Father Glenn J. Comandini

I recently heard a marketing expert explain how Halloween is one of the biggest consumer holidays of the calendar year. Many people love this day and decorate for it a month or more in advance of Oct. 31. In fact, it seems that, apart from Christmas, Americans spend more money on Halloween, tricks and treats, decorations and costumes, than any other holiday. Why this fascination with zombies (bodies without souls), ghosts (souls without bodies), tombstones, witches, wizards, monsters, animated pumpkins and scarecrows? Some sociologists allege that the reason for America’s growing fascination with the macabre, the occult and the dead is rooted in the erroneous notion that Halloween is a secular holiday. It is divorced from anything to do with family life, race, creed or sexual orientation. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least the part that asserts Halloween is a purely secular holiday. Perhaps in some circles, this is true but not the origins of Halloween, which takes us back more than 2,000 years ago to a tribe called the “Celts” that inhabited all of Ireland, most of the British Isles and part of France. The Celts celebrated the beginning of the new year on Nov. 1. This day symbolized the end of summer and the onset of winter. It was the time of the harvest. Celts believed that on New Year’s Eve, Oct. 31, the ghosts of the dead could roam the land from sundown on Oct. 31 until sunrise on Nov. 1. On Samhain, as this night was called, it was believed that the ghosts of the dead would rise from their graves, cause pranks and possibly ruin the harvest. To ward off these annoying spirits, the Celts wore costumes, usually made of animal heads and skins. They built a bonfire and paraded around the cemeteries of their dead until sunrise on Nov. 1.

Whoever thought that when we were saving our coins to help the missionaries in far-off lands, 30 or 40 or 50 years later, these missionaries would be working in our parishes? Yes, we, the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world, have become one of those “missions” that we envisioned only in third world nations of Africa, Asia and South America. How did this happen?

She never went on missions, never founded a religious order, never performed great works. Marie-Françoise Thérèse Martin was only 15 when she entered the Carmelite Monastery and was given the religious name of Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.The only book of hers, published after her death is a brief edited version of her autobiographical journal called “Story of a Soul.” Within 28 years after her death, however, the public demand was so great that she be made a saint that Pius XI canonized her on Oct. 3, 1923.

Some of the early fathers of the Church were labeled “Apologists” because the focus of their work was on a defense of the faith or, more specifically, a defense of the teaching of the Church on a particular tenet of faith or morals. If we take a look at the work of the apologists, they were not against Greek philosophy but desired to show that Christianity and philosophy were not mutually exclusive. In addition to Origen and Tertullian, early Christian apologists include Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria. St. Athanasius and St. Augustine.