What is Halloween?

What is Halloween? Is it night of harmless fun and gags that many believe. There are two ways to answer this. One is to look at the ideas behind the symbolism, and the second is to trace the historical progression of the symbols, including the chain of custody and evolution of the symbols themselves. This was the same approach I used in my book Mystery Babylon Rising. This article will trace Halloween from its pagan origins through the present to its future

It’s Origins in  Samhain.

It is widely believed by many reliable sources that Halloween origins began as Samhain. You can find accounts of this at History.com, World History, The Smithsonian, National Geographic, and the BBC among other places. Samhain was a Celtic fall festival that marked the end of the harvest. Celts believed that the boundary between the spirit world and the physical world was thinnest during Samhain. As Celts believed that spirits, including demons, roamed the earth during Samhain; they would disguise themselves as evil spirits to  blend in among them and light bonfires to ward off evil spirits. According to AN ARTICLE  the York Historian – The University of York Student History Magazine, ” Many people today are indeed unaware that Halloween derives from the ancient Irish Celtic festival Samhain, but modern-day practices on this holiday are not as far from its ancient ones as we might imagine.” This magazine is published by the York University History Department. In this article, Nicholas Rogers, a history professor from York, is cited as a source. He wrote Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night(2002). He wrote the first chapter on the origins of Halloween on Samhain.

From Nicholas Rogersbook:

In fact, the pagan origins of Halloween generally flow not from this sacrificial evidence but from a different set of symbolic practices. These revolve around the notion of Samhain as a festival of the dead and as a time of supernatural intensity heralding the onset of winter.

The notion that Samhain was a festival of the dead was first popularized by Sir James Frazer in the now classic Golden Bough (1890). He wrote that “the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided from them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinfolk.”19 This anachronistic description of a Celtic festival should make us wary, for it seems probable that Frazer confused the rites associated with All Souls’ Day with those that preceded it.

In fact, there is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship, despite claims to the contrary by some American folklorists, some of whom have presumed that the feast was devoted to Saman, god of the dead.20 Certainly, the feast was linked to the mythical peoples of Ireland. According to the ancient sagas, Samhain was the time when tribal peoples paid tribute to their conquerors and when the sidh might reveal the magnificent palaces of the gods of the underworld.21 Insofar as Samhain was dedicated to anyone—and this is extremely conjectural—it appears to have been associated with the principal god of the Old Irish tradition, Eochaid Ollathair, sometimes referred to as Dagda, who in Tochmarc Etaine, or the Wooing of Etain, had ritual intercourse with three divinities, including Morrigan, the raven-goddess of war and fertility. Among other things, this coupling protected the crops.22 This would make sense, since pastoral communities were likely anxious about their ability to survive the winter months with their available food supplies, especially when they had to bear the burden of quartering warriors within their compounds.

In marking the onset of winter, Samhain was closely associated with darkness and the supernatural. In Celtic lore, winter was the dark time of the year when “nature is asleep, summer has returned to the underworld, and the earth is desolate and inhospitable.”23 In Cornwall and Brittany, November was known as the dark or black month, the first of winter; in Scotland, it was called “an Dudlachd” or “gloom.” Samhain was a time of divine couplings and dark omens, a time when malignant birds emerged from the caves of Crogham to prey upon mankind, led by one monstrous three-headed vulture whose foul breath withered the crops.

As night overwhelmed day, so the supernatural abounded. In Ireland, thefe’-fiada, the magic fog that rendered people invisible, was lifted on Samhain, and elves emerged from the fairy raths, erasing the boundaries between the real and otherworld.

Rogers, Nicholas,Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (New York, NY,2002;pg 20-21,Oxford Academic), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195146912.001.0001.

What was especially noteworthy about Samhain was its status as a borderline festival. It took place between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In Celtic lore, it marked the boundary between summer and winter, light and darkness. In this respect, Samhain can be seen as a threshold, or what anthropologists would call a liminal festival.27 It was a moment of ritual transition and altered states. It represented a time out of time, a brief interval “when the normal order of the universe is suspended” and “charged with a peculiar preternatural energy.”28 These qualities would continue to resonate through the celebration of Halloween.

Rogers, Nicholas,Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (New York, NY,2002;pg 21,Oxford Academic), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195146912.001.0001.

