Of course, no 1 can impose or how they should care The Feast of the Dead. I compose about the Feast of the Dead due to the fact that it is the broadest and most universal term. It is not limited to 1 religion, culture, or spiritual tradition to cultivate the memory of the deceased – it is common regardless of spiritual beliefs and belief. The vast majority of us feel the request to preserve in the memory of our dead ancestors or loved ones, even if they do not believe in the afterlife.
Of course, due to the fact that most Poles declare themselves to be Roman Catholic – the day of 1 November is widely celebrated as a day All Saints. What is worth emphasizing – this vacation is simply a celebration, which is only a memory of people who from a Catholic point of view achieved a state of salvation. The remainder of the dead are devoted to the next day-- Soulful Day. By the way, the holidays mentioned above are not common to all Christians, for example, they do not care about Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
The Catholic nature of the Holy of the Dead is, indeed, the most common, but the spiritual layer of this feast seems to be shallow and superficial. How frequently in Polish cemeteries alternatively of prayer and reflection on the majesty of death – there are household discussions and jokes which do not respect the seriousness of the cemetery. any people seem to come to cemeteries for social purposes only. I do not even mention smoking cigarettes or going to cemeteries with dogs, which can be regarded as acts of profanation.
An interesting way to cultivate the memory of deceased people has native environments that effort to reconstruct pre-Christian rites of the grandfathers. The fundamental difficulty, however, lies in the incomplete cognition of the conduct of these rites, which is connected with the attempts to eradicate them by the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, for purely pragmatic reasons, Catholicism adopted any pre - Christian traditions in a changed form. An example of this is the habit of smoking on graves, which in the first version would illuminate the way for the souls of the dead to meet their loved ones. It is besides worth emphasizing the temporal convergence of pagan grandfathers with Catholic Zasulki. It is apparent that specified rites are modern niche and it is hard to say that they will become popular.
A completely distant from both Catholic and Slavic traditions, however, is the increasingly common habit of celebrating the alleged "holy" Halloween. Although this customized refers to the Celtic festival of Samhain, it has small in common with it, as it is simply a completely secular rite embedded in the commercial Anglo-Saxon anticulture. The symbols of this pseudoholy are illuminated pumpkins, skeletons, or skull bodies, which are tacky references to the death and the spirit world. This symbolism is more comic than it scares and is simply a denial of the seriousness and reflection that should be associated with cultivating the memory of the dead. It is worrying that specified traditions permeate everyday life, as is illustrated by pumpkins present on buying sites, or Halloween games for children. Furthermore, Catholics view specified practices as spiritual dangers and references to occultism. Abstaining from this, Halloween customs, which are pulpes of liberal commerce and consumerism, are surely contrary to Polish tradition and should be eliminated. Each cultural ellipse has its own customs and its own symbolism, which should be maintained. For the Roma, for example, drinking alcohol at household graves is part of their tradition, which for us is simply a violation of the sacrum sphere and is unacceptable. So let us stick to our traditions and customs.
Michał Radzikowski
