachronistic than appropriating the apple as the fruit of Eden; but we take the latter for granted.

So it all fits neatly, in the end: the tree represents the night sky, the night, the Fall; and at the same time the promise of redemption, the rebirth of the sun, the crucifixion and the redemption—the little bit of paradise that, thanks to Jesus, is within each of us, and in our Christian homes. It may be that the common conception of the tree as “pagan” is a folk memory that it represents, in the first instance, the Fall, and the state of man before the advent of Christianity.

Our tree is up. Is yours?

Hallowe'en--Boo! It's Christian!

There seems to be a pervasive myth that Hallowe’en is a pagan celebration. It is supposed to be a survival of the old Celtic feast of Samhain.

It is probably not. It has a perfectly proper Christian pedigree. It is, as the name implies, the eve of All Hallows; that is, All Saints’ Day. And All Saints’ Day is itself quite ancient—as old as the Third Century AD. Which is to say, as old as Christmas. The current date has been observed since the eighth century—in Rome, making any connection with the old Celtic Samhain apparently purely coincidental. There are no Celts in Rome.

It is traditional to include the night before as part of a Christian feast: Christmas begins Christmas Eve, and Easter Sunday begins with the Easter Vigil. So with All Saints’. In the very early church, indeed, well before the Third Century, it was traditional, on the night before a martyr’s death anniversary, to go to his or her tomb and celebrate mass there on the preceding night.

Following the ancient practice, it is still traditional on this night throughout Catholic Europe to bring flowers to the tombs of one’s ancestors, and stay there overnight in vigil, in the pious hope that they, too, are now saints in heaven. This is also how it is still observed in the Philippines. Precious few Celts are involved.

It is therefore a “Night of the Dead.” All Saints’ is indeed known, in Mexico, as the “Day of the Dead.”

If children, then, dress up as corpses or mummies, they too have a right to expect some sort of reward. It is a natural way of including them, when they are too young to understand death or to remember the ancestors being honoured.

November 2, again, is All Souls’ Day—a day of prayer for all the souls in Purgatory. This too can have no relation to the pagan Samhain—the observance of November 2 as All Souls’ began at Cluny, in France. However, the tradition that a door opens on November 2, and that the souls in purgatory are able to communicate with the living through it, is associated with this feast since its beginnings. In the 11th century Life of St. Odilo, the origins of the celebration of All Souls’ are explained: a pilgrim returning from the Holy Land was shipwrecked on a deserted island. There, a hermit told him, there was a chasm through which the souls in purgatory could be heard to lament, requesting prayers, and demons could be heard complaining of how well the prayers of the monks of Cluny worked to rescue these lost souls.

In Tyrol, families leave out cakes on All Souls’ Night. They do so in Bolivia as well, and the souls in purgatory are understood to be somehow nourished by them.

It is a short step from all this to the idea that kids knocking on your door are to be given cakes as well, and that they represent the dead returning to our homes.

Here, some traditions of All Souls’ have probably simply been moved to the celebration of All Hallows—just as the traditions of St. Nicholas, whose feast day is early December, have been amalgamated with those of Christmas; as has the gift-giving of Epiphany.

Bad news: it’s a Christian feast.

I guess this will lead to its being banned in the schools. Bizarrely, so long as we think a tradition is pagan, and has to do with such things as devils, witches, self-mutilation, and human sacrifice, it is socially acceptable.

But a nativity scene? Unacceptable.