Halloween's Origins: Samhain vs The Catholic Church
It’s that wonderful time of the year where here in the United States we get to celebrate three of our favorite holidays in a row: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. You can even make it four if you get excited for New Years for whatever reason. It’s also that time of the year where the most miserable of Catholicism’s enemies try to inflict some digs on us. Starting at the beginning of October all the way to the end of December we are more than likely to hear how our favorite holidays of Halloween and Christmas are supposedly pagan in origin.
Since it is spooky season as the youths like to call it, we will focus on Halloween’s origins. The atheists jeer at us for apparently worshiping Celtic gods and not knowing history (their main sources are of course the History Channel and Reddit by the way). The puritanical Protestant accuses us Catholics of being demonic pagans and following condemnable man-made traditions. Finally we see neo-pagans attempt to appropriate our holiday by “reclaiming” it. As an aside, think about how lame neo-pagans look while dancing around bonfires with their dyed pink hair and just laugh at the fact they think they can save the West. All of these attacks, like their beliefs, are groundless.
No doubt Halloween is a controversial holiday for Catholics. It has been hijacked by the modern secular culture to incorporate demonic elements- look no further to how imagery of the devil and witchcraft is used as decorations and costumes even for children. It also doesn’t help that those jeers I mentioned above are widely believed despite being erroneous. We don’t have to and should not have to avoid celebrating this fun day. Since it has its origins in Catholicism and has been celebrated by Catholics for all these years, we know there is a correct way to do so. One of the first steps is to obviously excise any demonic elements which should be kind of easy to do. The nice part of Halloween being a very aesthetic holiday is it is quite easy to see what to avoid. The next step is to answer the objections that this holiday is actually pagan which is my purpose here today.
Halloween’s name is derived from the Scottish shortening the word “All Hallows Even” and “Allhallowe’en.” (etymonline.com) The word “Hallow” is an antiquated synonym for “holy” and “saint.” Halloween, if you weren’t already aware, is the eve of All Saints Day on November 1st. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that from the earliest days of the Church, the faithful commemorated the anniversaries of the death of martyrs. (newadvent.org) As the number of martyrs increased, it became evident that you practically could not assign a specific day for each martyr and hence the need to appoint a common day to honor them all. Interestingly enough, the earliest evidence we have of the Church expressing the need to have a day to honor all the martyrs is from a sermon by St Ephrem the Syrian in 373 AD and in the 74th homily of St John Chrysostom in 407 AD.
The Western Church would first fix their date for All Saints Day on May 13th instituted by Pope Boniface IV. May 13th was chosen since it would commemorate the Pantheon in Rome being dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and all the saints sometime in 609 or 610 AD. It is worth mentioning that the Pantheon was originally a Roman pagan temple dedicated to all the Roman false-gods. Pope Boniface IV seems to have intentionally rededicated the Pantheon to the saints as a gesture of Christianity overthrowing the pagan world order. (wordonfire.org) At the same time, May 13th was originally the Roman holiday of Lemuria which honored their dead ancestors and this choice of celebrating All Saints Day on May 13th keeps in line with the message of Christianity conquering paganism. The modern date of All Saints Day being on November 1st originates with Pope Gregory III (731-741 AD) dedicating a chapel in St Peter’s Basilica to all the saints. Pope Gregory IV (827-844 AD) would go on to order that this day be celebrated by the whole Church.
Most arguments against Halloween argue that its origin lies in the Ancient Celtic holiday Samhain (actually pronounced ‘Sow-In’) which was celebrated on October 31st. In my studying of this topic, I find the celebration of Samhain and Halloween on the same day to be merely coincidental. One of my main sources for this article is Trick Or Treat: A History of Halloween by Lisa Morton. I find the book to be a wonderful source of Halloween facts, but the author is deficient in drawing certain conclusions given said facts. I found the author often delves more into unwarranted speculations on Halloween’s origins and does not adequately demonstrate how Pope Gregory III instituting All Saints Day on November 1st was connected to the Celtic holiday of Samhain. Confusingly, she suggests a much more plausible explanation that November 1st could have been picked because that would be an appropriate time for pilgrims to visit Rome for All Saints Day as it would be during harvest time which would feed the pilgrims, yet she still suggests that Halloween more likely came from Samhain. Often when reading popular historians who write about Halloween's origins, they all suffer the same deficiency of reasoning.
Samhain was a real Celtic holiday celebrated both as the Celtic New year and a holiday to celebrate the harvest. (ewtn.org) (aquinasonline.com) While being a Celtic holiday, it was restricted to Celts in the British Isles. By the time of St Patrick, roughly 431 AD, Ireland would have been Christian and also Samhain wasn’t observed by that time (well at least according to aquinasonline.com). Hence the argument has been made that this weakens the theory Gregory III instituted All Saints Day to coincide with Samhain. While I am biased into wanting to accept this argument from aquinasonline.com, I must admit I cannot verify the theory that Samhain was no longer being observed by the Celts by 431 AD.
The timing of Samhain and Halloween is at best coincidental. Often we will see arguments that Halloween is pagan in origin which take for granted that the timing of these two holidays implies one led to the other. All evidence presented is at best just that, coincidental. No evidence can be offered that Pope Gregory III, when instituting All Saints Day on November 1st (sometime between 731-741 AD), wished to commandeer a Celtic pagan holiday that may or may not have been still celebrated. It is also worth noting he was born in Syria, being the last Pope born outside of Europe until Pope Francis, so what are the odds he knew about Samhain? (wikipedia.org) While many respectable Catholic commentators have argued that even if Halloween was pagan in origin, it is Catholic now since the holiday has been “baptized.” I will not venture today into examining those arguments about “baptizing” cultural practices, it should suffice to leave our minds at rest that Halloween really has its origins in Catholicism.