▲ 132 points
back
47 comments
Is there a well regarded book or study on the origins of Halloween? Any thread online seems to involve a rather baseless argument between people who think it is the natural development of European traditions brought to the US and further iterated upon; or people who think it is an American tradition which also has some influences from immigrant groups.
Essentially allowing religious and nationalistic sentiment drive the entire discussion in terms of it's paganism or who owns it.
Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween by Lisa Morton is a good place to start, moderately thorough and doesn't have an axe to grind. Her Halloween Encyclopedia is also quite good.
The History for Atheists weblog has a good entry called "Is Halloween Pagan?":
> The short answer is “no”. Contrary to Seth Andrews’ claims about “the Catholic Church” stealing a pagan festival “involving the druid priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks and treats”, the date and most of the traditions are firmly Christian in origin. The November 1 date that is the centre of “Allhallowmas” was not derived from any “Celtic” original and the original Irish date for an All Saints feast moved from April 20 to November 1 due to the influence of Continental and English liturgical practice. That this meant the new All Saints Day fell on the “quarter day” of Samhain was pure coincidence. Contrary to repeated insistence in popular sources, scholars can find no clear indication of any ritual or religious practices on Samhain, and certainly none that can be traced to later Halloween traditions. Masks, costumes, trick or treating, Halloween games etc. all either have known traditional Christian origins or simply cannot be linked to anything definitely pre-Christian.
* https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/
YT video/audio equivalent of the article if you want a more podcast-y experience:
Halloween has always been a feast at the end of the harvest season. The weather changes around now. Its the end of Autumn for us, the start of Winter. There's berries and nuts etc. It was always going to be a massive party. I really doubt the coming of Christianity changed it in any significant way.
The bonfires and wildness of the night are still there, its always been a night were the rules seem looser.
> Halloween has always been a feast at the end of the harvest season.
[citation needed]
Because the weblog goes to primary sources (amongst others) and finds that:
> The Félire Óengusso or “Martyrology of Óengus” is another martyrology, attributed to Saint Óengus of Tallaght. It seems to date to the ninth century and is based on earlier English martyrologies (like that of Bede), but with significant local Irish additions. It mentions a feast of All Saints in its listing for April 20:
> Under November 1, on the other hand, we do find – finally – a reference to “Samhain”. But it is not associated with commemorating All Saints, but rather with three Irish saints only:
> So while the English were already celebrating All Saints Day on November 1 in the eighth century and that date became predominant in Frankia by the mid ninth century, the Irish were doing so on April 20, with “stormy Samain” the feast of three local holy men only. As esteemed historian of folklore, Ronald Hutton, summarises it in his Stations Of The Sun (Oxford, 1996):
[…]
> For Frazer, Samhain had been nothing less than the pagan Celtic feast of the dead. Like Rhys, he saw it as marking the death of the old year and also as a numinous time when the supernatural was abroad. But he argued that it was common for many cultures to honour their dead at the close of the year and so argued that the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls on November 1 and 2 had to have their origins in this posited earlier Celtic festival. Of course, this is based on the idea that All Saints began in Ireland and the Celtic tradition and transferred to the rest of Europe. But, as discussed above, this does not seem to be the case, with the earlier Irish celebration of All Saints (April 20) giving way to the date established in Frankia in the ninth century (November 1). Frazer got the influence completely the wrong way around.
> the coming of Christianity changed it in any significant way.
The 95 Theses changed it in a huge way in 1517. Recall that many Protestants don't believe in saints at all!
Halloween, in the sense of the eve of all saints, is after Easter in the eastern churches, which is the 'old' date but was changed to coincide with the day that the poe consecrated the Pantheon as a Christian church (the Pantheon having used to be a temple to all gods, is now dedicated to all saints).
The bonfires are a Catholic thing dating to when they were outlawed in England. They couldn’t light candles in churches so they lit bonfires in fields instead.
A lot of this can be said for most, if not all, of the stolen-Paganism claims, not Halloween. If you excuse the inherent bias, Fr. Casey Cole has a good recent video on the matter, however, he focuses more on Christmas than Halloween: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpYNQgb_IAE
Ironically, most of the anti-Christian and Pagan symbols you see today were actually copied from Christianity. The upside down cross was originally the Cross of St. Peter (St. Peter asked to be crucified upside down because he thought himself unworthy to die as Christ did), until anti-Christians used it in intentionally sacrilegious mock-rituals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mass).
