Days of the Dead

Halloween is the vigil of All Saints. We are bringing back the medieval Catholic artistic motif of the danse macabre, in which the living and dead alternate, each rank paired with a skeleton, because rank stops at the grave. We dress as ghouls to mock the devil, because Christ has already defeated death.

All Saints is a feast of the saints in glory, and most of them have no name and no statue. This is the great multitude of Apocalypse 7:9 — every nation and tongue, all haloed, none named. All ye holy Saints of God, pray for us.

R.I.P. is a prayer, and it is plural: requiescant in pace, may they rest. A soul being purified cannot ask for itself, so the prayers that reach it come from the living. The skulls, the cross and the flowers carry the difficulty and the beauty.

Halloween is the vigil of All Saints. We are bringing back the medieval Catholic artistic motif of the danse macabre, in which the living and dead alternate, each rank paired with a skeleton, because rank stops at the grave. We dress as ghouls to mock the devil, because Christ has already defeated death.

All Saints is a feast of the saints in glory, and most of them have no name and no statue. This is the great multitude of Apocalypse 7:9 — every nation and tongue, all haloed, none named. All ye holy Saints of God, pray for us.

R.I.P. is a prayer, and it is plural: requiescant in pace, may they rest. A soul being purified cannot ask for itself, so the prayers that reach it come from the living. The skulls, the cross and the flowers carry the difficulty and the beauty.