Very interesting insight on this overly famous celebration. Stores were stocked with Halloween paraphernalia many weeks ago. The yard art in our area begins earlier every year along with the daytime horror of deflated ghouls and goblins.
Regarding the mystery of death, I believe it was Tolstoy who said, “we live a stupid life and die a stupid death.” A pretty brutal account of the truth. I imagine you are aware of WH Auden’s lines from his Christmas Oratorio, “ For the Time Being?” “We who must die demand a miracle…”
Secularism’s absorption of religious festivals is always a fascinating one to watch - what is it up to and why does it need to buy itself this time to engage with a series of events that are utterly inimical to its fundamentally naturalist philosophy? I’ve always wanted to know what it must be like to live in the shared imagination of a culture for whom the festival really was a time when demons etc wandered the earth. In any event your comments made me think of John Bowker’s observation about how the naturalisation of death in a secular society leads to its trivialisation in forms of crass entertainment.
Good points all. In a similar vein, I'm tempted to take a Girardian standpoint here and add that, the more the supernatural retreats, the more dangerous the world becomes.
So, just to start here, a really impressive post. I'd heard of the Celtic pagan Samhain roots, but I wasn't aware of practices of merrymaking and pranks going back to the 1400s, or about Pope Gregory's efforts to Christianize it or use Samhain's popularity as an opportunity for catechesis. The workings-in of Rilke on "the face of life turned away," O'Connor on the mystery of evil, Mary Shelley.... etc!
The tentative comment I'd like to make is to raise the point that the secular and the religious might not always be so strictly divided as a matter of naturalism and commercialism on the one hand, and an earnest belief in the supernatural on the other. Ricoeur on symbolism, the symbolism of evil, the surplus of meanings and the powers evoked through symbolism. I think about the fascination with the undead and Zombies in pop culture, in the attraction this symbol has for secular adult people, and meanings that might not be entirely explicated but become more pronounced when, to take up Rilke again, death as the "face of life turned away" becomes more present in the feeling of being overtaken by madness, threat, (climate change), break-down, etc. Even think about the success of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" in reaching such an audience - aren't the post-apocalyptic cannibals in the novel kind of demythologized zombies, in a naturalistic world, but still one suffused with symbolism and ritual and like as Chris says, a horizon of concern about evil and inescapable consequence (guilt)?
It's an interesting point. I'll have to ponder it some more, but my immediate response is: a show like THE WALKING DEAD (which I loved at first but have slowly tired of) naturalizes the zombies entirely. At one point, the erstwhile minister Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) even says that God has utterly abandoned the world. Perhaps other zombie films have a different approach, but in this case the symbolism seems to reinforce the natural: the world is simply full of death, and we have to do whatever it takes to survive -- full stop.
Yes... but like, even in Oscar Romeros' Zombie movies, isn't there something like a creeping social commentary about commercialism, which I think isn't like *celebrating* or *accepting* commercialism like "Halloween Spirit" etc. (in the memes these days!) but, asking the question of commercialism meaninglessness - as the mall of late 20th century America made us into the walking dead? It's a question of a meaningful horizon with guilt, I think.... but I am personally caught hard in the matrix of Ricoeur and even Bultmann and Tillich (even Kant), but working against that too so it makes more inclined to view things this way than as, I don't know, maybe somehow like Hart or Taylor do about secularism/naturalism and religion/supernaturalism.
Very interesting insight on this overly famous celebration. Stores were stocked with Halloween paraphernalia many weeks ago. The yard art in our area begins earlier every year along with the daytime horror of deflated ghouls and goblins.
Regarding the mystery of death, I believe it was Tolstoy who said, “we live a stupid life and die a stupid death.” A pretty brutal account of the truth. I imagine you are aware of WH Auden’s lines from his Christmas Oratorio, “ For the Time Being?” “We who must die demand a miracle…”
Secularism’s absorption of religious festivals is always a fascinating one to watch - what is it up to and why does it need to buy itself this time to engage with a series of events that are utterly inimical to its fundamentally naturalist philosophy? I’ve always wanted to know what it must be like to live in the shared imagination of a culture for whom the festival really was a time when demons etc wandered the earth. In any event your comments made me think of John Bowker’s observation about how the naturalisation of death in a secular society leads to its trivialisation in forms of crass entertainment.
Good points all. In a similar vein, I'm tempted to take a Girardian standpoint here and add that, the more the supernatural retreats, the more dangerous the world becomes.
So, just to start here, a really impressive post. I'd heard of the Celtic pagan Samhain roots, but I wasn't aware of practices of merrymaking and pranks going back to the 1400s, or about Pope Gregory's efforts to Christianize it or use Samhain's popularity as an opportunity for catechesis. The workings-in of Rilke on "the face of life turned away," O'Connor on the mystery of evil, Mary Shelley.... etc!
The tentative comment I'd like to make is to raise the point that the secular and the religious might not always be so strictly divided as a matter of naturalism and commercialism on the one hand, and an earnest belief in the supernatural on the other. Ricoeur on symbolism, the symbolism of evil, the surplus of meanings and the powers evoked through symbolism. I think about the fascination with the undead and Zombies in pop culture, in the attraction this symbol has for secular adult people, and meanings that might not be entirely explicated but become more pronounced when, to take up Rilke again, death as the "face of life turned away" becomes more present in the feeling of being overtaken by madness, threat, (climate change), break-down, etc. Even think about the success of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" in reaching such an audience - aren't the post-apocalyptic cannibals in the novel kind of demythologized zombies, in a naturalistic world, but still one suffused with symbolism and ritual and like as Chris says, a horizon of concern about evil and inescapable consequence (guilt)?
It's an interesting point. I'll have to ponder it some more, but my immediate response is: a show like THE WALKING DEAD (which I loved at first but have slowly tired of) naturalizes the zombies entirely. At one point, the erstwhile minister Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) even says that God has utterly abandoned the world. Perhaps other zombie films have a different approach, but in this case the symbolism seems to reinforce the natural: the world is simply full of death, and we have to do whatever it takes to survive -- full stop.
Yes... but like, even in Oscar Romeros' Zombie movies, isn't there something like a creeping social commentary about commercialism, which I think isn't like *celebrating* or *accepting* commercialism like "Halloween Spirit" etc. (in the memes these days!) but, asking the question of commercialism meaninglessness - as the mall of late 20th century America made us into the walking dead? It's a question of a meaningful horizon with guilt, I think.... but I am personally caught hard in the matrix of Ricoeur and even Bultmann and Tillich (even Kant), but working against that too so it makes more inclined to view things this way than as, I don't know, maybe somehow like Hart or Taylor do about secularism/naturalism and religion/supernaturalism.
whoops (laugh/cry emoji here)! George Romero, *not* Oscar Romero! (cry emoji)
Now THAT is funny. I knew who you meant, haha.