All Hallows' Eve Shrines

This is my first year as a homeowner, and with Halloween approaching I began to wonder what I would do for decorations. In light of this interesting article by Fr. Grunow about the Catholic roots of Halloween and why Americans came to think of it as a pagan holiday, I decided to try to use this opportunity to reengage the culture and maybe even evangelize my neighbors.

The crazy idea I came up with was to make little shrines to honor a few saints who died as martyrs for their faith in Christ. That way we can remember death, but in a way that points to the Kingdom of God and not the occult. I also hope people are drawn to some of the beautiful and unusual imagery. I made a banner wishing everyone a "Happy All Hallows' Eve" and will leave a basket of free holy cards outside the door. We have really good candy to hand out too!

Materials:
empty cereal boxes
paper (for template)
pencil
marker
ruler
compass
scissors
x-acto knife
black poster board
print-outs of saints
flameless LED tea lights

Template available: download

I had three different sizes of cereal boxes, so I drew a gothic arch doorway that would fit nicely on the smallest box and traced it onto every box, and cut each opening with the x-acto. Then using the proportions of the largest box, I drew a gothic facade and traced it onto the black poster board three times. Then I traced the doorway onto each facade. I also traced the sides and tops of each box. Once all of the poster board pieces were cut out, I glued them to the cereal boxes, taking care to line up the opening in the front of the box with the opening in the facade.

I printed out pictures of St. Lucy, St. Peter, and St. Denis on 8.5" x 11" paper, trimmed the sides to fit, and glued them inside each box. Do this before you glue poster board over the top of the box! I also printed out their names, glued them to scroll shapes cut out of heavy white paper, and glued a name scroll onto each shrine.

It's also important to take breaks to smile at and/or nurse the cute baby on the floor near your work area.

 

Once you have the shrines assembled, they might look something like this:

I plan to make a few more next year since this was a last-minute idea.

My kids are pretty excited about them. J calls them "little churches." They just had their All Saints Day party at our homeschool co-op.  S wanted to dress up as St. Barbara. I couldn't get her to hold both her tower and her holy card straight at the same time, so here are two pictures:

 

J went as St. Patrick, but he wouldn't wear his miter once we were home. He likes to dress up as a priest almost every day, so this isn't even really a costume for him ;)