The idea that all the traditional holidays and festivals of the year are “pagan” in origin and were simply “stolen by the Church” is one that has permeated popular culture and is repeated without question in newspaper, magazine and online articles. It is perhaps not surprising that harried journalists and underpaid online content writers are uncritical about these claims, but it is more strange that prominent atheists are as well, given they are meant to be sceptics who check their facts and “question everything”. Unfortunately, many anti-theistic polemicists cannot resist a chance to get in a jab at any aspect of Christianity being “really pagan”, so every October we see supposed rationalists parroting pseudo history about the “pagan origins of Halloween”, with no sign of any fact-checking, let alone engagement with scholarship. In fact, the claim that Halloween is “pagan” is largely a nineteenth century myth.

We see it every year in the lead up to Easter, to Christmas and to Halloween: articles assuring us that these festivals are “pagan” in origin. Easter, we are told, was really a pagan fertility festival of a goddess (Eostre, or maybe Ishtar) whose feast day and symbols of bunnies and eggs were co-opted by Christianity, despite this being almost complete nonsense. Similarly, we are told annually that Christmas is actually the ancient pagan festival of Saturnalia, which also had feasting, gift-giving and decorations, despite this also being almost entirely wrong. It is hardly surprising, therfore, that the most obviously pagan-seeming festival of the year – Halloween – is also presented as a wholly “pagan” enterprise, which had once again been stolen by Christians and given a superficial make-over. After all, what could a festival that focuses on spirits and spooks, demons and the dark and tricks and pranks have to do with Christianity? All those supernatural elements, spooky costumes and trick and treating must surely have a pre-Christian origin.

So every October we see a plethora of articles with titles like “What’s the Real History of Halloween—and Why Do We Celebrate It on October 31?” or “The Pagan Origins of Halloween” all telling us much the same thing: Halloween may be the evening before All Saints Day, but it falls on this date because it was originally the pagan Celtic festival of Samhain, and all the spooky associations that it has come from this pagan festival of the dead. Trick or treating, Jack-o’-lanterns, dressing in costumes associated with the supernatural – all these things, we are assured, are pagan in origin and date back to pre-Christian times.

So it is not surprising that this commonly held idea, one that is reinforced every year, is accepted without question by many atheists. And, therefore, some of them use this “fact” to taunt Christians for celebrating what is actually a “pagan” festival. Unfortunately some of these atheists are the same ones who preach to others about checking their facts, paying attention to scholarship and researching evidence for claims. But when it comes to the alleged “pagan” origins of various festival days, they do not manage to do any of these things. They simply accept the standard claims because … it suits them to do so. So the Christian radio host who turned atheist activist, Seth Andrews, assured his 328,000 YouTube followers last December that Christmas is originally “pagan”, stumbling from one historical howler to the next in the process. Andrews also mentioned Halloween in passing during this extended mangling of history. Writing of this imaginary co-opting of Saturnalia by Christians, Andrews tells his listeners:

Now, this is a lot like what the Catholic Church did with Halloween. Halloween was essentially a Celtic tradition involving the druid priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks and treats – very pagan. And the Church was coming in going “Well, we can’t have all this paganism, but people sure like the holiday’, so the Catholic Church sort of redressed it and made it All Saints Day, All Saints Eve or Halloween, changed the date, stamped a brand of ownership on it and said “Aha! Now we, the Catholic Church, own the holiday!’ Christianity did much of the same thing with the festival of Saturnalia in the month of December.

