At about this time of year, we regularly see lots of arguments about why Christians shouldn’t celebrate Halloween. Some say that it’s a Christianized version of Samhain (pronounced SAH-wen), a pagan holiday going back to the Druids, so we should have nothing to do with it. A second argument is that the increasingly demonic, macabre elements of the holiday are things Christians should avoid. So how should we think about this?

What We Know about Samhain

Concerning the first of these points, we know surprisingly little about how Samhain was celebrated, particularly in pagan times. We do know that it marked the time when herds were brought back from their summer pastures, with some slaughtered to provide food for the winter. Bonfires seem to have been lit and there may have been sacrifices to the gods. When we get to the early modern period, mumming (i.e. going from house to house in costume performing and asking for food, something like wassailing at Yuletide) had become common, which may be the origin of our practice of trick-or-treating.

Samhain was also a “thin time,” a time when the boundaries between this world and the Otherworld were open. Thus, ghosts could return to their homes looking for hospitality, and a place was often set at the table for them. The fae could also manifest themselves, and gifts of food were often left for them. The doorways to some passage tombs were opened as well as gateways to the Otherworld.

All of this is connected to the timing of Samhain. It is approximately midway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. As such, it is an “in-between time,” and at such times it was believed that boundaries between the worlds are more permeable. Sunrise and sunset likewise are minor in-between-times for the same reason. In the old agricultural calendar, Winter begins at about November 1, making the Solstice mid-winter. (Samhain is actually the Gaelic word for November.) As a result, Samhain, the thin time at the beginning of Winter, was particularly associated with the dead since vegetation, the land, and the year all died during Winter.

Not surprisingly, given its status as an in-between time, many events in Irish legends and mythology take place on Samhain. There were undoubtedly religious rituals involved as well, though we have no information on what they were.

The connection between Samhain and Halloween is less than clear, however.

aLLHALLOWTIDE

The early church thought martyrs who died for the faith deserved to be remembered, and so they held memorial services for them on the anniversaries of their deaths, the date they entered Heaven. This is the origin of the feast days of saints.

But this raised a problem: how should we commemorate the martyrs and saints who did not have feast days associated with them, either because they were unknown or nameless like the many who went to their deaths in Roman arenas, or because their work was unknown or unrecognized in the wider church?

The answer was the creation of the Feast of All Saints, also known as All Saints’ Day or, in older English, Hallowmas or All Hallows’ Day. (“Hallows” refers to “holy ones” or saints.) The holiday evolved over many centuries. In the fourth century, churches in Greece and northern Italy began to commemorate the martyrs on the Sunday after Pentecost. Later, some regions celebrated the Feast of the Holy Martyrs on May 13. In 609 or 610, Pope Boniface IV picked that date to consecrate the Pantheon as a church to the Blessed Virgin and the martyrs and made it an annual feast day. At about this time in Germany, the feast was used to commemorate all the saints, not only those martyred.

In the early 700s, Pope Gregory III moved All Hallows’ Day to November 1, a change that aligned it with the practice of the Irish and Northumbrian churches. He also mandated that the celebration begin with a vigil the night before, which was then designated All Hallows’ Eve, or Halloween. In 835, Louis the Pious mandated that these holidays be celebrated throughout the Frankish Empire.

A final element was added in the early eleventh century when Odilo, abbot of the important monastery of Cluny, mandated that on November 2, Cluniac priories were to pray for the faithful departed who, according to the theology of the period, might be languishing in Purgatory. This, then, became celebrated throughout the church as All Souls’ Day.

The three days from Halloween to All Souls’ Day became known in English as Allhallowtide and was an important feast in the medieval church.

So Is There a Connection to Samhain?

Scholars are divided about whether All Hallows was set to align with Samhain. On the whole, though, it seems likely that it was.

All Saint Day was connected to dates associated with the dead well before it was officially moved to November 1. May 13, the earlier date for the Feast of the Holy Martyrs, was also the date of Lemuria, a Roman holiday in which malevolent spirits of the dead would come out and had to be propitiated with offerings. It seems that the date was picked to align with belief in thin times when the Otherworld was close, likely in an effort to reinterpret those days in line with Christianity.

For the Celtic Church, Samhain rather than Lemuria was the logical date to celebrate All Saints, though why the rest of the church adopted the Celtic date is less than clear.

Reinterpreting the practices and symbols of pre-Christian cultures is not necessarily a bad thing. While it could lead to syncretism or a paganization of Christianity, historically it has generally led to a Christianization of paganism. It is no different in principle from the approach taken by modern missionaries who look for ways to contextualize the Gospel, that is, to identify those elements in the culture that God has providentially left as His witnesses and using those as an entry point for the Gospel.

But What about the Occult and Macabre Elements?

Modern pagans such as Wiccans have claimed Samhain as a religious festival of their own, and they certainly have paganized their celebration of Halloween. And on a broader cultural level, Halloween is the holiday people in America spend more money on than any other except Christmas, and not as a prelude to celebrating All Hallows. People go out of their way to put up decorations, ranging from cartoon-style ghosts and witches to elaborate and gruesome displays that seem to celebrate death.

I would hope that it would go without saying that Christians should have nothing to do with celebrations of the ugly, the gruesome, the macabre, or the occult. While we should not fear death, we should recognize that it is still an enemy.

mOMENTO mORI

At the same time, however, we live in a culture that, despite Halloween displays, lives in denial of death. Through the centuries, Christians have used momento mori—reminders of the inevitability of death—in art and in churches to encourage people to think about their own mortality and to be sure to prepare themselves for eternity.

For example, in my previous church, built in 1763, there was an hourglass and candle on either side of the pulpit. Both of these were understood in the symbolic language of the day as momento mori, since the candle would burn down and the sand would run out of the hourglass, both of which were reminders of the shortness of life in this world.These things were good and valuable reminders that kept people anchored to reality.

This kind of healthy reminder of mortality, though, is not the message of Halloween graveyards and skeletons. These images are ultimately incompatible with the Christian hope of the resurrection.

All this to say that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with children dressing up in appropriate costumes and trick-or-treating with the neighbors or in a safe place. (This can actually be a great way to get out and meet neighbors, which is often rather difficult to do in many parts of the country.) But we should certainly steer clear of the images of death and evil that dominate the holiday.

It is also a good time to return to the idea of Allhallowtide and learn the stories of some of the saints over the centuries. 32 Christians who Changed their World is one place you can go for some of the stories of lesser-known heroes of the faith.