We’ve grown to think of our American experience of Halloween—with its focus on horror themes, costumes, candy, and decorations—as normative. In fact, it’s a product of the 20th-century media-saturated, consumer-oriented appropriation of Catholic feasts for mass consumption, which strips things of their true meaning. Like secular Christmas and Easter, it’s a hollowed-out thing that emphasizes pleasure while downplaying devotion.
Yet tantalizing hints of its genuine origins remain, and the Catholic calendar continues to focus doggedly on its real meaning.
Allhallowtide is actually a kind of triduum: three days of commemoration that includes All Hallows Eve (October 31, shortened Hallowe’en), All Saints Day (All Hallows Day, November 1), and All Souls Day (November 2). As with other major feasts, the celebration of All Saints’ Day begins on the vigil, which is why secular culture celebrates Halloween on the night of October 31st, but then does nothing on the actual feast days that follow.
Halloween is a Christian holiday. Some Celtic neo-pagans and fundamentalist Christians claim the Church simply took over the date for a pagan festival of the dead and all its trappings. False. The current dates fall on a harvest festival called Samhain by the Celts, but there is no indication that Samhain was a festival of the dead. It simply marked the end of the harvest season. Festival days were often regarded as liminal time in which the veil between the material and spiritual worlds is considered thinner, but elaborating this into a festival of the dead on par with those found in other ancient pagan belief systems is more than the textual evidence can support. Since we have no pre-Christian records of its observation, claims about its observation are speculative.
Bede calls November Blod-monath (Blood Month), which sounds promising. However, the real meaning is mundane: it was the time surplus livestock were slaughtered to save fodder for the long winter. Otherwise, Bede attaches no significance to the season.
There is, however, a connection to pagan practices found deeper in history.
References to a feast of All Saints are found in the 4th century in St. Ephrem the Syrian and Chrysostom, with the latter assigning it to the first Sunday after Pentecost. The Feast of All Saints was created by Pope Boniface IV to mark the consecration of the Roman Pantheon, which had been a temple for “all gods.” The Emperor Phocas gave the temple to the Church, and Boniface had it reconsecrated as St. Mary and the Martyrs on May 12th or 13th in 609. The calendar was filling up with feast days for saints at such a rate that it could never hold them all. Furthermore, there were saints who could not be known by name. All Saints was created to honor them and originally celebrated on May 13th.
The date for the new feast fell near that for the ancient Roman festival of Lemuria. This festival was an elaborate three-day ritual to propitiate the spirits. On the final night the head of the household went outside, unshod and holding his hand in the shape of the evil eye (forefinger and pinky extended), washed his hands, and threw black beans over his shoulder, without ever looking back at the ghosts no doubt nipping at heels, while saying (nine times), “With these I redeem myself and mine.” After a final ablution and loud noise to drive away the spirits, he dismissed the ghosts with the phrase “Manes exit paterni” (“Leave, ghosts of my fathers!”), also repeated nine times. The beans recall a bit of vampire folklore: throwing beans or rice on the ground will end a vampire’s pursuit, since they must stop to collect and count them all for reasons never adequately explained.
The feast of All Saints was moved to November 1st in the 8th century by Gregory III to coincide with the consecration of a new chapel in St. Peter’s dedicated to all the saints. A century later, Gregory IV officially added this date to the calendar. It’s certainly possible the date was chosen to “baptize” the harvest festival of an obscure group of Celtic pagans from the backwaters of the empire, but Jacobus de Voragine has a more logical explanation for the shift: “supplies were ample after the harvest and the vintage was finished.”
In other words, this was a traditional date of harvest festivals throughout Europe, which made it a good time to party. The church usually took these moments, embedded deeply in folk culture, and kept their trappings while shifting their focus. The goal was to let people continue their revels, moderate their sensual excesses, and raise their vision to that which is above. Also, Rome in May isn’t a great place for large numbers of people to gather, and the festival was beginning to attract significant numbers of pilgrims.
As for All Souls Day, St. Odilo added a memorial for all the faithful departed (Omnium fidelium defunctorum memoria or commemoratio) to the annual calendar of the Benedictines of Cluny and its associated monasteries in 998, building on an earlier practice of praying for them during Whitsuntide. The practice—which included fasting, almsgiving, and masses for the dead—spread to the other Benedictine houses and was adopted by individual dioceses. The practice is built on the ancient tradition of offering prayers for the dead.