Seth Andrews, “What Christians (Probably) Don’t Know About Christmas”, 35.20 – 36.02 mins)

These ideas are far from exclusive to atheist activists like Andrews. Modern neo-pagans propagate them with gusto as well, “reclaiming” their supposedly pagan holiday from any association with Christianity. In 1993 the British Pagan Federation for Halloween issued a pamphlet making a series of emphatic claims about the origins and significance of the festival:

Hallowe’en developed from the Celtic feast of Samhain (pronounced ‘sow-in’), which marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter. For the Celts, Samhain was the beginning of the year and the cycle of the seasons. …. Samhain was a time of change and transformation where both the past and the present met with the uncertain tides of the future yet to come. It was a time for magic and divination, when Druids and Soothsayers would forecast the events of the coming year. …. When Christianity became established in Britain, the Pagan Goddesses and Gods were said to have fallen under the rule of all the saints. All Hallows Day (November 1st), now known as ‘All Saints Day’, celebrates this take over. The old Pagan traditions, however, were not eradicated and lived on in the guise of Hallowe’en—the eve of All Hallows Day or All Saints Day.

(quoted in Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, Oxford, 1996, Ch. 35)

And here the neo-pagans in turn were responding to evangelical Christians, who have long attacked any celebration of Halloween as “pagan” and “Satanic”. Most moderate Christians generally regard Halloween as a bit of harmless fun, but the less fun end of Christianity regards it with great suspicion, precisely because of its supposed “pagan” origins and articles aimed at fundamentalist audiences like “What is Halloween and Should Christians Celebrate It?” answer the question with a firm “no”. Though few take this to the gloriously bonkers heights of the late Jack T. Chick‘s cartoon tracts on the subject, which Christians were encouraged to leave out for (no doubt disappointed) trick or treaters.

So atheist activists, neo-pagans and evangelical Christians are all, oddly, in complete agreement: Halloween is pagan in origin and both the date and the traditions around it derive from a druidic, Celtic festival. This strange consensus is made even more ironic by the fact that these ideas are almost entirely wrong.

The Christian Origins of Halloween

The name “Halloween” (or “Hallowe’en”) is a traditional contracted form of “All Hallows Eve”. This in turn is a reference to the feast of All Saints Day, traditionally called All Hallows Day, or simply All Hallows (or sometimes Hallowmas) in English. In the Catholic liturgical year All Saints Day falls on November 1 each year and, as a first rank feast day, was always celebrated with a vigil and, later, with an octave. This means that it was not only celebrated on the day itself, but also, like Easter Sunday and Christmas Day, with preparatory prayers and a mass the night before. The octave – an extended eight day sequence of liturgy following the feast day – was added by Pope Sixtus IV in 1480, though it was removed in the twentieth century. The vigil held the evening before, however, seems as old as the feast itself. So Halloween refers to this vigil and its associated traditions.

All Saints Day, as the name would suggest, is a commemoration held in several Christian denominations of all of those deceased believers who have attained heaven. In the Western tradition, it is followed by All Souls Day on November 2, for remembrance of the dead generally. The veneration of the triumphant dead is a very old tradition in Christianity and seems to have its origin in the cults of martyrs in the first centuries of the religion’s history. Annual commemoration of martyred Christians appears in the sources very early on, with The Martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 150- 200 AD) referring to this practice:

Accordingly, we afterwards took up his bones, as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels, and more purified than gold, and deposited them in a fitting place, whither, being gathered together, as opportunity is allowed us, with joy and rejoicing, the Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who have already finished their course, and for the exercising and preparation of those yet to walk in their steps.

(Ch. XVIII)

The same text places Polycarp’s death and therefore this commemorative day on April 25th, though the exact year is not certain. From the fourth century onward we find references to annual commemorations of all martyrs and saints on various days depending on location; so the Orthodox tradition celebrated All Saints on the Sunday after Pentecost (as it still does), while Syrian tradition held it on the Friday after Easter. On 13th May 609 AD (or perhaps 610 AD) Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon in Rome as a Catholic church dedicated to all saints and ordered an annual celebration of the saints in that church on this date, which is held to this day. At some point in his pontificate (731-41 AD), Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in St Peters to all saints and martyrs and some accounts say this was on November 1, making this the potential origin for the western date for All Saints Day. Sometime later in the eighth century the English Martyrologium Poeticum – a poetic calendar of saints days and other feast days celebrated at York – makes a clear reference to a feast of All Saints on November 1:

Multiplici rutilet gemma ceu in fronte Nouember
Cunctorum fulget sanctorum laude decorus.

