Halloween lessons to be learned from Europe

The roots of our Halloween traditions may lie in Europe, but in Europe Halloween is regarded as an American import.  Nothing says American Halloween like a big toothy jack o’lantern, and the paper pumpkins that are decorating the tourist bars of Kraków are a testament to globalization.

The Church in Poland is suspicious of the new and foreign holiday, and no wonder. The celebration of ghosts, ghouls, demons and witches is inconceivable to Catholic Poles, especially on the eve of one of their most important holidays: All Saints Day. It is the universal custom in Poland for families to travel to cemeteries on Nov. 1 to visit the graves of their relatives and friends, to tidy them up, to pray for the dead and even to sing hymns in the cemetery chapels. When Polish priests denounce Western Halloween, the word “satanic” is not neglected.

When I was a child, it never occurred to me for an instant that Halloween could be considered either a religious or a blasphemous holiday. It so clearly had nothing to do with religion, let alone Christianity. It was, I thought, something shared by all Canadian children.

I was a deeply pious child, and yet thought no ill of the cardboard ghosts and witches that adorned my Catholic classrooms. I loved the spooky stories we read in October and the Halloween art projects. A favourite theme was the haunted cemetery, so much more lively and inviting with its black cats and blackly humourous tombstones than flat York Cemetery on the other side of Yonge Street. And then there was the fun of dressing up and going out after dark, of ringing doorbells and of  annual tolerance of candy in my anti-candy home.   

It  had nothing to do with All Saints Day, and I don’t think the feast itself got much of a mention at school. Halloween was about imagination and fun; saints were about real life and true belief. And so I was confused and even hurt, on my last trick-or-treating venture, by a candyless neighbour who opened the door only to tell me that he didn’t have Halloween in his religion. Halloween is not part of my religion, either, but neither is disappointing children.

Having heard that the local bairns are thrilled to see my nostalgic-for-Canada jack o’lantern, I will keep putting it in our window. But at the same time,  my own enthusiasm for Halloween traditions has dimmed. It’s not that I think they are wicked; it’s that I think they could be so much better.

I came to this conclusion last All Saint’s Day during a visit to Poland. I was eager to see the local customs, so I dragged my husband to a Kraków cemetery. We were awed by the crowds that flowed into the cemetery as other crowds flowed out. Almost everyone was carrying dirty plastic bags of gardening tools or branches. There were flowers and coloured lamps for sale outside.

The tombstones were all raised; they were big enough to sit on, and there were no flat markers on grass such as we see most of the time in Canada and the United States. They were more like real homes on real avenues; it was a city of the dead. There were trees and tombs as far as the eye could see, and every tomb had coloured, candlelit glass lamps on it. No tomb had been left neglected.

There were people everywhere, quiet but chatty and cheerful. I could hear a grandson asking his grandmother how far away their grave was, and his grandmother assuring him it was not much further. In a distant corner, a middle-aged father and college-age son worked silent on and around a flat, raised tombstone, taking lamps and branches from bags. I found the tomb of St. Edith Stein’s colleague, Roman Ingarden.    

Prayers and hymns in the small, ornate chapel were amplified so that we could hear them a short distance away. And behind the chapel was a memorial to the victims of communism, in the form of a cross being grasped by many disembodied hands. A crowd of people stood silently praying before this memorial, behind hundreds of coloured, candlelit, glass lamps. 

It was not just about family, this quiet cemetery festival. It was about neighbours and nation, too, and the Catholic awareness that our dead are still part of our Church, still part of our families, and should not be left forgotten and neglected. For the first time, I felt ashamed of Canadian Halloween, its flat and silent graveyards locked against pranksters. I love its traditions, but not its amnesia. A jack o’lantern is fun, but a votive candle is more to the point.

(Cummings McLean is a Canadian writer and author of  Ceremony of Innocence.)