I recommend attending a traditional Catholic requiem mass for the dead on all souls day. It explains everything about Halloween decor.
The church is draped in black and lit only by unbleached beeswax candles, hence the black and orange for Halloween.
And there might be skulls or bones (relics) if the church is important enough.
Mozart's Requiem - All Souls Solemn High Mass https://www.youtube.com/live/9bRSLZQr7kU?si=TzyHzkJvV5-L2Mi6
Nice. Here's the one from last year and you can see all the elements:
https://www.youtube.com/live/D8x3s6h5f5M
1. The orange candles around the coffin and the altar
2. The black draped coffin and black garments worn by the priests
3. On the left and right side of the altar you can see what I presume are relics (bones and personal accoutrements of saints)
> If you excuse the inherent bias, Fr. Casey Cole has a good recent video on the matter, however, he focuses more on Christmas than Halloween: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpYNQgb_IAE
History for Atheists has posts on 'pagan origin' topics:
* https://historyforatheists.com/2020/12/pagan-christmas/
* https://historyforatheists.com/2023/12/interview-dr-philipp-...
* https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-...
* https://historyforatheists.com/2023/04/interview-andrew-henr...
Middle-Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate a festival called Eid il-Burbara (Saint Barbra's festival) on the 4th of December, which has lots of similarities to Halloween and trick-or-treating but has been celebrated a lot longer than Halloween [0]
I wonder if this tradition influenced Halloween in any way
Note: my family are Orthodox Christians from Jordan, but we celebrate this festival slightly differently than what is described in [0], but I know predominantly some Christian towns celebrate it as the article describes even today
Thank you for that site. As an atheist who is frequently extremely annoyed at other atheists for being hypocritically intellectually lazy when it paints faith negatively (i.e. "Christians just believe what they're told without any critical thought" and "somebody told me Christmas was pagan, which would be embarrassing for the Christmas, so I immediately believed and repeated it" from the same person), reading many of these articles is extremely satisfying and cathartic.
It reminds me of many of the negative but obviously false stories that were flying around about Trump before he was elected. I strongly dislike Trump, but I really hate bullshit. It's a shame that so many people who consider themselves to be critical thinkers and above the impressionable are just as susceptible to lazy confirmation bias as the rest.
I'm going to slightly disagree. The facts are probably correct, but celebration of spirits, evil, and the other things are clearly against teachings in the bible. Thus I'll have to claim that it came not from Christians, but from Pagans pretending to be christian. (which is rather common anyway)
I really don't think that HN is the place for pushing one's own dogmatic definition of Christianity. The people who celebrated Halloween have always considered themselves to be Christian, and there's no logical reason to give preference to your definition of the religion over theirs.
I have no problem with you having strong opinions about what the Bible teaches (I have similarly strong opinions myself!), but arguments about what counts as Christian invariably turn on dogma alone, which kills curiosity.
In Catholic tradition, which predates sola scriptura, the Bible gets legitimacy from the church, which predates the Bible, not vice versa.
The idea that the Bible ought to be the only source of Christian teaching is a very new idea. The apostolic churches don't buy it.
Not to say it's right or wrong but there's a two thousand year array of evidence that this is how the Catholic Church sees things.
From your reference to "the apostolic churches" I assume that you understand this, but to clarify for any less familiar with Christian denominations: both the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches (between them representing about 60% of global self-identifying Christians) deny the supremacy of the Bible for the same reason.
As someone on the OrthodoxChristianity subreddit put it [0], "show me where the table of contents comes from." Both Orthodox and Catholic Christians believe that because the list of books that make up the Bible is an output of some combination of history, tradition, and church councils, it can't be treated as superior to them.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/OrthodoxChristianity/comments/14y7f...
It came from Protestants pretending not to be Catholic, actually
Catholics and Protestants both have their own ways of pretending to be Christian while ignoring teachings in the bible. (though protestant has enough different sects that you can't draw a blanket on any one thing that they all do wrong)
Have you read much about the history of Catholicism and Protestantism? It sounds as if you’re speaking a bit out of your depth, admittedly.
Poland had "Dziady", although world-wide Americanism has introduced Halloween the same way as in the rest of the world.
I didn't find this to be deep. It seems to be a rambling series of conjecture that left me none the wiser for having read it.