(As a jewel worn on the brow sparkles time and again, so November
at its beginning is resplendent with the praise given to all the saints.)

Given this was a practice at York, it is not surprising to find the great scholar, Alcuin of York, writing to his friend Arno, Bishop of Salzburg, urging him to celebrate All Saints Day on November 1:

Kalendis Novembris solemnitas omnium sanctorum. Ecce, venerande pater Arne, habes designatam solemnitatem omnium sanctorum, sicut diximus. Quam continue in mente retineas et semper anniversario tempore colere non desistas

On the kalends of November is the solemnity of all the saints. See, venerable father Arno, you have marked the solemnity of all the saints, just as we said. Keep that ever in mind and never cease to celebrate it on that annual date

(Alcuin, Letter 193, 800 AD)

This urging suggests that All Saints Day was perhaps celebrated on other dates and Alcuin, by this stage back at the court of the Frankish ruler Charlemagne at Aachen, preferred the tradition he knew from England. Or it could be that he is urging the importance of the feast rather than the date of the celebration per se. What we do know is the November 1 date caught on in Frankia, with Pope Gregory IV promulgating it as the date for All Saints Day for both East and West Frankia, and this was reinforced by an edict by Louis the Pious in 835 AD as recorded in the entry for that year in the Chronicon of Sigebert of Gembloux. With the date established across the Frankish Empire, it became more widely adopted and over the next two centuries became standard Catholic liturgical practice across Europe.

What is obviously missing from all this is any hint of an influence by anything “pagan”, let alone some Irish or “Celtic” festival presided over by druids. Even if the dedication of the chapel in St Peters by Gregory III was not the origin of the November 1 date and the practice arose independently in England and spread to Frankia via the influence of English scholars like Alcuin, there is a serious problem with the idea that this was due to Irish “Celtic” influence on England. This is because the earliest Irish reference to an All Saints Day does not have it celebrated there on November 1, but on April 20.

The Félire Óengusso or “Martyrology of Óengus” is another martyrology, attributed to Saint Óengus of Tallaght. It seems to date to the ninth century and is based on earlier English martyrologies (like that of Bede), but with significant local Irish additions. It mentions a feast of All Saints in its listing for April 20:

Day of the suffering of Herodius,
priest who crucified desire;
Feast in Rome – that noble town –
of the whole of the saints of Europe.

Under November 1, on the other hand, we do find – finally – a reference to “Samhain”. But it is not associated with commemorating All Saints, but rather with three Irish saints only:

Lonan, Colman, Cronan
with their bright sunny followers —
the hosts of Hilary, many, sure,
ennoble stormy Samain.

So while the English were already celebrating All Saints Day on November 1 in the eighth century and that date became predominant in Frankia by the mid ninth century, the Irish were doing so on April 20, with “stormy Samain” the feast of three local holy men only. As esteemed historian of folklore, Ronald Hutton, summarises it in his Stations Of The Sun (Oxford, 1996):

Charlemagne’s favourite churchman Alcuin was keeping it by [800 AD], as were also his friend Arno, bishop of Salzburg, and a church in Bavaria. Pope Gregory [IV], therefore, was endorsing and adopting a practice which had begun in northern Europe. It had not, however, started in Ireland, where the Felire of Oengus and the Martyrology of Tallaght prove that the early medieval churches celebrated the feast of All Saints upon 20 April. This makes nonsense of [the] notion that the November date was chosen because of ‘Celtic’ influence.

(Ch. 35)

Hutton favours a “Germanic” origin for the date – either the practice of the English church which influenced Frankia or perhaps the other way around. Or it could be that the Roman celebration on that day deriving from Gregory III spread to both. But since the Irish in the same period seem to have used April 20 for their date and paid little regard to November 1 at this stage, the claim the whole thing began in Ireland as an originally pagan festival makes no sense.

