A HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN

Its pagan origin, sanctication by Catholicism and return to paganism in

modern times.

The story of Halloween is very old, going back to the days of the Druids1
in England, where in fact, most of the secular customs that are now
performed during Halloween were rst practiced. The Druids practiced
many superstitious customs depending on their beliefs. They had two big
feast days and one of these was their New Year’s Eve which was celebrated
around the 31st of October. On this day they believed that all those who
had died during the past year would rise from their graves and come to
spend a last evening by the hearth where they had spent their days of the
past. The Druids believed that at midnight all these souls would walk out
of the town to be taken by the Lord of Death to the afterlife from where the
souls would be able to tranmigrate.2 They also feared that if these souls
were able to recognize them, that they would drag them down into the
afterlife with them. The townspeople therefore wore costumes so as not
to be recognizable. They wore these costumes as they escorted
the souls of the dead out to meet the Lord of
Death. It is easy to see how the custom
of wearing costumes (i.e., of demons,
witches, etc.) on Halloween has never
had anything to do with those customs
of Christianity!

When Catholicism came to England and

Ireland, it encountered this very popular
pagan custom. The popes and bishops
became aware that they were going to have to
combat this particular custom by stringent means. They therefore set this
day aside in honor of the saints in Heaven and the following day as a
day of prayer for the souls of all the deceased. The Church made up a
whole beautiful set of customs and prayers to be done for the honor of the
saints and the relief of the souls in Purgatory. The Litany of the Saints
was chanted and the living went to the cemetery to pray at the graveside
of their dearly beloved deceased. The feast of All Hallow’s Eve became thus
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a most holy day.

But due to the popularity of the pagan customs, there were still many
people who were not ready to abandon this ugly ritual and they persecuted
the Catholics who attempted to fulll the customs of the Church. The
Church tried to draw these troublemakers away from their mischief by
staging morality plays and presenting skits on the lives of the saints. But
to no avail; the mischief makers would stand behind trees taunting the
praying Christians, howling and hooting so as to frighten them from the
graves. They would do all sorts of nasty tricks, and all of sorts of strange
things would happen. It was not unusual for a farmer to nd his livestock
spread all over the countryside the following day or even up in the loft
of his barn! Most of these nasty pranks were blamed on witches, those
women who had sold themselves to the Devil in life, and who returned on
brooms supplied by the Lord of Death in order to gather up those souls
who would be dragged thenceforth into their afterlife. Those who believed
in these witches would set small piles of hay on re and wave piles in the
air to ward off the witches from snatching them up and to frighten them
away from their livestock. We see here the two sets of rituals established,
the one all glowing with the beauty of Holy Mother Church, the other rank
with ugly and ignorant foolishness.

In a gesture of mutual charity, the Christian beggars of the towns would

go from door to door asking for food for which they would, in exchange,
pray for souls of the departed of that family. Eventually, the prayers were
exchanged for what were called soul cakes, and later because one women
wished the beggars to remember the eternity of life, pierced her soul cakes
for the beggars, thus as tradition tells us, being responsible for the rst
donuts.

After hundreds of years of the superstitions of the pagans still being

subtly supported by the Devil in diverse ways, the Protestant Reformation
came along and blew life into the uglier side of the Halloween rituals. The
Protestants went about knocking upon doors of Catholic families as if they
were beggars coming for the soul cakes. The Catholics were greeted by
cold water or other nasty tricks. One can see again the unCatholic origin
of this standard which is so widely practiced now on Halloween.

The mischievous tricks of the Halloween pranksters had become so out

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of hand by the days of World War II, that in fact, the day was known as
Mischief Night. And like anything and everything that honors the Devil
and detracts from the glory due to God, the ugly customs of the pagan
holiday of Halloween were promoted and spread and practiced in greater
malice until they became what we now know them to be.

