Celebrate life on All Saints’, Souls’ Day — CBCP
All Saints’ and Souls’ Days should be treated as a “celebration of life,” the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said yesterday.
Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, chairman of the CBCP-Episcopal Commission on the Laity, said these two occasions in November should not be treated like Halloween, which celebrates death.
“While we are called to remember the saints and our dearly departed loved ones on All Saints’ and Souls’ Days – Nov. 1 and 2, respectively – these occasions are actually a celebration of life,” Pabillo said.
“When people visit their dead in the cemeteries, what do they bring? Flowers, bouquets of flowers which are signs of life. Candles too are signs of life when lit. We also bring food, which is again a sign of life. So, it is really a celebration of life,” he added.
“It is the kind of life that we wished for our departed love ones when they go to heaven and that is why pray for them,” Pabillo said as he expressed hope that Filipino families will take time to visit the graves of their relatives.
The CBCP official is hoping that Catholics will stop promoting and patronizing scary Halloween gimmicks because “this is a secular” and not a religious practice.
“Halloween is not a Christian celebration which is a ‘celebration of death.’ Those scary make-ups, demon faces and costumes are non-Christian celebration and this is what ‘secularism’ is using,” he said. Earlier, he encouraged the parishes and the faithful to join the “parade of saints,” featuring children dressed as saints.
Advocacy group EcoWaste Coalition has warned the public against unsafe toys, costumes and props that are flooding the market in time for the Halloween celebration.
EcoWaste’s chemical safety campaigner Thony Dizon said most of the Halloween toys sold in Divisoria in Manila that their team has inspected failed to meet the required quality and safety verification by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“There is no assurance that all toys being sold in the market are safe for our children to play with. Some of these toys might be putting vulnerable kids in harm’s way,” Dizon said.
He said their inspection revealed that some of the toys could pose chemical, choking, fire and laceration hazards as well as blunt force trauma.
The group said of the 35 toy samples from Divisoria that its team inspected, none provided complete labeling information required by the FDA.
“Compliance with the labeling requirements is essential as this will equip consumers with vital information on which to make their decision to buy a product or not. In fact, toy manufacturers should also disclose the chemicals present in a product and their effects, particularly to children’s health,” Dizon said.
Registered toys, as per FDA’s requirements, should bear the following labeling information: license to operate (LTO) number; age grade; cautionary statements or warnings; instructional literature; item model, stock keeping unit number, and manufacturer’s marking, including the complete name and address of the manufacturer or distributor.
The group said of the 35 samples, only eight have the required (LTO) number stickers on their labels, although the information on it is hardly readable.
While 20 samples gave various hazard warnings, the warning symbols and statements were ineffective because the prints “were too small to get noticed.”
Among the toys that EcoWaste found to be potentially hazardous to children include a plastic imitation weapon measuring 35 inches in length with a massive blade-like part that may cause blunt force trauma; toy axes and swords with sharp edges that can cause abrasions and cuts; seemingly harmless “devil headbands” and light-up toys containing button batteries that a small child may swallow, and costume masks adorned with fake hair that can easily catch fire, but provide no fire hazard warning.
The group said there were also vampire-inspired accessories with matching “cosmetic blood,” the content of which is a mystery due to zero labeling information.
The group said it also found high lead content in some accessories and toys, including a skull headband with 1,265 parts per million of lead, way above the allowable 90 ppm regulatory limit.
“Parents should only pick safe, notified or registered toys for their children and supervise them as they play to prevent any untoward incident,” Dizon said.