Halloween for Catholics

Bulletin Column for October 27, 2019 – Can a Catholic Celebrate Halloween?

            A couple days from now, ghosts and goblins will haunt our city streets in search of candy. Ordinary kids will transform into policemen and superheroes, witches and sports stars. Halloween is upon us (or, if you look at the department stores, it has been upon us since mid-July!) – and it’s worth examining the question: Can a Catholic celebrate Halloween?

            Often I have heard that Halloween stems from a Catholic holiday (being the evening of All Saints Day, it was often called All Hallow’s Eve, or Hallow-e’en). And while this is true, the backstory is a bit more complicated than that.

            Our ancestors were much more in-touch with the natural rhythms of the world and the skies than we are (I guess without Netflix there’s not much else to do at night…). Many of our pagan ancestors – particularly the Gaelic pagans of Ireland – held great feasts at the turning of the seasons. But not only did they celebrate feasts when the seasons changed – they also had half-season feasts (called “quarter days”) which were the exact midpoints between two seasons. November 1 happens to be around the midpoint between the beginning of Fall and the beginning of Winter.

            For the ancient Gaels, the night of October 31-November 1 was a major harvest festival called “Samhain”. Samhain celebrated the end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold season that would lead up to the shortest day of the year (December 21^st). On Samhain, the Gaels believed that the barrier between the afterlife and this earth was the thinnest, allowing souls to pass from the afterlife to visit relatives and friends here. Not all of these souls were benign – these spirits (called “Aos Si” in Gaelic) could be malicious and all sorts of rituals were devised to prevent harm on this night. Many of the Samhain rituals involved divination (seeking to contact the “other side” or telling of the future – grave sins against the First Commandment!).

            Ironically, these festivals were often held in conjunction with Christianity! These pagan remnants remained ingrained in the common folk even after they had accepted Christ. In fact, it was a rather frequent occurrence for the Church to adopt a pagan festival and “baptize” it – for example, the first celebration of All Saints was actually instituted by Pope Boniface IV in 609, when he rededicated the pagan Pantheon (the temple to all the gods) as the Church of St. Mary and All Saints. The date he chose for the re-dedication was May 13, which was the same date as the Roman pagan festival of Lemuria which was a festival of the dead. So, the Church has often taken pagan traditions and reoriented them so that they pointed to Christ.

            And this is what was done with Samhain. It was in 835 that Pope Gregory IV named November 1 as the Feast of All Saints, at the behest of Irish missionaries who needed to baptize the festival of Samhain. Samhain was still celebrated by the locals, however, who would practice divination on the evening of October 31 and then attend Mass on November 1 (some habits are hard to break, I guess!).

            Now, of course, Halloween bears only a nominal resemblance to the pagan festival of Samhain. Trick-or-treating was originally a Samhain-Christian hybrid custom of “souling”: poor children going from door-to-door begging for a “soul cake” (a little loaf with a cross on top) which would be given to them in exchange for prayers for the donor’s family’s deceased relatives. When out “souling”, children would take lanterns made from hollowed-out gourds and turnips – a predecessor of our Jack-O-Lanterns. The custom of dressing up came from both a pagan and Christian origin. The pagan origin: as Samhain was believed to be the day that souls wandered the earth after death, people would disguise themselves so that no soul with a vendetta could recognize them and wreak vengeance against them. The Christian origin: Christian churches too poor to afford relics for All Saints Day would have children dress up as saints instead, and they would process through the town.

            So, yes, Christians can celebrate Halloween, knowing that many of the traditions do have Catholic roots!

            But…here comes the truly frightening part – Samhain is still celebrated by neopagans and Wiccans as one of their highest holy days. Their celebrations vary by group, from a reconstructed Celtic ceremony to something truly diabolical. So stay away from anything that remotely looks neo-pagan or Wiccan!

            The other caveat is that at times, Halloween can make glorify death and the occult. There is, in many cultures, a theme of memento mori – remember your death – and so skulls and skeletons can be very Christian themes. But it can be overdone – we must remember the One Who conquered death! And although it’s probably harmless to dress up in a witch’s hat and walk around with a broomstick, it is important to emphasize that the occult is very real – demons and witches and spells are actual realities which should not be toyed around with in real life.

            Other than that, Halloween is a harmless celebration for Catholics. I certainly enjoyed it every year while growing up. Just avoid the paganism and the occult, and go easy on the gross-out death stuff. And give me all of your Almond Joys. And we will all have a happy Halloween!