Totally agree. Nothing provable at all, and almost all of the links that the author could be illusory. Maybe something in the human psyche compels us celebrate certain things at similar times of the year in response to certain stimuli, in which case it is no surprise that we find somewhat similar festivals happening across multiple cultures. A smoking gun is needed if anyone wants to prove a real connection.
The story here is likely off on the wrong foot from the start: our Halloween isn't really meaningfully connected to Samhain. https://adfontesjournal.com/archives/halloween-its-creation-...
I don't know if that would be qualified as an unbiased source. The author seems to have an agenda going by the footer...
The fact that he puts the word "Celtic" in quotation marks while suggesting there was no such culture is interesting.
The footer of the site:
Ad Fontes is a quarterly publication of The Davenant Institute.
The Davenant Institute seeks to retrieve the riches of classical Protestantism in order to renew and build up the contemporary church.
There is no such thing as “celtic” culture. Celtoi is a word of precision roughly on par with “barbarian.”
Despite the looseness with which the Romans originally used the term, it seems well established that the groups of people who came to be regarded as the "Celts" did have some cultural traits in common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts
Perhaps it is more accurate to say there were Celtic "cultures" rather than a single culture. Regardless, I don't think the etymology of the word itself is determinative.
See also this exploration of the origin of All Saints Day:
https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2017/11/the-origin-of-...
It's the halfway point between the winter solistice an autumnal equinox. Just like "Christmas" is really just winter solstice.
It's all thinly veiled solar worship.
This is a very sloppy argument. The first citation is a work from the 60s which makes the unsubstantiated claim that some kind of practice was actually the survival of a prehistoric fertility cult. Then later the author says any claim made about a prehistoric society must be taken with a grain of salt... and then he makes a sweeping claim.
As far as I know, the modern historical consensus is that Samhain had no link to the dead and that aspect comes entirely from Christianity. People project a lot onto the past based on their assumptions about what seems pagan and what seems Christian, and what they project onto paganism is things that feel non-modern (belief in the supernatural, practices tied to the cycle of the year, things that seem "spooky.")
I was going to say the same thing. There is nothing "deep" about this history, the article is a string of poorly connected events that still try to bring up the spectre of wrong ideas that came out in the 60's tying Samhaim to our modern Halloween which has been refuted many many times. I am sorry but bonfires are not really associated with modern Halloween and just because ancient persians used them does not meaningfully tie that in with trick or treating, ghouls and ghosts. Even this actual line sounds nothing like our modern halloween:
> A 12th-century Irish source records a week of feasting during this time, when “there would be nothing but meetings and games and amusements and entertainments and eating and feasting" (sounds fun!).2 There is talk of kindling sacred fires, and of spirits and ghosts wandering the earth. But very little detail.
This sounds more like Thanksgiving (or fall festivals Oktoberfest etc) than halloween.
I almost lost it when he started making claims about proto-Indo-European religion.
I don't want to dunk on the author too much. His book about Margaret Mead and psychedelics sounds interesting, and I read a couple positive reviews of it. It looks like he spent too much studying early anthropologists and he seems to be replicating their worst qualities as academics.
> As far as I know, the modern historical consensus is that Samhain had no link to the dead and that aspect comes entirely from Christianity.
As far as I know it’s build on a harvest festival which happened to be when the veil between our world and other worlds were thin. That didn’t necessarily mean spirits of dead people, but also faeries and stuff. Of course the Christian church mostly took the timing of the already existing festival and used it as their own because people didn’t really want to stop celebrating what they usually did (who would?) and Christianity worked with what it had.
There is no evidence, as far as I'm aware, that Samhaim was associated with the "veil between worlds being thin" prior to Christianization. The medieval Church was not allergic to rituals that involved the spirits of the dead. The belief that these practices are anti-Christian or pagan is a product of the Protestant Reformation.
The notion that the Church was acting in a deliberate way to co-opt certain festivals that it couldn't destroy gives it too much credit. Syncretism is often bottom up. And many of the practices that survive are tied to the human experience in ways that transcend any specific belief system, like the changing of the seasons and the agricultural cycle.
Also, treating paganism as some undifferentiated whole is ahistorical. Why do people talk about ancient Indo-European rituals that survive for millenia and then Christianity is the rupture? More likely, religious beliefs changed many times, and Samhain was itself a syncretic combination of a new belief system with pre-Samhain harvest festival practices.