We can easily see simply by reading the history of this holiday that what
had been a pagan custom was combated by the Church for an honorable
and charitable reason and how the Devil has used it in a perverted manner
in order to destroy, if possible, what should be a ritual of beautiful custom.
We have a duty, as Catholics, to practice ONLY those rituals designed
for the honor of God and the relief of the suffering souls and given to us
by Holy Mother Church as a means of furthering our salvation also. To
partake in the practice of pagan and devil-honoring rituals is to offend
God in a most demeaning way. We should therefore strive rather to return
to the beautiful customs of our forefathers and practice in its entirety and
with all the purity of its original intention, the customs of All Hallow’s Eve.

Footnotes
1 The Druids were a people practicing a most cruel and inhumane paganism,
similar to that of the barbaric Aztecs.
2 Transmigration: The belief that a soul cam move from one object or being to
another. Hindus also believe in this, claiming that those who live well will return
to their next life in a body of higher caste and that those who lived badly will
return as animals or insects or such like.

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Question: Is Halloween Christian, Pagan, or Secular?

By Catherine Beyer, About.com Guide

Answer:
The most straightforward answer is "secular." People who celebrate this
day in a religious context generally do not call it Halloween, and the
common practices associated with Halloween such as costuming and
giving of treats are secular celebrations.

Christian Origins – All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day

However, Halloween evolved out of a Catholic holiday called All Hallows
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Eve, which occurs the day before All Saints Day, a general celebration of
the saints on November 1.

In turn, All Saints Day originally was celebrated on May 13, and in the
Orthodox Church is continues to be celebrated in late spring on the rst
Sunday after Pentecost, which in turn is seven weeks after Easter. Pope
Gregory III is commonly credited with moving it in the 9th century to
November 1, although the reasons for the move are debatable.

Ancient Celtic Origins - Samhain

It is often argued, most commonly by neo-pagans and Christians who
are against Halloween celebrations, that All Saints Day was moved to
November 1 to co-opt a Celtic Irish celebration called Samhain.

Did the Catholic Church Co-opt Samhain?

There is no direct evidence to say they did. Gregory's reasons for moving
it from May 13 to November 1 remain mysterious. A twelfth century writer
suggested it was because Rome could support larger numbers of pilgrims
in November than in May.

There are similarities. Samhain appears to have connection with the dead
and may have involved communication with, placating of, or honoring
of those who had died. All Saints is a celebration of dead saints, whom
Catholics communicate with through prayer and offerings in the hopes of
the saints acting as intermediaries between humanity and God.

However, Ireland is a long way from Rome, and Ireland was Christian
by the time of Gregory. So the logic of changing a feast day throughout
Europe to co-opt a holiday originally celebrated in a small portion of it has
some substantial weaknesses.

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Should Catholics Celebrate Halloween?

By Scott P. Richert, About.com Guide

A Controversial Holiday:
Every year, a debate rages among Catholics and other Christians: Is
Halloween a satanic holiday or merely a secular one? Should Catholic
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children dress up like ghosts and goblins? Is it good for children to be
scared? Lost in the debate is the history of Halloween, which, far from
being a pagan religious event, is actually a Christian celebration that's
almost 1,300 years old.

The Christian Origins of Halloween:

"Halloween" is a name that means nothing by itself. It is a contraction
of "All Hallows Eve," and it designates the vigil of All Hallows Day, more
commonly known today as All Saints Day. ("Hallow," as a noun, is an old
English word for saint. As a verb, it means to make something holy or to
honor it as holy.) All Saints Day, November 1, is a Holy Day of Obligation,
and both the feast and the vigil have been celebrated since the early eighth
century, when they were instituted by Pope
Gregory III in Rome. (A century later, they
were extended to the Church at large by Pope
Gregory IV.)

The Pagan Origins of Halloween:

Despite concerns among some Catholics and
other Christians in recent years about the
"pagan origins" of Halloween, there really
are none. The rst attempts to show some
connection between the vigil of All Saints and
the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain came
over a thousand years after All Saints Day became a universal feast, and
there's no evidence whatsoever that Gregory III or Gregory IV was even
aware of Samhain.

In Celtic peasant culture, however, elements of the harvest festival survived,

even among Christians, just as the Christmas tree owes its origins to pre-
Christian Germanic traditions without being a pagan ritual.

