I recently heard a marketing expert explain how Halloween is one of the biggest consumer holidays of the calendar year. Many people love this day and decorate for it a month or more in advance of Oct. 31. In fact, it seems that, apart from Christmas, Americans spend more money on Halloween, tricks and treats, decorations and costumes, than any other holiday. Why this fascination with zombies (bodies without souls), ghosts (souls without bodies), tombstones, witches, wizards, monsters, animated pumpkins and scarecrows? Some sociologists allege that the reason for America’s growing fascination with the macabre, the occult and the dead is rooted in the erroneous notion that Halloween is a secular holiday. It is divorced from anything to do with family life, race, creed or sexual orientation.
Nothing could be further from the truth, at least the part that asserts Halloween is a purely secular holiday. Perhaps in some circles, this is true but not the origins of Halloween, which takes us back more than 2,000 years ago to a tribe called the “Celts” that inhabited all of Ireland, most of the British Isles and part of France. The Celts celebrated the beginning of the new year on Nov. 1. This day symbolized the end of summer and the onset of winter. It was the time of the harvest. Celts believed that on New Year’s Eve, Oct. 31, the ghosts of the dead could roam the land from sundown on Oct. 31 until sunrise on Nov. 1. On Samhain, as this night was called, it was believed that the ghosts of the dead would rise from their graves, cause pranks and possibly ruin the harvest. To ward off these annoying spirits, the Celts wore costumes, usually made of animal heads and skins. They built a bonfire and paraded around the cemeteries of their dead until sunrise on Nov. 1.
By the year 800, the land of the Celts was now Christian. Pope Boniface IV took the pagan New Year feast of Nov. 1 and gave it a new name and a sacred meaning as the Feast of All the Saints or “All Hallows,” as it was called in Ireland. This was a time to honor all the saints and angels. The night before, Oct. 31, formerly the pagan feast of Samhain was now known as “All Hallows Eve” and eventually, “Halloween.”
Two hundred years later, that Nov. 2 was set aside as All Souls Day, a time to honor the dead. It was celebrated almost like the pagan feast of Samhain, with big bonfires and parades, but now the people would no longer wear costumes made of animal heads and skins; rather, superstitious that the ghosts of their dead could still cause trouble for the living, they now dressed as saints and angels. Like their pagan predecessors, the Celts, they still built a huge bonfire to show light was stronger than darkness and, like the Celts, they would parade through the cemeteries at night on Halloween, dressed as saints and angels. Why? They believed that if any evil spirits were lurking around the resting place of their deceased loved ones, on the night of Oct. 31, one look at these saints and angels, honored on Nov. 1, would scare off these un-welcomed intruders — and the living could now prepare to honor their dead without fear on Nov. 2.
What do the triduum of Halloween, All Saints and All Souls have in common? All the characters in each of these days are all God’s children!
Father Comandini is managing editor of The Catholic Spirit.