Samhain in the Sources

The claims about the origins of Halloween lying with Samhain tend to be very detailed about this “Celtic” festival, with references to all the key elements of it that thus made their way into Halloween traditions: trick or treating, Jack-o’-lanterns, dressing in costumes and masks and a general association with the dead. But when we turn to what we know about this pre-Christian feast day, we find few to none of these elements.

There is certainly some evidence that November 1 was a key date for several cultures across the Celtic language group, marking the end of summer. The Irish word “Samhain” (also found as “Samain” or “Samuin” and pronounced “Sow-win”) seems derived from an ancient word meaning “summer”. A key piece of evidence here is the Coligny Calendar: a inscribed bronze tablet discovered in south-east France in 1897. This represents a lunisolar calendar, which reconciles moon phases with the solar year over a cycle of five years via the insertion of an occasional intercalary “leap” month, and it dates to the first century BC. The inscriptions on the Calendar use Roman script and numerals, but the names of months on it are in the Celtic language of the ancient Gauls. These include a month called “Samonios” at the beginning of the year, derived from the Gaulish root “Samo-” meaning “summer”. This is almost certainly a cognate with the Irish “Samhain”, but “Samonios” began in May and did not fall in November (called Giamonios on the Coligny Calendar). This means “Samhain” is a compound word meaning something like “summer’s end”.

As already mentioned, the ninth century Félire Óengusso refers to November 1 as “stormy Samain”, and the early tenth century Welsh text, The Laws of Hywel Dda, repeatedly uses “the calends of winter” (i.e. November 1) as a key annual demarcation for various laws, again indicating the end of summer on this day as an important date. What we do not find in early references to either Samhain or the calendrical significance of November 1 as the end of summer is reference to rituals or religious practices. The early Irish glossary Sanas Cormaic, which dates to the tenth century, is a word list with etymologies and explanations of over 1,400 words and it mentions the spring festival of Beltane on May 1 and refers to druids driving cattle between two ritual fires to protect them for the coming year on that date, but does not mention Samhain at all, let alone any rituals associated with it. The Ulster Cycle epics, possibly dating to the tenth century or earlier, make a couple of mentions of Samhain. Tochmarc Emire (“The Wooing of Emer”) lists Samhain as one of the year’s “quarter days”, along with Imbolc (1 February), Beltane (1 May), and Lughnasadh (1 August) and Serglige Con Culainn (“The Sick-Bed of Cú Chulainn”) gives us some more details about what marking Samhain may have traditionally entailed:

Every year the men of Ulster were accustomed to hold festival together; and the time when they held it was for three days before Samhain, the Summer-End, and for three days after that day, and upon Samhain itself. And the time that is spoken of is that when the men of Ulster were in the Plain of Murthemne, and there they used to keep that festival every year; nor was there an thing in the world that they would do at that time except sports, and marketings, and splendours, and pomps, and feasting and eating; and it is from that custom of theirs that the Festival of the Samhain has descended, that is now held throughout the whole of Ireland.

(trans,. A.H. Leahy, Heroic Romances of Ireland. Vol I., London, 1905, p. 57)

Here we get a lot of feasting “and splendours and pomps”, but no rituals or any indication of overtly religious significance. It seems more of a chance to get together and have a good time before the weather turns too wintery. It is not until the twelfth century Macgnímartha Finn (“The Boyhood Deeds of Finn mac Cumhaill”) that we find something supernatural associated with the references to Samhain:

However, Finn went to Cethern, the son of Fintan, further to learn poetry with him. At that time there was a very beautiful maiden in Bri Ele, that is to say, in the fairy-knoll of Bri Ele, and the name of that maiden was Ele. The men of Ireland were at feud about that maiden. One man after another went to woo her. Every year on Samain the wooing used to take place; for the fairy-mounds of Ireland were always open about Samain; for on Samain nothing could ever be hidden in the fairy-mounds. To each man that went to woo her this used to happen: one of his people was slain. This was done to mark the occasion, nor was it ever found out who did it.

