On the importance of pumpkins at Hallowtide

Because religion is about mediation, it naturally refuses any duality of nature and culture. Reality, as the true nature of things, is sacred, but it must be mediated by particular human relations and practices - John Milbank.

If the Church - as suggested in yesterday's post - is "to retrieve, revive and confidently celebrate the festival of All Saints", this necessarily means more than liturgy.  Yes, the liturgical celebration may be at the heart of All Saints' Day, but it also requires a cultural presence - mediation - which reflects and embodies the reality that we are cultural beings.

In the absence of such cultural practices, it is difficult to see how the celebration of All Saints can truly resonate, for then the liturgical celebration fails to be embodied in the cultural fabric of our lives. To again quote Milbank, "mission is impossible without a strong cultural mediation and presence". 

Within classical Anglican theology, there is significant recognition of this need for cultural mediation.  Richard Hooker's defence of "celebrating festivall dayes" sets out three characteristics of festivals:

The most naturall testimonies of our rejoycinge in God are first his praises sett forth with a cheerefull alacritie of minde, secondlie our comforte and delight expressed by a charitable largenes of somewhat more then common bountie, thirdlie sequestration from ordinarie labors, the toiles and cares whereof are not meete to be companions of such gladnes.  Festivall solemnitite therefore is nothing but the due mixture as it were of these three elementes, praise, and bountie, and rest - LEP V.70.2.

Bounty and rest, therefore, are naturally required alongside our celebration of All Saints.  The bounty of Autumn - apples, pumpkins, nuts - should mark our celebration of the feast.  Festivity should characterise the days before the feast, being in some form a "sequestration from ordinarie labours".

This Anglican defence of festivity was given authoritative expression in James I's Book of Sports, reissued by Charles I:

And as for Our good peoples lawfull Recreation, Our Pleasure like is, That after the end of Diuine Seruice, Our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawfull recreation, Such as dauncing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmlesse Recreation, nor from hauing of May-Games, Whitson Ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting vp of May-poles & other sports therewith vsed, so as the same be had in due & conuenient time, without impediment or neglect of Diuine Seruice: And that women shall haue leaue to carry rushes to the Churches for the decoring of it, according to their old custome.

This affirmation of seasonal festivity, bounty, and customs was a recognition that such cultural practices more deeply embedded "Sundayes & holydaies" in the popular imagination.  It was also a rebuttal of both "Papist and Puritanes" who - obviously for different reasons - declared that "no honest mirth or recreation is lawfull or tolerable in Our Religion".  To propose a celebration of All Saints without 'old customs', without mirth, without 'harmless recreation', is to prevent the liturgical celebration from having a joyful presence in our lives outside the liturgy.  It is, in other words, to collude with the secular - to give the feast no real presence in time and culture.

The classical Anglican defence of festivity, therefore, reminds us of the necessity of cultural mediation for the celebration of All Saints.  In home and parish, the signs - the 'old customs' - of Hallowtide should be encouraged; the bounty of the season should be enjoyed; and 'harmless recreation' should mark All Hallows' Eve.  These are not optional extras, they are not distractions.  They embody and enable festivity.  In the words of Hooker:

the hallowinge of festivall daies must consist in the shape or countenance which wee put upon thaffaires that are incident upon those daies - LEP V.70.1.