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October 31 brings to the United States and parts of Western Europe one of the most bizarre and incomprehensible of holidays – the Pagan ritual known as Halloween.
I have long wondered why the people in the West – societies ostensibly based on Judeo-Christian principles – celebrate a festival that likely traces its ancestry directly to pre-Christian, Pagan rituals of the ancient Celts of Ireland.
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With its focus on ghosts, witches, warlocks, goblins, skulls, horror, death, and the supernatural etc., Halloween would appear to be almost completely incompatible with the tenets of Christianity.
Yet, Halloween remains a wildly popular holiday.
Perhaps this reflects the fact that many ancient rituals have miraculously survived into the modern world (even if many people who enjoy Halloween are oblivious to its pagan/Druid origins).
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Even the holiest events of the Christian calendar -- Easter (bunny rabbits, colored eggs) and Christmas (trees, Santa Claus) -- have retained elements of pre-Christian, Pagan conventions.
Some scholars believe that Halloween originated with “Samhain,” the most important festival of the Celts of ancient Ireland. October 31-November 1 coincided with the passing of one year to the next and the commencement of another long, hard, bleak winter.
These ancient peoples feasted and also believed strongly they could communicate with their deceased forebears. To show their respect for their ancestors, they would make offerings and sacrifice animals. Crucially, to ward off evil spirits, these hardy folk would wear frightful masks -- which may link directly to the practice of trick-or-treat by children today in a vastly different world.
In subsequent centuries, when Christian missionaries -- including the legendary St. Patrick -- arrived in Ireland and sought to convert the local population, they discovered they could not eliminate the deeply-ingrained Pagan beliefs – so they relented and accommodated some of the older pre-monotheistic practices within the context of the new faith.
Moreover, many of the pagan holy days were arbitrarily (and conveniently) reconstituted as “Christian” holidays – with a fairly seamless transformation.
Pope Gregory the First of the sixth century AD was particularly adept at this.
Still, the Christian clergy regarded the old pagan belief systems as “evil” and “demonic.”
So, among other things, they designated November 1st (the day after Halloween) as “All Saints Day” – to set aside for the veneration of all Christian saints, as a way to supersede the pagan rituals (which, of course, did not completely happen to their liking).
However, Rosalie Beck, associate professor of religion at Baylor University in Waco, Tex., told International Business Times that all agricultural societies have celebrated important junctures in the year -- harvests, plantings, solstices, the equinox, etc. She also does not buy the notion that Halloween necessarily came directly from Samhain.
“I think the real influence for the creation of Halloween comes from a broader-based agricultural cycle shared by all rural peoples in ancient Europe,” she said.
Beck added that: “As the veneration of saints became an important part of medieval Christian spirituality, some local festivals were ‘baptized’ into the faith to celebrate the triumph of Christianity over the evils of the world. All Hallows Eve [Halloween] traditionally was a time of evil in the world. A day of respite always follows a day of tension and fear; so, the church developed All Saints Day [All Hallows Day] to affirm the superiority of Christianity over all pagan rituals and beliefs. Halloween and All Saints Day are two sides of one coin.”
