Faithful Democrats
This election invokes our national ghosts in an unusual way. All-Saints and All-Souls days are here to help.
I don’t think I’ve ever before taken note that Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day are so close to Election Day. And I probably am only aware of it this year because I am excruciatingly aware of every day that stands between us and November fourth.
Over the past few days I have had the urge to learn more about All Saints Day and All Souls Day (the latter is also known, somewhat ominously, as the Day of the Dead). I’d like to share a little of what I have learned about the traditions surrounding the holidays and offer some reflections on how I see them as possible preparation for our national election.
Halloween, All Saints and All Souls day combine ancient Christian custom with even more ancient rituals from around the world. All Saints day began as a way to recognize all those Christians who had been persecuted and killed in the Roman Empire during the first three hundred years of Christianity. (There were so many martyrs that they couldn’t each get their own holiday.) In the 700s Pope Gregory made it a formal Catholic holiday to celebrate all saints, known and unknown. In the 10th century, an abbot in France added All Souls day to the calendar as a time to pray for all who have died, not just the saintly. Add to this the Celtic belief that the souls of the dead return for a meal with the family on the night of their late-autumn Samhein festival, the Aztec belief that souls of the dead must pass through nine phases before coming to rest, and the Catholic belief that all who die need to "undergo purification to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven"[i] and you get three days from October 31st to November 2nd acknowledging that 1) those who have died come back to haunt us, and 2) our prayers and actions can impact those who have come before us.
Such recognition seems particularly fitting to me this year because this election invokes our national ghosts. Even though I believe that race will not be the primary motivating factor in most Americans’ vote on November 4th, I do believe that our nation’s history regarding race is bubbling up in vivid ways as we approach the election, poised to choose our first African-American president. William Ayers and G. Gordon Liddy might be the "skeletons in the closet" that some have chosen to invoke, but I wonder: what national spirits will feel present to us as we get closer to voting day? Those souls who died on both sides of the Civil War, fighting for and against black slavery? Those souls who were killed at various points in our history, fighting for what we call Civil Rights? Those who participated in lynch mobs?
The polls are telling us that in the American psyche there is a gap between the two candidates – it widens and narrows day to day, but the overall impression is this: enough Americans favor Senator Obama to translate into a democratic victory in the presidential election. Ironically, though, there is another gap in the American psyche: many of those who will vote for Obama can’t quite yet believe in the America on the other side of an Obama win. How many people have you heard wondering aloud, "When people get in that voting booth will enough Americans actually be able to vote for a black man?" When I hear people say it, I know the ghosts of our past are still with us.
For these tension-filled few days we dwell in the gap between the America-that-could-never-elect-a-Black-President and the America-that-has-a-Black-President .And because our history is more vivid to us than our future, this gap invites the spirits of our past into the spaces.
So thank God for All Saints Day! We can invoke all that is good and transformational and transcendent in our national history. We can remember all the positive change this nation has brought about and all the people – known and unknown – who have made such change a reality. We can pray that we will make our heroes proud.
So thank God for All Souls Day! If racial hatred gets stirred up in these last days before the election we can recognize that some of our past has come back to feast on current events. Just like the old tales that say the dead return for a meal with the family at this time of year. And then we can pray for our troubled past – for all those souls who need our prayers and action – to help them rest more easily.
And thank God for Election Day! After All-Saints and All-Souls Days have cleared the way, May we vote with a vision of our future, not spooked by the ghosts of our history.
On November 5th, May we find ourselves on the other, glorious, side of the gap.
[i] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, para 1030. Other sources: "Glimpses of Christian History" gospelcom.net; "History of All Souls Day" TheHolidaySpot.com; "History of Halloween" History.com
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