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The Halloween season will soon be upon us. Stores will sell orange and black greeting cards;
costumes and masks. Children will dress up as witches, ghosts, and vampires. Parents will carve
pumpkins into grotesque configurations. Teens will join in the holiday spirit by engaging in pranks
ranging from window-soaping to malicious destruction o[property. Many people will participate in
Halloween customs, but few will know why they did. What are the origins of these strange customs?
And shouldyou as a Christian take part in them?
HALIOWEEN:
WHERE DOES ITC0\1E FROM?
by
Wayne S. Antion
,
_ alloween, "Eve of All
Hallows," a quasi-Christian hooday, has become well-entrenched
in
American
and English tradition.
But
is
it a holiday-or "holy day"-Christians should
keep? Is it merely a harmless custom, or should its patently pagan origins warn us
away from its observance? Halloween is an ancient tradition with complex origins.
The customs of this evening began in northern and western Europe with the Celtic people. Long
before Christianity was taught there, the Celts worsh iped nature and a variety of gods according to
the tenets of the Druid religion.
Celtic worship (Druidism) was
"solar"- that
is,
all its chief festivals
related to points in the sun's
progress. Four main times were im–
portant: winter and summer sol–
stices and spring and autumn
equinoxes. Equinoxes were com–
memorated as Beltane on May 1,
and Samhain (pronounced
sowin)
on October 31.
Samhain, "Summer's End," des–
ignated both a time of year and the
name of the Lord of Death. When
the sun's power waned, when har-
14
vest was over, dying and death pre–
vailed in nature and the Celts felt
that the strength of the gods of
darkness, winter and the under–
world grew great. The day Samhain
also marked the end of the Celtic
year, and the new year began on
November l.
The Druids observed Samhain
(Halloween) with many customs
which are stiU practiced today: for
instance, lighting massive bonfires
and telling of mysterious sights and
sounds they'd seen and heard.
Today's society continues this tradi-
tion by telling Halloween ghost sto–
ríes. Significantly. in such stories we
still encounter the pagan beliefs that
the souls of good people enter other
human beings at death: that the
souls of evil people enter the bodies
of animals; that cats are sacred ; and
that cats are human beings who
have been punished for evil deeds.
Even the modero jack-o'- lantern
is rerniniscent of the legend of a
penny-pinching man named Jack
who was supposedly barred from
heaven beca use of his stinginess and
barred from hell because he played
The
PLAIN TRUTH October-November 1978