Catholics And The Halloween Triduum of Death — Traditional Catholic Femininity 🌹🙏🌹

How Catholic Is Halloween?

via Catholics And The Halloween Triduum of Death — Traditional Catholic Femininity 🌹🙏🌹

Annunci

The Pseudo~Scholars

  Mabel always enjoyed watching her favorite uncles, Lum and Abner, during their weekly chess game.

 

“This week should give the old fellows a lot to ramble on about,” she thought. “Reformation Sunday, All Saints and All Souls Days, Guy Fawkes Day.”

 

 

As always, the doting niece sat still, riveted by their pseudo~scholarly debate.  The boys spent hours making profound observations about history, theology, philosophy, as self~professed paragons of erudition always do.

 

 

“There’s only one thing that has me going crazy with suspense, though,” she couldn’t help wondering.  “Has either of them ever once really played chess?”

 

 

Rochelle, as always, brinks us yet another of her weekly Friday Fictioneers.   Instructions can be found on her blog.  This week’s photo has been provided by Jeff Arnold. 

scary halloween

I should like to have been able to say that I don’t scare very easily but there are at least a few tricks that can really bother me. Anything involving heights, left turns, odd numbers or red hair is usually guaranteed to send all sorts of chills up and down my spine.  Let’s not forget, either, about strangers and new experiences, liberalism and anyone who’s so much as the least bit inarticulate. I don’t usually bother with Halloween so much as an adult. I quite like telling people that I spend Halloween listening to the Zombies and the Grateful Dead, in the hope that at least someone will overlook the fact that they’re only a couple of 1960’s bands. Today and tonight, for some strange reason, absolutely no kids have come to the door trick-or-treating.  When I was a kid, my Halloweens were often not as much scary as they were obnoxious, with neighborhood kids hitting me over the head with socks filled with eggs, and pulling other stupid pranks.  Although I miss all the Halloweens of yore, this one has been quite nice, with such a whole lot of peace and quiet.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/trick-or-trick/

http://tuckedintoacorner.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/a-trick/

http://tombalistreri.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/scary-costume/

http://designersophisticate.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/sorry-no-tricks/

http://guthonestfaith.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/horsing-around/

http://movingtowardsthelight.com/2014/10/31/halloween-haunting/

http://dragoneystory.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/who/

good grief!

I have always thought that if I were ever to choose a Halloween costume that would be the definitive representation of the real me, although I am only one guy, it would absolutely have to be one that represented the entire gang from the Charles M. Schulz comic strip “Peanuts”. Like Charlie Brown, the little round-headed kid, I always seem to be prone toward misfortune.  Each of us seems to have quite a flair for finding life’s booby traps the hard way. A main difference between him and me is that although he is perpetually smitten with the little red-haired girl I have always been terrified of her.  The Linus in me tends to be exceptionally introspective, always taking a significantly intellectually inclined approach to things. I always hang onto whatever security blanket is conveniently available too.  Everyone knows about my affinity with Schroeder. The main distinction between him and me is that while his main obsession is classical music, mainly Ludwig van Beethoven, I have always been equally insatiably consumed with the lives and times of the Beatles, and all the music, and circumstances in general, of the 1960’s. My sloppy disheveled side is represented by Pig Pen. To my chagrin I tend to be quite disorganized in certain ways.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/masks-off/

http://tuckedintoacorner.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/the-costume/

http://abozdar.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/another-fallen-hero/

http://lindaswritingblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/mask-uerade/

http://lifeassirli.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/my-halloween-costumes/

http://psychologistmimi.com/2014/10/25/im-a-cupcake-girl-full-of-whimsy-efficiency-and-style/

la di dah day la di dah

I’ve always enjoyed exceptionally warm weather and dreaded the several months of the year when it’s cold. Autumn is, to a certain extent, quite an exceptionally nice experience for me though. At first, when all the leaves start changing colors and orange and black seem to be everywhere, it’s such a fine feeling. I have many decades’ worth of nice memories of Halloween, especially when I was a kid, and Thanksgiving, most significantly when I used always to spend it with cousins in western New York. I remember during my very young days, as far back as Jackson Heights, the weather on Halloween was usually so bitter cold that I was forced to explain to people that somewhere under my fifty layers of heavy clothes was a costume, and that I really was dressed as either the Green Hornet or some other then-current character. Thanksgiving in North Tonawanda, during the 1980’s, was also frequently bitter cold. November can often be exceptionally rainy.  Once the full brunt of autumn settles in, though, it then becomes quite a seriously nasty depressing time for me. The miserable weather and dark gloomy atmosphere have always struck me as  exceptionally frustrating, and are also quite an intense metaphor, for me, of the dark side of life. My mother died during the last week of September and my father died during the first week of November so that adds yet another dark property to the fall.  When I was a kid autumn brought with it the beginning of the school  year, that was always welcome, but as an adult I can count on no such milestone to keep things interesting. Walt Whitman’s poem, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” from “Leaves Of Grass”,  specifically references the ninth month as a symbol of birth. September, the ninth month, is when fall begins.  For me it represents all the good and bad that life has to give. Change has never been easy for me. The positive and negative aspects of fall perfectly reflect the good and bad things in life.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/autumn-leaves/

http://lifeconfusions.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/autumn-leaves/

http://stacilys.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/autumn-creative-collaboration/

http://calandrabranch.com/2014/09/21/its-my-season/