> a product of the Protestant Reformation.
It's instructive to note the beginning date of the Reformation: 31 October 1517. Likewise, 5 November 1605 remains significant for Protestants.
Bonfires on the 5th of November have been obligatory for centuries, and therefore strongly associated with this season. For Protestants. Protestant bonfires. Not pagan. Burning their fellow Christians in effigy.
I would say that those two events, combined with Día de los Muertos influence, are the most enlightening aspects of Halloween culture.
In fact, rather than Christians co-opting paganism, it's more properly a case of anti-Catholic bigotry co-opting All Saints Day. The secular/pagan/demonic overtones are merely allied with the Protestant jihad.
> As far as I know it’s build on a harvest festival which happened to be when the veil between our world and other worlds were thin. That didn’t necessarily mean spirits of dead people, but also faeries and stuff.
A lot of these types of claims came from the book The Golden Bough, which gets things wrong:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough
A good weblog post that goes into primary sources and how Bough influenced popular culture is:
> Contrary to Seth Andrews’ claims about “the Catholic Church” stealing a pagan festival “involving the druid priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks and treats”, the date and most of the traditions are firmly Christian in origin. The November 1 date that is the centre of “Allhallowmas” was not derived from any “Celtic” original and the original Irish date for an All Saints feast moved from April 20 to November 1 due to the influence of Continental and English liturgical practice. That this meant the new All Saints Day fell on the “quarter day” of Samhain was pure coincidence. Contrary to repeated insistence in popular sources, scholars can find no clear indication of any ritual or religious practices on Samhain, and certainly none that can be traced to later Halloween traditions. Masks, costumes, trick or treating, Halloween games etc. all either have known traditional Christian origins or simply cannot be linked to anything definitely pre-Christian.
* https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/
Some people suggest Halloween is named after "Heer Halewijn" (Lord Halewijn), who figured in a pre-Christian Dutch folk tale [1].
Might as well be the other way around though :)
Yes it’s quite a stretch. Occam says that it clearly comes from All Hallows’ Eve/Day (Nov 1st). Hallow just means “to make holy”, so the day of all who where made holy, or All Saints Day.
Not sure how they justify the connection to the dutch. There is a town called “Haelen” in Limburg or “Hale” in the local dialect. And “wijn” just means wine, as in the drink. It’s quite a plausible surname pattern and a total coincidence, not even a very close one. Although it is quite a spooky tale, fair enough.
The Mysterious Origin of Halloween - Randall Carlson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucn175R8WgY
The Neolithic tomb described predated any Indo-European arrivals by centuries and nothing recognizable as “Celts” would appear for at least two more millennia.
A couple of years ago I wrote a brief article about Halloween, and linked to the Roman Lemuria: https://godsip.club/articles/monster-mash/
So, as a person who came to the US in his late 20s in '95 from a country where Halloween was not "celebrated" (of course, now it is has expanded there, too, like in many other countries, fueled by the incentive to sell stuff) I have had an outsider's PoV of the celebrations over the years, here's my chronology in chronological order with my son:
1. Baby Halloween: When you have children this is from birth to approx. 4yrs old, where they don't have much input into costumes so parents can buy the cutest, funniest costume, e.g. a small cow or a bumble bee.
2. Kid Halloween: From about 5 yrs to 11yrs, when kids join you in costume planning and are so infatuated with candy its cure. Some Halloween decorations may still be scary for them :-)
3. Teen Halloween: From about 12yrs old to perhaps 13-14 yrs old. Halloween is a guilty pleasure for these kids, who think they are now too old. You see them still collecting candy but not in costume and using pillowcases for loot
4. Sexy Halloween: Starts around 18 yrs old and covers college years and single adulthood. This is the realm of spooky houses, sexy witches, skimpy costumes
5. Interlude: Early years of marriage, when (4) is fading but you don't have kids yet. You still go out to parties but they are not that wild.
6. Grandkid Halloween: You get to live (1) again but you have much more time!This warmed my heart. I'm sooo looking forward to #6 having lived through 1-5 both for myself, and with my kids.
3.a. 14-17 yrs old. Once you're old enough to work and buy your own candy but still too young to find an unsupervised party, Halloween briefly loses its allure, except maybe as an outlet for a little mischief.