Taking It Back: Redeeming Halloween (Pt. 1)

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I want to set the record straight about Halloween.

We, the church, are hesitant, even loathe to use “Halloween” because of the different connotations of the word. In pop culture, immediate images of oafish psychopaths, scantly clad teens running into a bloody chainsaw, demonized little girls with stringy hair and post-pubescent voices, and ghosts from the past talking through the radio. But these ideas are deviations from the true Christian meaning of Halloween. In this three part series, I want to engage the history of this “holy-day” and then propose how we can redeem it.

First, we come to the Romans. They observed “Feralia:” a day in February to honor the dead. Sacrifices were made and prayers offered up on the behalf of the dead. The early church baptized “Feralia” to honor saints of the church, or great people of faith who had died. The date for “All Saints Day” has moved around through the ages, but presently it’s on November 1. Western Christianity, whose epicenter was Rome, had great influence throughout the known world, and naturally, so would it’s holidays.

Meanwhile, the people of Britain were called the Celts. They were people who worshiped nature and its beauty. The Celts, like the Romans and Greeks, had a pantheon of gods, partly as an attempt to explain how the world worked. The Sun God was their source of life, and the Celts adored him as such. They also worshiped Samhain, (pronounce “sow-in,” i.e. “sow” like a female pig) who was god of the dead and, of course, the winter. They believed that on October 31, Samhain would call together all of the dead, and all creatures wandered the Earth that night. The Celts called this the “Vigil of Samhain.” Additionally, October 31 meant the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter.

The Druids, who were the priests of the Celtic people, built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to commemorate the festival and honor the gods. At midnight on the 31^st, they stop worshiping the Sun God and started to worship Samhain, the ruler-god for the winter. This marked the start of the Celtic New Year. Celts performed ceremonies and dressing costumes like animals through the night to divine the future of the New Year.

After the Romans conquered the British Isles around the time of Christ, the two holidays of Feralia and Samhain merged together in Roman-Celtic territory. As Christianity spread throughout the Empire and up in Britain, the Church further attempted to replace the Celtic and Roman traditions with a similar, but decidedly, Christian celebration on November 1. Known in Middle English as “Alholowmesse,” All Saints Day celebrated and commemorated saints of the Church who did not have a particular day associated with them. Further, the Church often “baptized” secular or pagan holidays and incorporated those days into its liturgical calendar: Easter and Christmas are additional examples holidays with pagan roots. The day before “All Saints Day” was known as “All Hallows Eve;” hence, Halloween. Around AD 1000, the church made November 2 “All Souls’ Day,” a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils.

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