If you know me personally, you’ve probably heard me say something along the lines of, “The Internet was a mistake.” Getting all the information in world history is simply too much for a brain that struggles to do long division (or, in some cases,1 short division).
So, I am here to tell you: All of the things Evangelicals currently believe about Halloween are a product of Sloppy Internet Mythology™. To summarize: Halloween is so ancient it has ties to the early Christian church and some of its practices (e.g., trick-or-treating) were actually invented by Christians. Let’s dive in.
In the 90s, there was a cluster of Internet myths that everyone seemingly believed: Mountain Dew reduced your sperm count. Marilyn Manson was actually Paul from the Wonder Years. Daddy Long-Legs are actually the world’s most poisonous spider, but their fangs are too small to bite a human.
All of these things are false (a Daddy Long-Legs can definitely bite you), but they were repeated ad nauseam when I was a kid and I believed them! The myths surrounding Halloween pre-date the Internet, but the Internet definitely helped the rest of us Boomers spread a lot of the misinformation. I heard all sorts of things growing up, from Halloween is Satan’s birthday (who is his dad?!?), to “neighbors are putting razor blades in apples” (do they grow an apple around a razor blade!?). All of it is nonsense.
Even in the Evangelical churches I grew up in, people said that some of the practices associated with Christmas and Easter were originally pagan and Christians adopted them later. None of that is true. Although the story about Martin Luther inventing the Christmas tree is probably folklore, it is closer to the truth than the myth:
Modern Christmas trees originated in Central Europe and the Baltic states, particularly Estonia, Germany and Livonia (now Latvia) during the Renaissance in early modern Europe. Its 16th-century origins are sometimes associated with Protestant Christian reformer Martin Luther, who is said to have first added lighted candles to an evergreen tree. The Christmas tree was first recorded to be used by German Lutherans in the 16th century, with records indicating that a Christmas tree was placed in the Cathedral of Strasbourg in 1539 under the leadership of the Protestant Reformer Martin Bucer. The Moravian Christians put lighted candles on those trees.” The earliest known firmly dated representation of a Christmas tree is on the keystone sculpture of a private home in Turckheim, Alsace (then part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, today part of France), with the date 1576. Modern Christmas trees have been related to the “tree of paradise“ of medieval mystery plays that were given on 24 December, the commemoration and name day of Adam and Eve in various countries. In such plays, a tree decorated with apples (representing fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thus to the original sin that Christ took away) and round white wafers (to represent the Eucharist and redemption) was used as a setting for the play. Like the Christmas crib, the Paradise tree was later placed in homes. The apples were replaced by round objects such as shiny red baubles (my emphasis).
That is from freaking Wikipedia. The same holds true about the origins of Easter, which has exactly zero ties to paganism. In fact, the (mis)belief has gotten so ubiquitous, the r/pagan subreddit regularly re-ups a post every Easter emphasizing that pagans have nothing to do with the origins of the holiday. So, to all my Christian friends saying Easter and Christmas are pagan: EVEN THE PAGANS DISAGREE WITH YOU AND THEY WOULD KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
I think Halloween has officially fallen into the same category, although I blame the Internet less than I blame James Dobson. So, I’ll say it now: Halloween is thoroughly Christian to its core. Even the name Halloween has a Christian origin, as it was the Lowland Scots word for “Saints’ Evening.” Halloween was the evening feast before All Saints Day, November 1st. The three holidays - Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day - all encompass Allhallowtide,2 a festival meant to remember the deceased, specifically the persecuted church. Therefore, it is explicitly celebrated as a holiday meant to honor and remember martyrs. And we’ve surrendered it because Jack O’Lanterns are scary.
I’ll provide a few resources for you guys to read that go into more detail than I want to here, but we can hit the main points:
Halloween may have a Christian name, but the Christians really stole it from Samhain, a Celtic festival that celebrated death, ghosts, and evil spirits.
I am starting with this one because it is my favorite. I love the assurance some people have when they say this, because we know absolutely nothing about the Celtic festivals in general, much less one held on October 31st. Do you know why? THE CELTS DIDN’T WRITE ANYTHING DOWN. We have no idea what they were celebrating - if anything - on October 31st because it wasn’t important enough for the Celts to document.
What we do have is evidence that Samhain was some sort of reference to the end of summer (the word literally means “summer’s end”), and that occasionally the Celts got together to drink and celebrate. But it has no connection at all to death, ghosts, or evil spirits. And some years they didn’t celebrate it at all. And if you want to really stretch it, there is some record of Samhain as an entity in Celtic mythology, but he was a shepherd…not the lord of the dead.
Trick-or-treating and dressing up is evil.
Trick-or-treating comes from the Christian practice of going house to house and asking to pray for people. In return, the Christians - usually children and their mothers - would ask for “soul cakes,” a.k.a., a treat in exchange for the prayers. From Matt Arnold:
The origin of this modern day practice has its roots in the Christian practice of children and beggars going from door to door around the village / town, offering to pray for the souls of the people and their families as they open the door to the children. Some denominations would also offer prayer for those who have passed over too. In return, the pray-ers would receive what is known as “soul cakes”, which are the “treat” from which modern day treats derive.
