Halloween is Coming!

By Pastor Ronald Boelte

If we look at the history of the event we now call Halloween we need to go back over 2000 years and look at the Celtic people. These people located in England and Northern France worshiped the sun god. They also worshiped the Samhain who was the lord of the dead and of the cold dark winter season. Their belief was that on October 31 Samhrin would gather all the dead souls together and they would take the shape of animals who wandered the earth that night. The Celtic priest, the Druids, would burn great fires on that night and offer all kinds of sacrifices, usually food, to the sun god in hopes he could overcome Samhain and the evil spirits that would roam the earth for the next six months.

When the Celts were conquered by the Roman Catholics, they brought their own customs to the Celtic people. They decided to celebrate on October 31 as All Hallows Day Eve to counter the pagan worship that went on that night by the Celts. All Hallows Day also known as All Saints Day was already being celebrated by the church on November 1. The church had hope by celebrating this holiday in place of Samhain the people would soon forget their pagan gods and worship. This did not totally happen, and a few years later the belief that witches, the devil and his demons came out on that night and perform all kinds of unholy acts replaced Samhain and the day was soon named the night of the witches by the Celts.

The church by this time had shorten the name of All Hallow Day Eve to All Hallows Even, to be shorten to Hallowe’en, to Halloween. The whole point of the story is that the church tried to take a pagan ritual and make it into a Christian ritual. In this case it didn’t work as the church had hoped. The people would still offer sacrifices of food/money that night to help keep the demons and witches away from them and their families. Gradually the custom of the children of a community collecting these gifts to be offered became widespread. As you can imagine the children would help themselves to some of the offerings along the way.

In the places that still celebrate Halloween the custom of offering something usually candy to the children is still done. Plus in some areas the act of having fire as part of the celebration still exists.

I hope this brief history of Halloween helps you to see where this holiday has its roots and how the church has tried and sometimes failed to make pagan practices into a Christian rituals.