A History of Halloween

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 e s c o r t e d 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 1 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 2 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. ------------- 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 3 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. ------------------- 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 4 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.

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