Of course, there are practical issues in marking this most solemn and Catholic holiday. Some pious folk insist on dressing their children only as saints or angels. This works very well for girls up to the age of ten and boys too young to pronounce the word “lame.” It’s cute for parents to doll their children up as friars like St. Francis or nuns like St. Therese, but the kids know perfectly well they’re being cheated: This holiday, the night before the Feast of All Saints, has always been our way of confronting the eerie, appalling fact of death – the uncertainty of our individual fates, our powerlessness before the scythe that cuts down the just and unjust alike. We want – we need – to face these fears, to play on the brink of the abyss, to shudder in “haunted” houses and whistle by the graveyard.

Of course, there are practical issues in marking this most solemn and Catholic holiday. Some pious folk insist on dressing their children only as saints or angels. This works very well for girls up to the age of ten and boys too young to pronounce the word “lame.” It’s cute for parents to doll their children up as friars like St. Francis or nuns like St. Therese, but the kids know perfectly well they’re being cheated: This holiday, the night before the Feast of All Saints, has always been our way of confronting the eerie, appalling fact of death – the uncertainty of our individual fates, our powerlessness before the scythe that cuts down the just and unjust alike. We want – we need – to face these fears, to play on the brink of the abyss, to shudder in “haunted” houses and whistle by the graveyard.

—My High Holy Day (via Eve Tushnet)