(Tom P. Cross & Clark Harris Slover, ed.s, Ancient Irish Tales, New York, 1936)

The idea that the world of the Sídhe, the fairy folk of Irish legend, is open to the mundane world at certain times of year is also found associated with Beltane. But even here we do not find any indication of ritual or religious observance. Perhaps the closest we get to that is in the Dindshenchas (“The Lore of Places”), also from the twelfth century, which tells a story of Saint Patrick throwing down an idol of the pagan god Cromm Crúaich at Magh Slécht (“the plain of prostration”). The Dindshenchas says “the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan” were sacrificed to this idol. It also details how each year at Samhain the High King would lead the people in prostrating themselves before the idol of Cromm Crúaich and how they would fling themselves on the ground so violently that three quarters of them died each time. Other, later, versions of how Patrick ended the worship of this god also mention sacrifices of children to his idol, but make no mention of Samhain. Hutton is sceptical of whether these stories reflect anything historical and concludes “the Magh Slécht story sounds … like a medieval Christian fantasy, developing over time and growing more lurid with each retelling” (Hutton, Blood & Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain, Yale, 2009, p. 41). It should be noted here that even in these stories the references to child sacrifice to this this idol are not associated with Samhain.

All this means that, despite some rather strained attempts to make these and other references conform to the idea of Samhain as some ancient Irish festival of the dead, we really do not have any clear evidence of Samhain as a religious festival at all. And we definitely do not have so much as a hint of the alleged “pagan” practices that are the origin of modern Halloween traditions of trick or treating and Jack-o’-lanterns etc. So what is the origin of the claims these things come from Samhain?

The Construction of a Modern Myth

The earliest reference to Samhain as a time of ritual, sacrifice and druidic ceremony comes in 1634, in an account by Seathrún Céitinn or Jeffrey Keating; a priest, poet and antiquarian from Tipperary who Hutton describes as “the thoroughly unreliable seventeenth-century Irish antiquary”. Keating’s account mingles a few elements from the medieval sources with a lot of lurid fantasy:

It was there the Fire of Tlachtgha was instituted, at which it was their custom to assemble and bring together the druids of Ireland on the eve of Samhain to offer sacrifice to all the gods. It was at that fire they used to burn their victims; and it was of obligation under penalty of fine to quench the fires of Ireland on that night, and the men of Ireland were forbidden to kindle fires except from that fire; and for each fire that was kindled from it in Ireland the king of Munster received a tax of a screaball, or three-pence, since the land on which Tlachtgha is belongs to the part of Munster given to Meath.

(Keating, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn: The History of Ireland, Book 1. XXXIX)

Like Hutton, all other modern scholars reject this account as largely lurid fantasy on Keating’s part, cobbled together out of references to fire rituals associated with other times of year, with a heavy layer of Keating’s imagination (see Binchy, D. A. “The Fair of Tailtiu and the Feast of Tara.” Ériu 18 (1958): 113–38; specifically pp. 129-30). Unfortunately, as one of the few early and seemingly scholarly books on early Ireland, Keating’s work was highly influential on later claims about Halloween’s “pagan” origins. Here we find the druids and the human sacrifice found repeatedly in later claims about the pre-Christian Halloween, along with a garbled origin story for the traditions around fires which did feature as part of many Halloween practices.

Partially thanks to Keating, the association of the supposed rituals of “the druids” as the origin of various traditional practices and ancient sites became a mainstay of antiquarian speculation from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, with John Aubrey’s Monumenta Britannica (1693) fixing the still persistent association of druids and Stonehenge in the popular imagination. Protestant polemicists took this idea up to blame the druids for all manner of residual Catholic traditions, which they condemned not just as “Popery” but traced to bloodthirsty pagan origins – a line of argument that also persists to this day and leads directly to fervid evangelical fantasies like the Jack T. Chick tracts noted earlier.

