Halloween Witch Turns Saint the Next Day!

Not many trick-or-treaters transform their costume from witch to saint.

A Favorite Halloween Memory

My favorite Halloween memory is when my daughter was a witch. We had purchased a witch’s hat, she had a broom, and I think we put a green substance on her face. She already had a black dress. We took her photo beforehand. She went out with a friend and her parents and brought home a load of candy.

A Transformation

The next morning, she donned the same dress, her face free of the green, but instead of a pointy hat, she wore a veil and became St. Francesca Cabrini. The tradition in her Catholic school was for each of the third graders to dress up like saints. During All Saints Day Mass, each introduced himself or herself and said a few words about his or her saint. We took a picture of her in the same spot as we had taken the witch photo. She looked completely different on All Saints Day than the night before. We keep the two photos together.

St. Francesca Cabrini

St. Francesca Cabrini was the first American to become a saint in the Catholic Church. She came from Italy and founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Although she had always wanted to be a missionary in China, she came to the United States in 1889 to minister to Italian immigrants. She and her sisters founded almost 70 institutions across the country for people who were poor or sick.

St. Francesca Cabrini died at 69 due to malaria complications. There is a high school in Seattle where she apparently stayed. Those who have worked there for years claim to have seen her ghost. My daughter told me that dressing up like a saint was a “once in a lifetime” opportunity. (I doubt that she would say the same today.)

A Catholic Perspective

I did not know that members of some Christian denominations do not celebrate Halloween until my daughter attended a Presbyterian preschool that held a Harvest Festival rather than trick-or-treating. I had always thought of scary costumes as scaring away evil spirits. I never considered that some of the frightening figures represented evil themselves.

Some Christians have disapproved of the Harry Potter series because of the practice of magic and the presence of witches and other creatures in the books and movies. I think if the main characters in those books had used magic for evil, I would not have been comfortable as a Christian either. Because they were fighting against evil and the stories were clearly fiction, I had no trouble with them and enjoyed the books myself.

Whether or not a person observes Halloween or reads Harry Potter is certainly none of my business so I am not critical of those choices. I would be sad, however, if non-Catholics had the impression that Catholics believe in, condone, or practice witchcraft.