Holy Angel University, the biggest Catholic school in the region, will celebrate Halloween this year with a unique twist: instead of vampires, demons and ghosts, participants will wear saints’ costumes.
When the University first held a similar event in 2012, it became the banner photo of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
According to Robby Tantingco, Vice President for External Affairs, the event is part of the University’s advocacy to promote a more Catholic celebration of Halloween.
“The original intent of Halloween was to celebrate the saints, not the devils because it’s the night before All Saints Day,” Tantingco says. “Halloween is short for Hallows’ Eve, and hallows is old English for saints.
Somehow we allowed the dark spirits to take over the themes and images of the celebration of what is supposedly a Catholic holy day.”
More than 600 pre-school and grade school pupils of the University’s Basic Education Department are expected to participate in the annual event. The Center for Kapampangan Studies and the Institute for Christian Formation will also add other spiritual and cultural elements to the celebration, like distributing estampitas (prayer cards) and singing gosu, the traditional Kapampangan hymns to saints.
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