Combining the Pagan and the Christian:

The Celtic elements included lighting bonres, carving turnips (and, in
America, pumpkins), and going from house to house, collecting treats, as
carolers do at Christmas. But the "occult" aspects of Halloween—ghosts
and demons—actually have their roots in Catholic belief. Christians
believed that, at certain times of the year (Christmas is another), the veil
separating earth from Purgatory, heaven, and even hell becomes more
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thin, and the souls in Purgatory (ghosts) and demons can be more readily
seen. Thus the tradition of Halloween costumes owes as much, if not more,
to Christian belief as to Celtic tradition.

The (First) Anti-Catholic Attack on Halloween:

The current attacks on Halloween aren't the rst. In post-Reformation
England, All Saints Day and its vigil were suppressed, and the Celtic
peasant customs associated with Halloween were outlawed. Christmas
and the traditions surrounding it were similarly attacked, and the Puritan
Parliament banned Christmas outright in 1647. In America, Puritans
outlawed the celebration of both Christmas and Halloween, which were
revived largely by German Catholic (in the case of Christmas) and Irish
Catholic (in the case of Halloween) immigrants in the 19th century.

The Commercialization of Halloween:

Continued opposition to Halloween was largely an expression of anti-
Catholicism (as well as anti-Irish prejudice). But by the early 20th century,
Halloween, like Christmas, was becoming highly commercialized. Pre-made
costumes, decorations, and special candy all became widely available, and
the Christian origins of the holiday were downplayed.

The rise of horror lms, and especially the slasher lms of the late 70's
and 80's, contributed to Halloween's bad reputation, as did the claims
of putative Satanists and Wiccans, who created a mythology in which
Halloween had been their festival, co-opted later by Christians.

The (Second) Anti-Catholic Attack on Halloween:

A new backlash against Halloween by non-Catholic Christians began in the
1980's, in part because of claims that Halloween was the devil's night; in
part because of urban legends about poisons and razor blades in Halloween
candy; and in part because of an explicit opposition to Catholicism. Jack
Chick, a rabidly anti-Catholic fundamentalist who distributes Bible tracts
in the form of small comic books, helped lead the charge.

By the late 1990's, many Catholic parents, unaware of the anti-Catholic

origins of the attack on Halloween, had begun to question Halloween as
well, and alternative celebrations became popular.

Alternatives to Halloween Activities:

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Ironically, one of the most popular Christian alternatives to celebrating
Halloween is a secular "Harvest Festival," which has more in common with
the Celtic Samhain than it does with the Catholic All Saints Day. There's
nothing wrong with celebrating the harvest, but there's no need to strip
such a celebration of connections with the Christian liturgical calendar.

Another popular Catholic alternative is an All Saints Party, usually held

on Halloween and featuring costumes (of saints rather than ghouls) and
candy. At best, though, this is an attempt to Christianize an already
Christian holiday.

Safety Concerns and the Fear Factor:

Parents are in the best position to decide whether their children can
participate safely in Halloween activities, and, in today's world, it's
understandable that many choose to err on the side of caution. One
concern that's often overblown, however, is the effect that fright might
have on children. Some children, of course, are very sensitive, but most
love scaring others and being scared themselves (within limits, of course).
Any parent knows that the "Boo!" is usually followed by laughter, not only
from the child doing the scaring, but from the one being scared. Halloween
provides a structured environment for fear.

Making Your Decision:

In the end, the choice is yours to make as a parent. If you choose, as my
wife and I do, to let your children participate in Halloween, simply stress
the need for physical safety (including checking over their candy when
they return home), and explain the Christian origins of Halloween to your
children. Before you send them off trick-or-treating, recite together the
Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, and explain that, as Catholics, we
believe in the reality of evil. Tie the vigil explicitly to the Feast of All Saints,
and explain to your children why we celebrate that feast, so that they
won't view All Saints Day as "the boring day when we have to go to church
before we can eat some more candy."

Let's reclaim Halloween for Christians, by returning to its roots in the

Catholic Church!

- end -

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