Like so many “Christian” Holy Days, All Saints Day, like our celebration of Christmas, is just the “christianizing” of pagan festivals. In an attempt to control the behaviors of Christians, the Christian Church over time has appropriated these pagan festivals. Judging the behaviors of many people, the appropriation of these pagan festivals have had varying degrees of success and failure.
The early origin of feast days of the people we call “saints” began during the Roman persecutions, as early Christians gathered in the catacombs and celebrated the Mass on the tombs of those Christians who were martyred. These early Christians began to keep a calendar of the date of death for the deceased Christians to prevent the deceased from haunting them. Over time, the reason for celebrating Feast Days of the deceased moved from staving off haunting, to honoring the memory of those who have died. This honoring is now more celebrating the “birth” of our deceased loved ones into the fullness of eternal life, just as we celebrated the birthdays of our alive loved ones in this life.
Every culture has its sets of feast days. The making of saints in the Catholic Church is, in my opinion, largely flawed. Cynically, the politics involved influence the canonizing of saints, many of whom, like Pius X, Pius IX, and John Paul II I cannot celebrate, in spite of their official status within the Catholic Church. For the most part I have discarded a lot of the official calendar of saints in the Catholic Church and started my own calendar of saints, marking in my calendar the feasts of those I consider saints.
Of all the hymns, and of all the prayers prayed on this feast day, the one I think best describes the real intent of this day was an early poem penned by a young William Butler Yeats, entitled “The Fiddler of Dooney.” I think that this poem best describes the joy of eternal life with God, than all the pious platitudes and prose composed by others over the years and reflects that which Julian of Norwich described in her writing when she says, “All shall be well. All shall be well. And all matter of things shall be well.”
Here is the poem composed by William Butler Yeats:
The Fiddler of Dooney
When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.
I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.
When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance:
And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’
And dance like a wave of the sea.
-W.B. Yeats
This poem was the inspiration behind my composing ten songs in 2020 entitled “Music for the Celestial Dance”. You can find the songs on YouTube for free, on iTunes, Amazon Music, and on many of the streaming services.
Here are two of those songs.