• All Hallows Eve – Christianized Halloween, dressing in costumes representing saints and evil spirits.
• All Saints Day – Remembering departed saints
• All Souls Day – pray for saints in Purgatory

By the end of the twelfth century, the linked festivals of All Saints’ and All Souls’, Todos Santos or Tots Sants in Spanish, or Hallowtide in English, were well-established liturgical moments in the Christian year. At the end of the Middle Ages they were among the most important. The feast of All Saints’ and All Souls’ was one of the six days of obligation, marked by high masses and prayers. It was a holiday that affirmed the collective claims that the dead had on the living. Its requiem masses also served as insurance against hauntings, for ghosts were generally “understood to be dead relatives who visited their kin to rectify wrongs committed against them while alive and to enforce the obligations of kinship.”1 As night fell and All Souls’ Day arrived, bells were also rung for the souls in purgatory.

These were people who were in a spiritual suspension, in an intermediary space between heaven and hell, for whom prayers and penance could be made for their sins before the day of judgment. In preparation for Hallowtide, churches made sure that their bells were in good shape, for in some places they were rung all night to ward off demonic spirits. In the churchwardens’ accounts of Heybridge in Essex in 1517, for example, there were payments to Andrew Elyott and John Gidney of Maldon to repair the “bell knappelle” and rope for “Hallowmasse.”2

These were the basic church rituals associated with Hallowtide, but over time other customs were added. In Naples, the charnel houses containing the bones of the dead were opened on All Souls’ Day and decorated with flowers. Crowds thronged through them to visit the bodies of their friends and relatives. Sometimes the cadavers were dressed in robes and placed in niches along the walls. In Brittany, the clergy led a solemn procession to the graveyard, where the local people would consecrate the graves of their kin with holy water or milk. At Salerno, and indeed elsewhere in Catholic Europe, household members would lay out food for the dead, whose souls were expected to return to their former abodes on All Souls’ Day. As we see in chapter 7, this practice has obvious links to the current rituals of the Mexican Day of the Dead, notably to the meticulously prepared ofrendas, or family altars

Rogers, Nicholas,Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (New York, NY,2002;pg 23-24,Oxford Academic), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195146912.001.0001.

The Historic Lawlessness of Hallowtide

Halloween has a long history of mischief that has gone on for Centuries, which has been documented by multiple scholars, including Lesley Bannatyne and Nicholas Rogers

Hallowtide was thus one of those occasions when flagrant violations of community norms might be addressed. It was a time when choristers would cross-dress and begin the revels that culminated in the Christmas Feast of Fools, normally reserved for 28 December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents. It was a time when youths rang bells for their dead ancestors and extended their misrule into the streets.12 As one poet put it: “How fit our well-rank’d Feasts do follow/All mischief comes after All-Hallow.”13 In less formal settings, it was a time when the young men of the village would ring in the winter season, play the fool, gang together to play football, and perhaps, under cover of that collective, carry out some rough justice against unpopular neighbors

Rogers, Nicholas,Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (New York, NY,2002;pg 26,Oxford Academic), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195146912.001.0001.

This lawlessness continued to the New world and persisted until the 1950’s. Historian  Lesley Bannatyne wrote an article in the Smithsonian titled When Halloween Was All Tricks and No Treats. She writes

Halloween in early 19th-century America was a night for pranks, tricks, illusions, and anarchy. Jack-o’-lanterns dangled from the ends of sticks, and teens jumped out from behind walls to terrorize smaller kids. Like the pumpkin patches and pageants that kids love today, it was all in good fun—but then, over time, it wasn’t.

As America modernized and urbanized, mischief turned to mayhem and eventually incited a movement to quell what the mid-20th-century press called the “Halloween problem”—and to make the holiday a safer diversion for youngsters. If it weren’t for the tricks of the past, there’d be no treats today.

Halloween was born nearly 2,000 years ago in the Celtic countries of northwestern Europe. November 1 was the right time for it—the date cut the agricultural year in two. It was Samhain, summer’s end, the beginning of the dangerous season of darkness and cold—which according to folklore, created a rift in reality that set spirits free, both good and bad. Those spirits were to blame for the creepy things—people lost in fairy mounds, dangerous creatures that emerged from the mist—that happened at that time of year.

Halloween and the LGBTQ movement

Due to both the cultural deference to wearing costumes on Halloween and the subversive history of Halloween, it became a favorite of the LGBTQ community.It would become known as Gay Christmas. The Pink News document an intersection between Halloween and the LGBTQ movement.

By the end of the 19th century, Americans had become determined to sanitise Halloween and strip it of its anti-social, death-obsessed image. Instead, Halloween was reframed as a community focussed event that saw families and friends get together to mark the turn of the season. Halloween parties became popular, with the focus instead being on games and fun instead of fairies and spirits.

That shift proved essential for America’s burgeoning queer community. Halloween was a time when people could wear whatever they liked without facing repercussions – even if that meant wearing clothes traditionally associated with the opposite gender.