What about dressing up? For that, we turn to Tim O’Neill, who has a great blog in general on the Christian origins of Halloween:
Poorer people going to houses to receive food as charity gave rise to people visiting others in disguise to demand “soul cakes” as part of a game. This took many forms that varied by region, but this practice of “guising” or “mumming” was part of celebratory folk practices at other times of year, particularly Christmas. At Halloween, the “guisers” often sang “soul cake songs” demanding traditional food gifts in return for a blessing. In some places the practice meant any “guiser” could enter a house and had to be welcomed and given soul cakes, while the owners pretended to not know who the visitors were. This is why traditional “guiser” masks were designed largely to hide someone’s identity from their neighbours rather than the modern version of the Halloween “costume”. In some versions the “guisers” simply painted their faces black. The game consisted of people in a close knit community pretending not to know each other while breaking social norms. This element developed into a “misrule” element – again, something also seen at Christmas – were acts of damage and violence were threatened (and minor acts carried out) if the “guisers” were not rewarded with food. The clear line of descent from this to modern “trick or treating” is obvious (my emphasis).
O’Neill’s writing is great because he cites to actual, scholarly sources and explains them in a way that is easy to read. I think that’s what a lot of this boils down to: We are buried deep in layers and layers of misinformation about a Christian holiday, to the point where you have to go to Celtic and Northern European academics to find out the truth. But there is really nothing pagan about Halloween’s origins.3
Where does all this misinformation start? I think it is here where we concede that a lot of this comes from Protestants, who made up things about Catholic holidays in order to attack the authority of the church. It appears that at least some of the myths about Halloween (and other events in the liturgical calendar) start with us, and that is sad.
I didn’t get my kid a costume and now I feel bad.
You should. And you should be a better Christian. Just kidding. But look: This isn’t to say that Halloween has magically become as wholesome as Christmas. Obviously, it is still associated with spooky stuff and that can be jarring for kids. On my walk yesterday, I personally made note of a few houses in our neighborhood that I wouldn’t take our daughter to, simply because their yard decorations were too scary for me! None of that goes away because orthodox Christianity had a say in Halloween.
But some of Halloween’s association with the dead comes from Christian tradition. There is a scene from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford that I think about a lot. In it, Robert Ford shoots and kills a dude named Wood Hite. I set the video below to skip the shootout itself (because it’s bloody), but it highlights a few important things:
The scene accurately shows how chaotic shootouts were back in the day. Guns were hard to aim, had a ton of recoil, and were super inaccurate. The gunfight at the O.K. Corrall had people standing only six feet apart, and even then they fired 30 shots and only 3 people were killed!
Henleys are a classic and timeless menswear item.
Death was treated very differently than we treat it now.
In the scene, Robert Ford tells two other people in the house to come and say goodbye to the guy he just shot, and they do it very casually. The woman even says, “I’d bring you a glass of water but I’m afraid you’ll choke on it.” She’s saying this to a dead guy!
Death used to be much more normal in our society because it used to be much more frequent. In 1800, a little more than 200 years ago, families were expected to lose 2-3 children before they turned 5, simply due to disease and/or malnutrition. What we now call the “living room” in our houses used to be the “parlour room,” where we’d put deceased members of our family during a funeral. Death used to be so common we had a room for the dead in our houses. Hundreds of years ago, Christians were fine with holidays commemorating the dead because they saw death - even the deaths of young children - as a normal, everyday part of life.
Halloween has become so commercialized that it is now almost a silly holiday, with kids dressing up in costumes and eating candy. I personally like to think of that as a direct result of Christ’s victory over death, but maybe I like capitalism too much.
All that said, I have made it a personal mission of mine to reclaim Halloween’s Christian origins. Last year, I told my daughter about Christian martyrs who gave their lives instead of denouncing their faith. I will probably do something similar this year, the same way we try to teach her the true meaning of Christmas (before she opens a thousand presents). These are good practices that I think every Christian actually celebrating Halloween should engage in, and maybe in a generation or two we can debunk all the myths. Until then, I’ll settle for a little pep talk about Christian martyrdom after we go trick-or-treating.
And then I’ll eat all her candy.
Resources again, in case you read to the end and don’t feel like scrolling back up:
Tim O’Neill’s piece on Halloween. A friend sent me this last year and his whole blog is great. What makes it unique: O’Neill is an atheist, and would normally be predisposed to pointing out a pagan origin for Halloween. But he did the research and found the opposite.
Matt Arnold’s piece. Similarly debunks a lot of the major misconceptions about Halloween.
I’ll see you after the elections on Tuesday.
Mine. Math is evil.
This extends to Remeberence Sunday as well.
This isn’t to say some regional traditions from Ireland and Scotland didn’t get mixed in with Christianity’s practices. Jack O’Lanterns, for instance, were an Irish and Scottish tradition that - as O’Neill points out - had obscure and unclear meanings. Some of this has been imbibed by Christianity over the years, but that isn’t nearly enough evidence to say it’s pagan and demonic!