tabi-tabi and the priesthood

What is Halloween and where did it come from?
Halloween is an October 31 event. It is the night before what was formerly called All Hallows Day. All hallows day is actually a two day affair with the celebration of All Saints Day in November 1 and All Souls Day in November 2. But both were then considered All Hallows Day. Hallow is an old English word which means to make holy as we say in the Our Father – “hallowed be thy name”. Hallow is similar in meaning to saints. Saints are people who were made holy, people who are holy – hallow. Halloween comes from this word. In fact it is an Irish word hallow e’en translated literally in modern English as Hallow eve which means the night before All Hallows Day. So there you are Halloween.
So what about the souls, and ghosts and goblins and pranksters on this day, the eve of all hallows day or Halloween?


All Hallows Day is Celtic in origin. The Celts are the people who populated Ireland, Scotland and the Welsh even before the Roman times. October 31 until November 2 is the Celtic Festival called Samhain (pronounced as sow-en). It was their New Year. It is described as “the turning of the year when the veil between the worlds was at its thinnest and the dead communicates with the living.” It is therefore the day when the dead interact again with the living. During this day the barrier which separates the natural from the supernatural is removed temporarily and the divine men and the dead move freely among men and women and interfere in their affairs. It is not as you imagine, not like the movies the day of zombies nor the night of the living dead. But yes they cause trouble, what with fairies, elves, goblins and spirits all moving around playing tricks on men. That’s the origin of playing pranks and tricks on people during this day and then blame them on elves and fairies, ghosts and mga kalag. This is the trick part of the trick or treat game played during this eve. So what about the treat part?
This time of Samhain is also the end of summer and therefore a time of preparation for winter. Animals in the herds which are weak and old and could not survive the cold of winter were slaughtered and their meat preserved for the long winter months. Samhain is also the close of the harvest and therefore a time to celebrate the fruits of one’s labor in the fields. In the Celtic world this is also the time when the poor are dressed like spirits, wearing masks and all they could think of as somewhat scary, and ask for food knocking at every house. It’s a harvest celebration, a kind of thanksgiving for the harvest. That is why in my time baye-baye which is made from ground pinipig, which is pounded rice from crops recently harvested, is one of the delicacies prepared for this occasion. We also have muasi, suman, ibos, inday-inday, palutaw, linugaw, puto, bingka, suman latik, sundol, butong-butong – all by-products of rice and coconut just harvested from the fields. We didn’t have spaghetti during those days. Even now I still find that food “so cheap naman” during kalag-kalag or Halloween, for I grew up knowing and loving it as a time when sweet rice cakes are eaten fresh and hot, lots of rice cakes, rice cakes and more rice cakes to our hearts content.
The Catholic Church during the time of the Celts was then a loving and an understanding church, far, far from the image which some priests and devout lay nowadays want to portray her as the eternal killjoy. And so, understanding as she was back then, the church on seeing all these practices, instead of suppressing them as something pagan, did what they also did with Christmas and Valentine’s Day and the other pagan festivals of ancient times. The church Christianized them, she Christianized this pagan festival of the Celts and celebrated All Hallow’s Day, the day of all the Saints, and added to it the Day of praying for all the Dead.
So there you go, the American “trick or treat” or the Filipino “pangalag-kalag,” the day of ghosts, fairies, mantyo, tayho, tamaho and elves; the day of tricks and pranks and practical jokes, the day of eating newly harvested products of the land – all brought about by a pagan practice which was early on Christianized.
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Halloween tells us something about our world and the work of a priest about that “something in our world”. They tell us that there is a world beyond what our eyes can see. We call this the invisible world. They tell us too that there is a knowledge beyond what our mind can know. We call this the mysterious world. They tell us that there is a limit to science, there is a limit to physics, there is a limit to what reason can do and understand. That in this world we leave room for mysticism, a world where the answers to the world’s problems may have to do with acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers!
The work of a priest, my work, at times humiliates me. I was once invited to bless a house only to find out that with it, I have to bless five “bungsod! ” When I bless cars I would oftentimes pray extra knowing that if anything happens to the car my blessings could be blamed, and later I would feel so guilty about it I want to return the stipend too! Or sometimes I would be called to do exorcisms (which when that call is made, I would always find myself needing to go to the bathroom . . . so that they would find the next available priest.)
As a priest I would sometimes say to Etik, our driver, to honk on that part of the road as it is said to be mariit. And yes on passing a known haunted ground I would reflexively say and repeatedly so, “tabi-tabi tabi-tabi.” (we are the only people who say “excuse me” to the invisible world! – most would exorcise these! Really, we are a hospitable people!)
Trained in the use of reason by Philosophy I feel something in me questioning some of the things I am made to do and am used to doing. But again I have to humble myself and learn to acknowledge that there is a limit to what I can physically do, there is a limit to my act of knowing; that there is a limit to what my eyes can see and to what my mind can understand; that there is limit to my psychologizing, and a limit to my explanations. At the end of the day a tabi-tabi can do no harm, but the peace of mind lost if anything happens afterwards and the trauma that follows can be a source of too many regrets. As they say, “well, no harm done!”