It’s worth bearing in mind that many places actually criminalised what was referred to at the time as “crossdressing” – so Halloween presented a welcome escape for early queer communities.

By the time the 1920s rolled around, queer communities were hosting drag balls on Halloween as they knew it was a time of year they could escape harsh, puritanical ideas about gender expression.

Notice that the Pink News credited Samhain as the source of their gay joy, saying “The culture around Halloween that we know and love today would never have been possible without Samhain.” There is a significant intersection between the occult and homosexuality.

The Secularization of Halloween

Around 1920, there was a concerted effort to sanitize Halloween, cleansing it of its rowdy and dark elements. It was entrenched enough in popular culture that asserting the police power was not an adequate solution. There was a concerted effort by community groups to distance it from, both its occultic underbelly and the raucous behavior that came downstream from it.Nicholas Rogers had the following to say

Shootings on Halloween made good news copy. So, too, did the tales of fatal accidents and fires that accompanied the pranks of the night. While these stories undoubtedly exaggerated the mayhem of the holiday, they probably reinforced the idea that Halloween had to be tamed and modernized, at least among security-sensitive citizens. This could not be accomplished by the traditional forms of crowd control, Razor in the Apple 81 for police forces were always stretched to capacity on this annual mischief night. It had to be effected by community groups who strove to channel youthful energies into more respectable, law-abiding activities. All manner of clubs and societies went out of their way to provide alternative events for Halloween. Lions, Rotarians, Kiwanis, religious groups, high schools, boys’ and girls’ clubs, women’s institutes, the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, and even the Sons of the American Revolution all rose to meet the challenge of rendering Halloween safe and sane during the interwar years.

Rogers, Nicholas,Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (New York, NY,2002;pg 80-81,Oxford Academic), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195146912.001.0001.

It should be noted that this secularization did not alter the meanings of the occultic   symbolism, but simply downplayed them. People began to see devilish costumes as just wicked fun, laughs,  and partying rather than something that is religiously meaningful

The Repaganization of Halloween

There is a growing presence of groups who celebrate Halloween as a full embrace of the Pagan occult meanings. Modern Druids are a things, and they fully embrace Halloween as Samhain (albiet a modern interpretation). Wiccans are also drawn to Halloween as Samhain. As the culture is in a clear Neo-Pagan trajectory, a movement towards embracing Halloween’s pagan rooted is to be expected. Halloween is very, very likely to become more and more at odds with Christian faith as we head into the future and deeper into the End Times.

What is the Christian Response?

The Christian response is threefold.

1. We are first and foremost to flee idolatry.
2. We must recognize areas of liberty.
3. We must use our liberty in a constructive manner

We are first and foremost to flee idolatry.  We must avoid all associations with things that have Pagan or occult meaning: witches, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and devils still carry dark meanings, and Christians should have nothing to do with those things. On this front Halloween is different from Christmas and Easter: the Pagan things have not changed into non-Pagan but hold a significant amount of their ancient meanings. We must avoid anything that direct worship away from Christ, realizing that any worship not to God and His Christ is actually worship of the Devil – even acts of worship not seen by the worshipers as Satanic.

1 Cor 10:14-22  Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.  (15)  I speak as to wise men; judge for yourselves what I say.  (16)  The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?  (17)  For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread. Observe Israel after the flesh: Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?  (19)  What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything?  (20)  Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. (21)  You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons.  (22)  Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?

We must recognize areas of liberty and we must use our liberty in a constructive manner. Because of the 20th century secularization of Halloween, there are both aspects of the holiday that are not pagan and observers who are not intending any worship.

1 Cor 10:23-31  All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify.  (24)  Let no one seek his own, but each one the other’s well-being.  (25)  Eat whatever is sold in the meat market, asking no questions for conscience’ sake;  (26)  for “THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S, AND ALL ITS FULLNESS.”  (27)  If any of those who do not believe invites you to dinner, and you desire to go, eat whatever is set before you, asking no question for conscience’ sake.  (28)  But if anyone says to you, “This was offered to idols,” do not eat it for the sake of the one who told you, and for conscience’ sake; for “THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S, AND ALL ITS FULLNESS.”  (29)  “Conscience,” I say, not your own, but that of the other. For why is my liberty judged by another man’s conscience?  (30)  But if I partake with thanks, why am I evil spoken of for the food over which I give thanks?  (31)  Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Finally, our liberty must be used constructively for the Kingdom, and not for ourselves. Let us glorify Christ and be a blessing to others. Whatever you do, do for the glory of God