By the nineteenth century better researchers began to examine the evidence more carefully, though the “pagan origins” idea established since Keating’s time continued to be their key assumption. In 1886 the Welsh-born Oxford philologist Sir John Rhys argued in his Lectures on the origin and growth of religion as illustrated by Celtic heathendom (1886) that November 1 had been the “Celtic new year”, largely based on Welsh folklore associating Halloween with new beginnings. This idea was greatly expanded by Sir James Frazer in his heavily influential The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion: originally published in two volumes in 1890 and eventually expanded to twelve volumes in its third edition, published 1906–1915. Frazer’s book caused something of a scandal for treating Christianity like any other form of ancient mythology, but effectively established the discipline of comparative religion in the English-speaking world. It was and remains culturally significant in that it influenced everyone from Sigmund Freud to Joseph Campbell and writers and artists from Robert Graves to Jim Morrison. This is despite the fact modern scholars find much of Frazer’s arguments unconvincing.

For Frazer, Samhain had been nothing less than the pagan Celtic feast of the dead. Like Rhys, he saw it as marking the death of the old year and also as a numinous time when the supernatural was abroad. But he argued that it was common for many cultures to honour their dead at the close of the year and so argued that the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls on November 1 and 2 had to have their origins in this posited earlier Celtic festival. Of course, this is based on the idea that All Saints began in Ireland and the Celtic tradition and transferred to the rest of Europe. But, as discussed above, this does not seem to be the case, with the earlier Irish celebration of All Saints (April 20) giving way to the date established in Frankia in the ninth century (November 1). Frazer got the influence completely the wrong way around.

But thanks to the influence of The Golden Bough on popular culture, the idea that there was a “Celtic” day of the dead as the origin of both the date of Halloween and its traditions involving ghosts and the supernatural persists. This is mixed with the anti-Papist claims in the Protestant tradition that links this supposed pagan origin to druids and human sacrifice that also persists in some versions of the Halloween origin story. So, we are assured, the practices of wearing costumes and masks, trick or treating, Halloween games and Jack o’Lanterns are also firmly “pagan”.

Halloween – Past and Present

The problem with the claim that the key traditions of Halloween are all “pagan” in origin is the same as that with all such arguments. They assume that no new traditions could possibly have arisen in the centuries since the conversion to Christianity and so all traditions which are old (or seem old) must be pre-Christian, therefore “pagan”. There are many unwarranted assumptions in this line of reasoning, but it seems to be widely accepted without much question. As it happens, the elements of Halloween which may be pre-Christian are actually not common today and the most common practices today do not seem to be pre-Christian at all.

One of the most common elements in traditional Halloween folklore involves the lighting of fires. This seems to be the source of Jeffrey Keating’s antiquarian fantasy about druids burning people alive at Samhain, but fires that are watched as they burn out over the course of the night at Halloween are found in traditions across Ireland, Scotland and many parts of Wales. These “Hallowmas fires” were discouraged in Protestant areas as a holdover from Catholic traditions, since watching the fire as it burned down while remembering the dead was part of the tradition in many parts, and was clearly connected to the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. But there are elements in these practices that could indicate a pre-Christian origin, such as the Scottish tradition that the fire is burned to “keep the fairies á awá” or to drive off witches. The fire traditions are also associated with divination, which is another cluster of practices around Halloween that has largely died out. In North Wales each person put a white pebble in the fire and if any of them was missing from the ashes the next day, this was a sign that person would die that year. Similar practices in Scotland could indicate an pre-Christian origin for these ideas, though there is no way of being sure of this.

Other, better known and still popular traditions do not seem to have “pagan” origins at all, despite persistent claims to the contrary. The lurid fantasies of druids carrying off people for human sacrifices unless they were placated with gifts and food are often alleged to be the origin of trick or treating. In fact, this seems to have its origin in a Christian practice. Since All Saints and All Souls were feasts focused on the afterlife, in the old Catholic tradition they were also a time where charity was encouraged by the living to boost their chances of attaining heaven. So distributing food to the poor was a central part of Allhallowtide – the three day period from Halloween to the end of All Souls. Special “Soul Cakes” were traditionally baked to be given as charity to the poor and other seasonal food, such as nuts, apples and berries – all abundant in early autumn – were also distributed.

