Photo: Ben Gwilliam Through the Rite of Baptism and other Sacraments, Christians start out in life familiarised and sustained by invincible answers to ultimate questions (which can seem highly presumptuous of God and those bound to deliver His goods).

By continuing to listen to the words of Jesus passed on through His Church, Christians can signal a development of greater humanity - through an increased ability to question. Being forced to question teaches Christians the value of comparatively insignificant and transient matters; the little things in life. By humbly recognising small and basic satisfactions as gifts of God, it becomes possible to see all those who are satiated by them to be children (or creatures) of God. It is through questioning that Christians are prompted to take action to ensure that the poor, the suffering, and future generations (whatever their species or condition) are enabled to live life to the full, and future generations may experience health and security.

Christian prayer, the Mystery of God, and deep moral questioning are inseparable. In fact, the Lord of Christians hangs more upon a question mark than He does upon a Cross. The hewn lines of a crucifix may be seen as a mutilated question mark which challenges all the false presumptions in hearts which need to be straightened out. Ultimate answers, paid up as currency in advance, demand an endless supply of questions from anyone who attempts to understand them. Vegans know this, responding to question marks in the suffering eyes and halted hearts of so many tortured creatures.

Take World Vegan Day as an example. A prayerful Christian might ask “Why has it been scheduled to clash with the Solemnity of All Saints, which is a Holy Day of Obligation, requiring me to attend Church? We may feel torn between loyalties, and wonder whether the trickery of our English “Halloween” (with its pumpkin heads, gingergread men, apple bobbing, witches, concoctions in cauldons, skeletons rising from graves, and ghosts white as sheets leaping from shadows to frighten people) is prevailing. We may well ask “Who can make sense of this season any more?”

The Solemnity of ‘All Saints’ is celebrated on 1st November every year, throughout the world, and (unlike World Vegan Day) has been for a very long time. It was the practice of the early Church, whenever one of its members was martyred, to dedicate a new feast day to him or her, but by the time of Diocletian (turn of 3rd and 4th centuries) there were not enough days in the year. It was therefore decided that in each separate place of worship, one day each year would be designated for the remembrance of all those who had been slaughtered (for their belief in the love taught by Jesus Christ).

A Basilica in Rome already existed, where all of the Apostles were remembered on 1st May each year. This celebration was extended to commemorate “All Saints”; beginning with an evening Vigil on sunset the previous day. Pope Gregory II (731-741) later consecrated a chapel in dedication to “All Saints” in the Basilica of St Peter in Rome, for the same Solemnity. However, when Gregory IV (827-844) decided to officially extend the feast to the Church throughout the world, he decided to change the day, fixing it universally on 1st November. The wisdom of this was that 1st November was the New Year festival of the Celts, called ‘Samhain’ (pronounced a bit like ‘saint’ without the ‘t’), their old year ending with Harvest. It was also a time of special communication with the dead, and belief in a magic akin to the miraculous properties of relics of saints who had been harvested to God. Gregory IV’s promulgation led to a redistribution of relics from tombs in Rome to shrines throughout the world newly dedicated to “All Saints”.

The disturbing evidence of the relics (though less macabre than a contemporary butcher’s shop window) may partly account for the old Halloween customs still practised in England, but not fully because they have never occurred elsewhere in Europe. In the 19th century, “Halloween” customs flew across the Atlantic to the USA, and from there slightly influenced the pagan harvest festivals in a few neighbouring regions, but they are peculiarly English.

A real event in history, which had resonance with the people in England, somehow embellished the Liturgical Calendar for the celebration of “All Saints” and remained in the popular imagination long after the Church had purified her memory of it. The custom is too enduring to have originated in a fiction, and there is a possible incident recorded. A Chronicler called Raoul Glaber, wrote in his ‘Historiae”, that in 1043, Burgundy suffered a famine following three years of heavy rain which flooded the fields so much that they could not be grazed by animals, nor ploughed.

The animals died or were slaughtered for their meat. After this, so many people died that wolves were able to prowl the streets in broad daylight, and feed on the unburied casualties. Some of the common people then resorted to cannibalism, and one man was hanged and his body burned for attempting to sell human flesh in the market place in the shadow of the great Abbey of Cluny.

This was a very large Abbey, which exercised powers delegated from the Pope, and sometimes over him and Emperors. Following the Norman invasion of England in 1066, Abbot (now Saint) Hugh of Cluny was persuaded to send monks to rebuild an ancient monastery once dedicated to an early Roman martyr, St Pancras; Cluniac presence in England (with their well-stocked libraries and guarded pilgrim roadways to Cluny and Rome) spread from there due to Norman patronage. The English would have learned about the famine in Burgundy so the “All Saints” Liturgy may have been subject to ‘disturbances’ intended to ridicule and upset Burgundian monks associated with French oppression. Or the Monks may have introduced customs as warnings against the consequences of livestock farming practices (they had extensive farmlands throughout wet and muddy England which consistently yielded good, arable crops).

Throughout the world we face the threat of increased flooding. Insufficient agricultural land is put to the plough today to feed the UK population; we rely upon harvests from places which are at even greater risk in the face of global warming. Livestock farming, and similarly insensitive industries, are now known to be largely responsible for climate change.

“Halloween” is a good opportunity to consider how well we respect the sanctity of human life, how this is bound up with the fate of all God’s animals, and what action we can take to develop a healthy and secure food strategy. Perhaps the Church, in Her wisdom, will one day soon extend the teaching required in her churches on “All Saints” to consider humans who have been cannibalised, along with souls of innumerable animals routinely resorted to, and whose fate also merits a universal examination of conscience?

By taking World Vegan Day as an example, Christian questioning reveals a constructive cross-purpose, for the Solemnity of “All Saints” (along with our weird – and wonderful - English Halloween) is complemented by “World Vegan Day” very well.