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OPINION 12 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 2 NOVEMBER 2022 SO many ironies, I don't even know where to start. But to save time, let's begin by taking a closer look at these two photographs. Now: to be fair to Fr David Muscat, I imagine he wasn't the one who chose that particular picture, to accompa- ny a press article about his latest rant against Halloween (and all the suppos- edly 'satanic, pagan' influences there- of). For if his intention really was to 'sound a warning for parents who plan to let their children dress up [as devils, ghouls, vampires, witches, bogeymen, etc.]'…. he would hardly have opted to dress himself up, for the occasion, as a 'Ku Klux Klansman, getting ready for a spot of good old-fashioned ethnic cleansing'… would he now? On one level, the visual impact sim- ply annihilates the entire point he was trying to get across – in the sense that: how can you possibly take the man seriously, when he is, a) warning against the dangers of children wearing 'spooky' fancy-dress costumes; and b) caught in the act of putting on an even 'spookier' outfit, himself? But on another: the unmistakable 'KKK' connotation – even if obvious- ly misplaced – only serves to recall the many, many times when Fr David Mus- cat not only 'looked' like a Klansman… but sounded like one, too (among other things, by endorsing the openly racist, Holocaust-denying views of Norman Lowell's Imperium Europa). And yes, yes: I am perfectly aware that it is clearly a coincidence; and that the costume he was putting on, was most likely in preparation for the an- nual Good Friday procession… But… erm… that only adds to the iro- ny, don't you think? Leaving aside that Fr Muscat's (pre- sumably 'angelic') Good Friday cos- tume is infinitely SCARIER, than the harmless, cartoony child-devil we see in the other picture… there is al- so the fact that nearly all the Catholic Church's most cherished festivals (in- cluding both Christmas and Easter) can also trace their origins to the same pagan traditions that Fr Muscat now denounces as 'Satanic'. And this brings me to first problem with this widely-held misconception. [To be fair to Fr Muscat for a second time: he is hardly the first to have ev- er expressed it. In 2016, Edgar Preca – husband to then-President Marie-Lou- ise Coleiro-Preca – had likewise warned that: "Few perhaps know that the feast of Halloween is a satanic hol- iday…."] I'll try and keep this as brief as I pos- sibly can (but it's going to be difficult, seeing as we're trying to cram around 8,000 years of history into just a few sentences): but 'paganism' and 'satan- ism' are not exactly synonymous, you know…. Quite the contrary, in fact. Natural- ly, I won't bother attempting a prop- er definition of 'Paganism' – the term is far too broad for that - but let's just say, for now, that it represents an en- tire mindset (of which 'religion' played only a small part) that was designed to cope with a world in which human be- ings generally felt 'powerless against the elements' (or as Shakespeare would put it, many millennia later: 'As flies to boys are we to the wanton gods; they kill us for their sport'). For much the same reason, the count- less pagan pantheons that once existed were all neatly divided into 'gods' and 'goddesses' that embodied the uncon- querable powers of all those elements – from the physical: the sky, the wind, the rain, the sea, etc.; to the metaphysical: love, life, death, war, etc. And under those circumstances: it is hardly surprising that the ancients would also have - consciously, this time – create all those gods and goddesses 'in their own image and likeness'; and with their own (greatly magnified) 'lusts and impulses'. After all, if you're trying to placate an otherwise indifferent 'god' or 'goddess': to guarantee the success of your next harvest, perhaps; or to provide a favour- able trade-wind, for your next invasion of Troy… Let's face it: even from our own con- temporary experience, in 2022, we can all confirm that it's a heck of a lot easier, when those in power can be 'tempted' (or 'bribed') in exactly the same way, as any other human… And at the risk of a truly mythical oversimplification: there is simply no room for any form 'Satan-type charac- ter', in that paradigm. So much so, that there are no 'gods' or 'goddesses' – any- where in European mythologies, at any rate – that can directly be equated to Christianity's 'Prince of Darkness'. This is partly because those pagan be- There is nothing 'pagan' (still less, 'satanic') about Halloween Raphael Vassallo Nearly all the Catholic Church's most cherished festivals (including both Christmas and Easter) can also trace their origins to the same pagan traditions that Fr Muscat now denounces as 'Satanic' If David Muscat's intention really was to 'sound a warning for parents who plan to let their children dress up [as devils, ghouls, vampires, witches, bogeymen, etc.]'…. he would hardly have opted to dress himself up, for the occasion, as a 'Ku Klux Klansman, getting ready for a spot of good old-fashioned ethnic cleansing'… would he now?

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