For example, in “On Monogamy,” Tertullian writes of a widow: “Indeed, she prays for his soul, and requests refreshment for him meanwhile, and fellowship (with him) in the first resurrection; and she offers (her sacrifice) on the anniversaries of his falling asleep.” These prayers and offerings, following tradition, were indicated for the anniversary of a person’s death. All Souls Day gathered them to a single day. It first starts appearing in the Ordines Romani (volumes of liturgical rubrics) in the 14th century, indicating its spread to the wider Church.
From the Middle Ages until its suppression during the Reformation, the days were marked in several ways in England, to take one example. Most prominently, this included much ringing of bells: joyful on October 31st, mournful on November 2nd, until Queen Elizabeth I declared an end to “the superstitious ringing of bells at Allhallowtide, and at All Saints Day.” She may have silenced the bells, but prayers for the dead were harder to drive out, and they continued—discretely—into the 19th century, with people gathering in open fields to pray by torchlight.
This brings us to another part of the festivities: fire. This has been artificially linked to Beltane fires, which were bonfires set in May, allegedly to protect livestock from witches. (Many of these connections, and indeed much writing on folklore, are highly speculative.) The fires called to mind the fires of purgatory, which cleansed the souls of the dead who were being recalled by their loved ones on the feast. And, frankly, bonfires in November are just not that uncommon. The weather is cold, and there is often detritus to burn off.
Bells were rung, masses said, candles lit, and prayers and alms offered all for a single purpose: seeing the dead through purgatory and into heaven. Thus, they ran afoul of the reformers who insisted purgatory was merely a Romish lie.
In early tradition, “soul cakes” were baked and distributed, at first probably just to the poor, but eventually to the entire community in some places. House-visiting customs evolved around the distribution of these cakes, including a little bit of chanted doggerel recorded by antiquarian John Aubgry in 1686:
A soul-cake, a soul-cake
Have mercy on all Christians for a soul-cake.
And Shakespeare notes the practice in Two Gentleman of Verona, where Speed says of Valentine that he is “puling like a beggar at Hallowmas.” In the mid-19th century, one folklore collection recorded that children would go begging for rewards and sang a little song:
I hope you will prove kind with your apples and strong beer
And we’ll come no more a’souling until this time next year.One for Peter, one for Paul
One for Him as made us all.Up with your kettles, and down with your pans
Give us a sou’cake and we will be gone
The cakes were a kind of alms, and thus also helped the souls in purgatory. The house-visiting, called “souling” in England, has obvious echoes with today’s trick-or-treating. The practice seems to have vanished in most places in England in the 19th century, only to come back to life in the 1980s under the influence of American-style Halloween.
Costumes are not a huge part of the surviving reports, but there would have been mumming as part of the festivities, along with games. In some areas, superstitions took hold involving divinations at this time of year. A girl could learn who she would marry by paring an apple and throwing the peel over her left shoulder. The shape formed by the peel was supposed to be the initial of her future husband.
There’s no reason for contemporary Catholics to shed the secular trappings of a modern Halloween, although certainly the more occult aspects should be shunned. Rather, we must simply remember its original purpose as well, and that is to honor our dead: those who are surely in heaven, and those who are on their way, with prayers, offerings, and masses.
(Editor’s note: This essay was published originally on October 24, 2018.)
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I’m still a little skeptical about the benignity of joining in fully with what has become a monthlong celebration of ugliness and fright. In my childhood it was one evening but now it begins October 1 and many people decorate as much and as long as they do for Christmas. Maybe its just commercial, but that the change coincides with so much cultural decay and death should give us pause.
Yes; it has gotten uglier and uglier. And it used to be a children’s thing chiefly, but now that we have adults who never want to grow up it’s overdone.
“There’s no reason for contemporary Catholics to shed the secular trappings of a modern Halloween…” After a long and informative article that began with referring to the holiday as “media-saturated consumer-oriented appropriation of Catholic feasts” its conclusion was a bit abrupt and disappointing as it offered no reasons as to why we should just carry on celebrating secular Halloween. The author might have considered coordinating his opening toward another theme: an examination as to why so many Catholic elementary schools still celebrate secular Halloween as a prelude to All Saints and All Souls; and an answer as to why such schools should not shed anything that might be a “trapping” (outward sign of secularism) when they are about to celebrate a holy sacrament (an interior reception of grace).
