Halloween is a Christian holiday?!

Yep.

Well, originally.

The word Hallowe’en itself is a contraction of “Hallowed evening”. Hallowed is an old English word for “holy” — as in “Hallowed be Thy Name”, in the Lord’s Prayer.

Why is this evening “hallowed”? Because is is the eve of the Feast of All Saints — which used to be called All Hallows. Like Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, and the Easter Vigil, the Church’s celebration of her greatest feasts begins the evening before. (This follows the ancient Jewish practice of beginning the celebration of the Sabbath at sundown on Friday evening.)

It’s a good piece, examining the Halloween event in the culture now (commercially rivaling some of the biggest), and the place of Christianity’s understanding of “the last things” in the celebrations and rituals of life, to it’s earthly end.

MercatorNet has another good commentary on the horrors of it all…

[Polish director Krzysztof] Zanussi’s sharply critical view that Western art has literally lost the plot of human life sheds some light on the kind of horror stories that authors and audiences seem to like best today. Losing the sense of a transcendent mystery seems also to have coarsened the taste of horror creators and consumers, making them indulge in the lowest level mysteries, in which gore and ugliness dominate.

There is another fact to consider. Today’s horror goes along with the contemporary cult of emotions, emotions that demand more and more extreme forms of gratification. French philosopher Michel Lacroix has analysed this trend, opposing it to the Enlightenment cult of reason but also to the more delicate search for the emotions found in contemplation. In his opinion these extreme emotions flag a loss of sensitivity, acting as a powerful drug more and more widespread — not only among young people but everywhere in our modern society.

Seeing all the ads for gory flicks and video games, this analysis comes as a good reference point to adjust our thinking as a consumer culture. Especially on Hallowe’en.