Halloween history: From hauntings to Hallows

By Patricia Kasten
Compass Associate Editor

Witches, toads and souls of the dead. Definitely Halloween stuff.

We know that Halloween dates back to pagan harvest celebrations, the end of the year and feasts of the dead. But did you know that All Saints Day and All Souls Day have some pagan roots too? And many of the notions we now associate with Halloween rose out of practices tied to All Souls Day, Nov. 2?

All Saints Day

Let's start with All Saints Day.

A feast day commemorating the saints goes far back into Christian history. It arose from feasts honoring martyrs, the first formally acknowledged saints. Early Christian churches were often built over the tombs of martyrs. For a while, the first Sunday after Pentecost was a preferred day for a feast honoring all the saints. However, in 610 A.D., that changed.

That year, Pope Boniface IV gained possession of the Roman Pantheon and converted it into a Christian church. The Pantheon - with its architecturally famous open dome - was originally built (and rebuilt in 125 A.D.) to honor the vast array of Roman deities. When Pope Boniface received the Pantheon from the Byzantine Emperor Phocas, he followed an already common tradition of rededicating pagan temples for Christian use. The pope dedicated the Pantheon to Mary and the growing pantheon of Christian martyrs.

The day of the new church's dedication was May 13, 610. The date was carefully chosen. In imperial Rome, May 9, 10 and 13 were the days of Lemuria, a festival to appease the gods. So not only did Pope Boniface re-engineer a temple into a church, he rearranged a pagan holiday into a feast honoring the saints.

The May 13 date for All Saints Day continued until the time of Pope Gregory III (731-41). Pope Gregory had to deal with iconoclasts, who opposed all religious icons and destroyed many images of Christ and the saints. Pope Gregory finally excommunicated them. And, perhaps to make the message plain, he dedicated a chapel in St. Peter's Basilica to "all the saints" on Nov. 1.The feast day's date has stuck ever since.

All Hallows Eve

Gregory III doesn't have the only claim to setting the Nov. 1 date. That also goes to Irish monks and grew out of Celtic traditions. In the Celtic calendar, Nov. 1 was the start of winter. The druidic celebration of Samhain fell on the night before because that was when Samhain, the Lord of the Dead, was believed to call together all the souls of wicked people who had died during the past year. (A stunning visual of this can be seen in the Disney's Fantasia, set to the music of Modest Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain.")

Again the tactic of converting pagan celebrations to Christian use came into play. Rather than try to abolish Samhain, the monks set up their own festival celebration of All Saints - on Nov. 1 - and began to co-opt the celebrations of the night before, such as all-night bonfires. The vigil of All Saints Day became known as All Hallows Eve, eventually shortened to "Halloween."

Also, those missionary monks no doubt realized - at a time like the dark night of Samhain - that the saints provided images of light. As Pope John Paul said in his encyclical on the laity, "The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church's history."

All Souls Day

All Souls Day follows All Saints Day and is a time to pray for the souls in purgatory. It dates to at least the fifth century, when a day of prayer for the dead was held on the Monday after Pentecost. St. Odilo (962-1049) gets credit for moving the feast to its placement after All Saints Day, at least for the monks in the abbeys of his order, the Cluniacs. Their practice spread, as the monks traveled - most especially into the British Isles. There they met the traditions of the Samhain harvest festivals.

Some of those traditions were eventually moved to the feast of All Hallows, and then to our secular beliefs about Halloween. First, since Nov. 1 ended the growing season and began the druidic New Year, it was marked by large harvest festivals, complete with feasts, pumpkins and scarecrows made from straw, corn husks and other harvest leftovers.

Also, people believed that, at the turning of the year, the souls of the dead - especially the recent dead - could roam free and return to haunt those who had wronged them in life. These souls could take many forms, but preferred witches and toads. People hoped to placate these angry souls by leaving gifts for them, especially gifts of food.

In other words, angry souls could be prevented from playing tricks by offering treats.

As Christians, we don't believe in malevolent souls, but we do believe that the souls of the faithful departed are connected to us through the Communion of Saints. The church teaches that purgatory is an event that happens to many souls after earthly death. By praying for those souls at any time - but especially on All Souls Day and in November, the month of All Souls - we can help them during that experience of purgation to more quickly gain the full joys of eternal union with God.

That's the best treat for any soul.