The 1921 Army-Navy Hymnal contained a hymn “Pray for the Dead”, which until now was unavailable for listening. It is now available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3V5gYRSpUI
What!!!!!!!!!! I cannot believe this was written and then presented….:
There’s no reason for contemporary Catholics to shed the secular trappings of a modern Halloween, although certainly the more occult aspects should be shunned. Rather, we must simply remember its original purpose as well, and that is to honor our dead: those who are surely in heaven, and those who are on their way, with prayers, offerings, and masses.
Of course the worldly/secular should be set aside for All Saints Eve so that we are in but not of the world/secular, and ALL parts of the occult ARE to be shunned – for they are from satan and return to satan!
May the Saints and Angels bring Jesus to be all in all.
I agree with you! Growing up in a Catholic household we celebrated Halloween with trick or treating and then attended Mass the next 2 days to pray to the Saints and then to honor our beloved Dead. It was never about the occult or evil.
I’m not sure I agree with the conclusions of the author but what he describes in this article as costumary practise is indeed my experience growing up in Portugal. On All Saint’s Day after Mass (in the morning) children go from door to door asking for sweets (traditional cakes – the portuguese version of soul cakes – and modern day sweets) and the parents, in some villages go along to drink abafado (a drink made only this time of year – the vintage if you will). Then there is usually a family lunch. The next day, All Souls, there is Mass in the evening with a candle lit procession to the cemetery, everyone decorates the graves with flowers and candles. This practise has wained in some parts of the country, but is very much alive where I’m from. This is my favorite timeof year after Christmas.
How about the history of the phrase”trick or treat”? I can’t believe Catholics still participate in the secular Halloween. Even the Vaticans late exorcist, Fr. Gabriel Amorth, warned against it.
C.S. Lewis has an interesting passage in one of his letters to children (from 16 January 1954): “Where I grew up the great thing was Halloween (eve of All Saints’ Day). There was always a slightly eerie, spooky feeling mixed with games, events, and various kinds of fortune telling – not a good night on which to walk through a churchyard. (Tho’ in fact Irish people, believing in both, are much more afraid of fairies than of ghosts).” He grew up in Belfast, in the early years of the Twentieth century, in the (Anglican) Church of Ireland. Presumably that keen enjoyment, with “a slightly eerie, spooky feeling mixed” in, would not have been something exclusive to C of I folk. At around that same time, G.K. Chesterton in his introduction to the 1907 Everyman’s Library collection of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Books writes, “On Christmas Eve one may talk about ghosts as long as they are turnip ghosts.” (I see online quotations of a definition from the Oxford English Dictionary of a ‘turnip ghost’ as “a simulated ghost or apparition of which the head is formed of a turnip-lantern”.) What times and seasons have traditionally been ones of enjoyment of “eerie, spooky” lore among Catholics – an enjoyment which survived the ‘Reformation’ in various places?
This is a blatant lie.
I have always experienced Catholics as intellectuals who understand what came before Christianity and feel no need to be revisionary in their tales. This is a bit Orwellian to be honest.
Witches and spooks and ghosts aren’t Christian. For Catholics, souls don’t hang around talking about the weather or rattling chains. In its most benign form, Halloween is imagination ad superstition. In Catholic countries, it’s just a recent import from the United States, like Coca Cola – in those countries practically nobody makes the connection between Halloween and the observances around All Souls Day, which are still very much practiced. As in the U.S., Halloween has become let-your-hair-down time for all assortments of occultists and satanists; their season to get out and mix it with the children of people who should know better.
Ghosts? If they are souls in Purgatory asking for prayers it is a Christian thing.
The demonic, no that’s something else.
No ghost in the Halloween cult asks for prayers. They are religiously agnostic entities, and are understood and portrayed as such by the practitioners of the “event”. Children are taught this understanding of ghosts as spooks who inhabit this world whereas, for Catholics, the souls of the dead are not concerned with this world, and their apparitions to ask for prayers are a special grace from God that is far rarer than Marian apparitions. All the pagan religions understand spooks, gods, demons, goblins etc., as superhuman entities that are integrally part of an enchanted secular world, and were the object of cults purely for secular benefit, as Saint Thomas points out in De regimine principum. This is why Confucianism can never be considered a religion in the true sense. Christianity is the rejection of the enchantment of this world.
