French Catholics and Halloween

French Catholicism has responded to the commercialization of Halloween by reengaging with the feast of All Saints, according to historian Paul Airiau. This response has led to the reappearance of local saints and their relics, as the church sought to reclaim its own traditions amid the growing influence of Halloween.

Halloween's Impact on Catholic Practices

Since the end of the 1990s, French Catholicism has recognized that it was dealing with something resembling death, but not as it had wished. The commercial importation of Halloween by a company specialized in costumes and by Orange, which launched a major marketing campaign, suddenly confronted French Catholics with a festival that felt too morbid, gothic, or even diabolical.

Reclaiming All Saints

In response, French Catholics developed parades emphasizing All Saints as a manifestation of divine victory over death and demonic powers. The "All Saints cake" was launched in Paris in 2001 and the festival "Holy wins" in 2002, combining pop-rock concerts with evangelization and achieving more assured success, even in Belgium.

Cultural Submersion and Minority Status

Among Catholics, there was a kind of existential crystallization caused by what was experienced as a form of cultural submersion of the Christian matrix of France. This period marked a more or less conscious entry into the fact of now being minority or ultra-minority, as commercial strategies imposed the reality that bishops had more or less assumed with the "Dagens report" in 1996.

Reclaiming the Sacred through Joy

The response to Halloween deliberately anchored itself in a perspective of joyful and relaxed manifestation, somewhat changing the meaning of the Catholic feast. The material attestations of the meaning of All Saints claimed by Catholicism were not used, and the ritual and liturgical dimensions of cult practices were partially set aside.

Reintroducing Relics and Local Saints

The return of relics indicates a break in tradition and believing memory. Local, regional, and parish saints have largely sunk into oblivion, including among the most militant Catholics, due to the cultural rupture represented by the accelerated urbanization of the 1950s-1970s. Relic processions now benefit mainly a few stars of ostensions and processions, notably Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus.

A Shift in Catholic Practice

Should one believe that the vigil at the Stade de France on September 25 last indicates a change of perspective and that at All Saints and during patronal feasts, processions and veneration of reliquaries will now flourish? Perhaps, who knows. It at least shows a greater sensitivity to the sacred power of relics and a quasi-material religiosity, one that fixes itself in bodily remains, independently of any questioning on the legends of the saints invoked.