All Saints Day is one of the oldest and most significant feast days on the Church calendar. Sadly, it has lost some of its relevance in the modern age, becoming grossly overshadowed by Halloween, the Holy Day’s overbearing secular counterpart.
My family, for one, has never stopped assigning a high degree of importance to the feast day. Years ago, my husband and I would take our children to an All Saints Day party every November 1. At these parties, each child would dress up as a particular saint, tell all the others who they were and give a little anecdote about their particular saint’s life and mission.
Being a sewing enthusiast, I would spend considerable time creating their costumes. One year my first son Bobby, who was three at the time, portrayed the boy Jesus and my second son Michael, who was two, dressed up as St. Joseph.
The following year, Michael insisted on being Archbishop Thomas Becket after watching the video movie “Becket” for days on end. It seems that three year-olds have a way of never tiring of a good thing. In spite of the fact that his costume was technically challenging, I worked hard to replicate the bishop’s garments with as much accuracy as possible. I made a chasuble from gold lamé and applied white and gold trim in the shape of a cross. Underneath, Michael wore a simple white gown that served as a cassock. The miter was the tricky part, but I managed to cover a cardboard cut-out of a miter with the same fabric from which I made his chasuble. As he traipsed through the neighborhood on Halloween night, a great number of people commented on his costume. “He looks like Father Chris,” one lady said, referring to our parish priest.
Halloween served as dress rehearsal for the following day’s All Saint’s Day party. It also served as a way of bringing the Church into an otherwise thoroughly secular American holiday. We’d attend Mass on the Holy Day, and after that the All Saints Day party — always an enjoyable and effective way of teaching young children about the lives of the saints.
This year we’ll be taking our youngest son, Andrew, to an All Saints’ Day party hosted by a Catholic home schooling group in our home town. In fact, it’s practically guaranteed that any Catholic home schooler you know has such a party in the works. With more and more Catholic families availing themselves of the home schooling option, it’s just a matter of time before these wonderful traditions become more widely practiced in our culture.
There are other traditions families can tap into to celebrate All Saints Day. It is customary in certain Catholic countries, for example, to make special breads in recognition of the big day. In his book The Fine Art of Italian Cooking (Random House 1989), author Giuliano Bugialli provides a wonderful recipe for Italian All Saints Day bread.
The feast of All Saints can also be an excellent time to teach your children the Litany of the Saints by reciting it together at the conclusion of the family Rosary. It also provides the opportunity to point out how the Church tends to “group” the saints — i.e., “all ye holy martyrs, pray for us; all ye holy patriarchs and prophets, pray for us….” This illustrates for them how the Church does not try to name every individual saint, but rather seeks the intercession of those grouped together in particular categories.
The Feast of All Saints was first instituted by Pope Urban IV in order to commemorate the large number of martyrs and saints that the Church wanted to honor but could not do so individually. In his Decretale Si Domminum, Pope Urban IV said, “Any negligence, omission and irreverence committed in the celebration of the Saints’ feasts throughout the year is to be atoned for by the faithful, and thus due honor may still be offered these Saints.”
The secular America holiday of Halloween has its roots in All Saints Day. “Hallow-een” is really All Hallow’s-eve, the night before All Hallows Day. The ghosts and goblins that dominate Halloween have their roots in Druid festivities and have become synonymous with the modern observance of Halloween.
By celebrating All Saints Day with parties honoring the saints, by dressing our children as saints rather than goblins, by teaching our children the litany of the saints and making special breads and the like, we are again building up the great Catholic culture that forged Christendom and gave the West its glorious patrimony.