I don’t believe that souls in Purgatory asking for prayers are a more rare thing than Marian apparitions but it’s certainly something we need discernment about and counsel from our priests.
I agree. Quite aside from dramatic apparitions, though, both the Blessed Virgin and souls in Purgatory seem to remind us of their existence and/or wishes through meaningful “coincidences”, significant dreams, and other events that fall far below the standard necessary to certify a miracle yet, to the person on the receiving end, convey messages that are helpful. Maybe the difference is that an explicit miracle, like St. Juan Diego’s tilma, is meant to affect millions, whereas mere synchronicity is meant to affect only one person, or at most a few. It should be obvious that discernment is just as necessary in these cases as in the case of an apparition. I have experienced at least 3 such events myself, 2 of which pushed me to stop delaying my entry into the Catholic Church and 1 of which came when I was beginning to despair of the futility of praying for a deceased family member.
For that matter, I have read enough accounts from exorcists to know that some believe that the living have been possessed not only by demons, but by the souls of the damned; others believe this does not happen. If that cannot be ruled out, it seems likely that neither can appearances of souls of the damned be ruled out, though that might be much more rare. I suspect that we would do well to adopt the position of Monsignor Maxwell in A MIRROR OF SHALOTT, by Msgr. R. H. Benson (https://archive.org/details/mirrorofshalottb00bens): that we should not pretend to know what we do not know, among which are all of the reasons for which the unseen world is briefly seen.
Mrs Cracker: ” don’t believe that souls in Purgatory asking for prayers are a more rare thing than Marian apparitions but it’s certainly something we need discernment about and counsel from our priests. ” In my late life journey through Catholicism I was taught that souls in purgatory cannot pray for themselves but only for others. That is why I pray for the repose of the souls of my known and unknown ancestors as well as those I knew if this life who have past and I pray for all the souls in purgatory especially those of my ancestors and those who have no one to pray for them and I thank the souls in purgatory for praying for me.” I never assume to know who any one of them are as it is not mine or our’s to know, only God. Let them pray for us and let us pray for them. We must help one another always.
@Mary McCurry — One of the “Darby O’Gill” stories (which does not actually involve Darby himself) concerns a drunk man who falls asleep in the ruins of a monastery that was abandoned when the plague killed off all the monks and most of the nearby population. The ruins were haunted by both the abbot and his monks and the local lord and his retainers, because they had wronged each other, but no living person was left to pray for them. The man wakes up to see the procession and hear the ghosts praying for mercy, but the story makes exactly your point: the living can pray for the living, the living can pray for the dead, and the dead can pray for the living, but the dead cannot pray for the dead, or at least their prayers are not heard. The man is moved to pity, and so he joins in praying, “Lord, hear our prayer.” AT THAT MOMENT their prayer is heard, and their lament becomes a Te Deum; they are freed from Purgatory.
Yes, it’s just a work of fiction, but it is a beautiful and thought-provoking work of fiction.
Thank you Miss Mary. I pray for my departed family and ancestors, too. Having Masses said is important also. Even for our family members who weren’t Catholic.
It’s about time Catholics should stop making excuses for Halloween.
It has no spiritual or esthetic value. It is tacky, tasteless and vulgar.
So, just like Independence Day — or, for that matter, like St. Valentine’s Day (as actually observed), St. Patrick’s Day (as actually observed), Mardi Gras, and New Year’s Eve. Christmas at least has a “Keep Christ in Christmas” campaign.
It is true that Independence Day has minimal spiritual value and that it can easily degenerate into jingoism and militarism. That doesn’t make it worthless, though; it still has value, as long as we take care not to give in to base temptations. And so it is with many things, including Halloween.
It’s going to depend upon what we are celebrating and why. All Hallows Eve is Christian and legit. Celebrating the occult is not.
The teaching is, souls in Purgatory can not themselves merit any more than where they have reached. They suffer their “fire of purification” but their sufferings can be alleviated and their time in the detention shortened.
Dressing up and trick’o’treating and such aren’t liturgical acts, sacrifice or prayer no matter the amount of time spent or the elaboration of fun or mottling of deviancy.