If you’re unfamiliar, the “blood libel” is a long-running tradition of belief that Jews were actually eating Christian babies and children, or at least killing them and using their blood.
The accusation that the “love feasts” of early Christians involved the literal eating of flesh was made by the Romans (probably either in cynical propaganda or credulous misunderstandings of the new religion’s rites), but Christianity doesn’t stand alone in this regard–the “blood libel” against the Jews throughout the medieval period represents a much more serious and lasting accusation than that against Christians. Various possibilities have been put forth in religious folklore–Cain, Lilith, etc. The Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game played with this idea and Biblical legend has perhaps always played a part in the various cultural ideas of vampirism–after all, if you have a Christian worldview and also believe in the existence of vampires (as was somewhat broadly the case almost to the 20th century and still has its holdouts) you have to figure out how the two ideas mesh. Let’s first address the elephant in the room, shall we? Midnight Mass is certainly not the only piece of fiction to have made an association between vampirism and Communion. Much has already been said about the series’ approach to religion, but rather than respond to the thoughts of others (many of which I’ve found cogent and insightful even where I may not agree with them), I thought I’d write my own instead. I enjoyed it–this time of year I’m always in the mood for some horror fiction and there’s a lot out there that just isn’t good (I also recently watched Gretel & Hansel, which was mildly interesting but really just doesn’t merit a post). K and I recently finished Midnight Mass on Netflix.