Is Halloween a Pagan Holiday or a Catholic One?
Question:
Is Halloween a pagan holiday or a Catholic one?
Answer:
The short answer: nowadays, a little bit of both. But it wasn’t always that way. Halloween and All Saints’ Day are closely connected. In the 800s, the Catholic Church began celebrating All Saints’ Day. It was originally called All Hallow’s Day or Hallowmas. The celebration began early on All Hallows’ Eve. But if Halloween is really about the saints in all their victorious glory, where do we get haunted houses, costumes, and pranks?
All Saints’ Day became associated with the other deceased rather quickly. November 2nd is All Souls Day, where we pray for the souls in purgatory. Throughout the European world, especially with the Celtic and Germanic peoples, the dead were honored in the autumn months. The Celtic pagan celebration of Samhain had its own folk rituals and occurred around the same time as these Catholic feast days.
Within the last few hundred years, this included dressing in disguise and going door to door, asking for food in exchange for a rhyme or poem. Some people masqueraded as “dark” spirits and pulled pranks on others. Today’s celebration of Halloween tends to take on these later practices, rather than the original meaning of celebrating the saints. But remember … this feast was Catholic first!
©LPi