HomeOver the next few days, several ancient festivals will be celebrated, each of which focuses at least in part, on death.
The Christian tradition celebrates All Saint’s and All Soul’s Days.
Munchkins, dressed as goblins, will wander our streets celebrating Halloween.
In Mexico, there will be celebrations of the ancient Aztec festival the Day Of The Dead.
All Soul’s and All Saint’s Days, of course, were created as a replacement for the older Celtic New Year festival, which began about November 1, and for the Germanic New Year festival which took place around November 11. That latter date is still celebrated as St. Martin’s day, and one eats a fat roast goose dinner. I serve mine and with red cabbage.
In Celtic lore, this New Year was a time when the boundary between this world and the world of the dead was weakest. The departed returned to their homes seeking warmth and food and rest. To welcome them home, family members lit a fire, set out a feast of their favorite foods and beverages, made their beds with fresh linens, and set out new sets of clothing. Among the foods set out would be cakes, sometimes called ‘soul cakes”. In England it was common in Protestant parts for people to go “a-soulin” on All Souls and All Saints Days. Many of us think of that now as something attached to Christmas.
But it was not only in Celtic areas that the Festival of the Dead was celebrated. It took place throughout Europe, in France, in Italy, and in Estonia and Lithuania.
Similar accounts of the dead visiting home on one day of the year exist place throughout the world.
The connection of Halloween with witches probably came about because those who kept to the old pagan religion were called witches. The connection with vampires and other evil creatures is less obvious but if one thinks of spirits as scary beings, then the idea of other scary beings accompanying them is quite natural. And when one thinks that vampires are thought of as the half-dead or the undead it is easy to see how they can “slide over”, as it were, to a festival of the dead.
That sense of the Festival of the Dead as frightening was not universal. It was often, if not usually, a very celebratory feast. As the Church attempted to stamp out the old pagan religion, it would naturally see such old festivals as evil; and there would be a tendency in Christian theology to connect the old religion and its festivals with the work of the Devil. One can find examples of that tendency today among conservative Christian groups who will not allow their children to celebrate Halloween.
And so it was only later that both the night and the visitors came to be seen as evil. The Day Of The Dead in Mexico is a holiday that combines an ancient Aztec festival of the dead with All Soul’s Day. The Aztec festival took place originally in August, but was intentionally shifted to November by the Spanish Christian missionaries.
Duane will speak to the actual practices of El Dia De Los Muertos.
That is the historical account, very briefly and incompletely given.
I want to take some time to think about what these festivals mean.
What does it mean that the dead come back?
First, it means that there is some notion of life after death, and many find that to be a comforting thought. The sense that this is not all there is means for some that this, this life, takes on new meaning and purpose. In some way it affects the next life. That allows people to have answers for suffering and for the fact that good people sometimes live lives of pain while people who behave bad sometimes seem to prosper. If there is something after this life, then there can be a redressing of imbalance in that afterlife. And, if there is something after this life, there is hope for us. I am someone who is attached to life, I do not wish to let go. For me, it would be nice to believe that there is something that lives on.
But there is something deeper, I think—and that is odd to say but I think it is deeper than even MY living on after death-- there is something oddly more personal and more immediate that is involved in these celebrations. When we love someone who is gone, we have a hope, a desire, a longing for them to feel the love we still have for them, to know that we still think of them. We have a longing for them to still have some consciousness, whatever that might mean, of our connection to them. We have a longing for them to know how deeply we feel their loss.
We also have a longing to see them again, to touch them and feel their touch in return, to hear their laughter or their singing or their humming. We have a longing for their wisdom, for their companionship, for their living presence in our lives.
When ancient peoples said that the spirit of their ancestors returned to their homes, id they mean ghosts in our spooky tales sense? Or did they mean something else entirely.
What does it mean to say, the spirit of my loved one has come back? It may be meant literally, of course. But more than that, it is meant metaphorically; actually and metaphorically.
Whenever I think of someone, whenever I speak of them, whenever I remember them in what I do or how I do it, they live again in that moment.
They live on in and through me.
Their wisdom lives on if I live a life true to their teaching.
Their love lives on if I live a life filled with the love they gave to me.
Their spirit lives whenever I allow it to inhabit my body and mind.
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