Poorer people going to houses to receive food as charity gave rise to people visiting others in disguise to demand “soul cakes” as part of a game. This took many forms that varied by region, but this practice of “guising” or “mumming” was part of celebratory folk practices at other times of year, particularly Christmas. At Halloween, the “guisers” often sang “soul cake songs” demanding traditional food gifts in return for a blessing. In some places the practice meant any “guiser” could enter a house and had to be welcomed and given soul cakes, while the owners pretended to not know who the visitors were. This is why traditional “guiser” masks were designed largely to hide someone’s identity from their neighbours rather than the modern version of the Halloween “costume”. In some versions the “guisers” simply painted their faces black. The game consisted of people in a close knit community pretending not to know each other while breaking social norms. This element developed into a “misrule” element – again, something also seen at Christmas – were acts of damage and violence were threatened (and minor acts carried out) if the “guisers” were not rewarded with food. The clear line of descent from this to modern “trick or treating” is obvious. That this all arose from a Christian practice of charity on a holy day is also clear, though in places it also involved leaving out food “for the dead”. Again, it is impossible to tell if this too was an pre-Reformation Christian practice or a remnant of something pre-Christian.

“Guisers” often carried vegetables carved with faces holding candles as lanterns as they went around the houses of their community. These could be turnips or mangel wurzels, and this practice was common in Ireland but also in northern Scotland and in parts of Somerset, where they were called “punkies” or “spunkies”. This was a dialect word for the phenomenon of ignited marsh gas, thought to be apparitions, and in eastern England these will-o’-the-wisps were referred to as “Jack o’lanterns”. This has given us the Irish-by-way-of-the-United-States modern version their name, though now made out of pumpkins. Again, the origin of the practice is obscure and there is no way of knowing if it was a pre- or post-Christian tradition.

Other traditional Halloween games and practices involved various forms of divination, to predict the future regarding death, marriage and children. Not surprisingly, Halloween games often involved apples (e.g. bobbing for apples) or nuts, given these were collected around this time of year. But the most common modern Halloween traditions are a few Irish and Scottish practices that were transplanted to the United States, and then really only became popularised after the Second World War. The influence of American popular culture and the commercial opportunities the modern American-style festival provides to manufacturers of confectionary, toys and costumes means that, these days, the commercialised version of the holiday is now almost international.

So, is it “Pagan”?

The short answer is “no”. Contrary to Seth Andrews’ claims about “the Catholic Church” stealing a pagan festival “involving the druid priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks and treats”, the date and most of the traditions are firmly Christian in origin. The November 1 date that is the centre of “Allhallowmas” was not derived from any “Celtic” original and the original Irish date for an All Saints feast moved from April 20 to November 1 due to the influence of Continental and English liturgical practice. That this meant the new All Saints Day fell on the “quarter day” of Samhain was pure coincidence. Contrary to repeated insistence in popular sources, scholars can find no clear indication of any ritual or religious practices on Samhain, and certainly none that can be traced to later Halloween traditions. Masks, costumes, trick or treating, Halloween games etc. all either have known traditional Christian origins or simply cannot be linked to anything definitely pre-Christian. Possibly the main thing that does connect Halloween to earlier beliefs about Samhain is the idea that it is a numinous time of year when this world and the otherworld become closer and, thus, it is a time to be wary of malevolent entities. But how much of that idea comes from pre-Christian beliefs and how much of it is a result of a Christian feast focused on the afterlife and the dead is, again, impossible to tell. It is most likely some combination of the two.

What is very clear is that anti-theistic activists like Seth Andrews simply do not care about the details, let alone the truth behind the popular claims about Halloween being “pagan” in origin and simply “stolen” by Christianity. Despite exhorting others to “question everything” and check their facts, supposed rationalists like Andrews do not bother to practice what they preach if an idea fits neatly enough with their strong confirmation biases. And that is genuinely scary. Happy Halloween.