Spooky Season

October is now upon us. Here in the United States and increasingly around the world, we pole vault into Halloween, or as it is sometimes called "Spooky Season." People go all out decorating their houses with ghosts and spiders and, as is becoming more common, even exterior orange Christmas-like lights. 

This is also the beginning of what I call "Echo Chamber Season." It comes around every year, and, much like accusations against Christmas, there is a plethora of historically false information and articles aplenty about how Halloween is pagan. I always find it both hilarious and yet tiresome because so many people get sucked into believing accusations that have virtually no historical evidence to back them up. Even otherwise reputable websites studying historical topics like history.com or historyhit.com get sucked into this ahistorical nonsense that Halloween is the modern incarnation of a supposed Pagan festival called Samhain. 

I say this grows tiresome for two major reasons. One is that so many well meaning Christians get absolutely sucked into this ahistorical nonsense. They ban Halloween or Trick or Treating because it is pagan or worshiping the Devil or whatever. Now, I understand that the trend in the last 20 years or so in American has moved to turn Halloween into some gruesome blood slurping Zombie killer garbage and adult themed parties and what have you. I agree that Christians should probably not be engaging in that ghastly tomfoolery of shock value just for the sake of shock value. 

But, Halloween itself is not of Pagan origin. Despite the echo chamber that tells you otherwise, there is simply no primary historical evidence that Halloween is the modern Samhain. There is not even any evidence that Samhain was actually even a thing from primary sources at the time Samhain was supposedly some sort of Celtic festival. The earliest reference we have anywhere of a Celtic festival of Samhain is from a Christian Medieval account retelling a supposed Celtic/Viking folklore tale from centuries earlier that mentions (quite positively interestingly) a springtime festival called Samhain. The earliest account clearly says Samhain was a spring festival that had nothing to do with ghosts and harvests. There is no evidence in primary sources or in physical archaeological evidence that Samhain was some old folktale some Christian scribe decided to throw into a bardic tale centuries later. In fact, I openly defy anyone to give me primary evidence of any kind from the alleged period of Samhain as a festival that is actually ever really existed. There is none. Not one shred of evidence. The only thing people can point to are echo chamber website articles quoting other secondary and tertiary sources claiming Samhain was an actual thing, when there is not a single bit of actual evidence anywhere that Samhain actually was a real festival. The Irish word “Samhain” seems to be derived from an ancient word meaning “summer” and not "autumn."

What is furthermore hilarious is the lengths that some modern pseudo-historians go to discuss the actual practices and customs of this alleged Pagan fall festival. They spin all sorts of yarns about Pagans using skulls with candles, Celtic peasants dressing up in costumes, and even describing elaborate Druidic rites of dark magic and worship. It's all fiction. All of it. Not a single dot or tiddle of it has any real historical evidence. It's the same phenomenon when people dress up as Druids and have some sort of New Age Occult liturgy around Stonehenge on the equinox. It's all junk completely spun from the ether in the last 100 years. If any historian tells you he knows what Druidic worship practices looked like, he or she is lying to your face. The Druids never wrote anything down of their practices specifically to keep them hidden and secret. When the last Druids died, they took their worship practices with them to their graves. 

In fact, Halloween rituals as we understand them now actually completely evolved in relatively recent America. Halloween parties and "trick or treating" and carved pumpkins seem to have derived from a confluence of Irish immigrants in the Americas after the Irish Potato Famine. The Irish bring with them the festivals of All Saints Day and All Souls Day from Catholic culture, going back to the 6th Century officially, and other days commemorating Christian Martyrs going back to at least the 3rd century regionally. 

If anything, Halloween evolved from Allhallowmas, or the All Saints Vigil which was a legitimate Christian festival where people would dress up in mock costumes to satirize the forces of evil that thought they had won when Christ was dying on the Cross, but actually ended up losing badly. Think Aslan on the Stone Table. The idea that evil does not win in the end to the point we can make fun of evil forces and darkness by the power of Christ's victory over death and the grave. There is legitimate historical evidence for such Christian festivals. 

Moral plays about the end of Time and the Final Judgment were a common theme in Medieval Christian parish festivals. Troops of actors would come in and have all these moral plays, often incorporating themes of Divine Judgment. Some times they were Passion plays, but often it was a time of thinking about death and Divine judgment. The notion of Christ as the Fisher King were often themes in such annual festivals. Christ dressing up as a lowly fisherman or some other servant or lowly status person only to reveal himself as Christ the King in the end. Ironically enough, the one class of people that always ended up in hell in this Medieval judgment plays were the brewers who watered down the beer. (Nobody likes that guy!)

So, people often ask me if Christians can and show celebrate Halloween. Personally, I have no problem with Halloween if it is celebrated as a truly great Christian festival that mocks Satan and the forces of Darkness. Even classic Monster movies like Frankenstein or the Wolfman or Dracula all have very Christian themes in their own ways. Playing God like Dr. Frankenstein never ends well. You can read Werewolf stories as a form of demonic possession where in the original stories, the "silver bullet" that kills the werewolf is actually a silver crucifix. The same is true for Dracula. Despite the overly modern sexualized reading of Dracula, there are incredible Eucharistic and Christological overtones in Dracula. Even the story of Ichabod Crane and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow is actually a hilarious satire of Yankee Puritans who just don't get it because they are blinded by their Pharisaic moralism. What does Ichabod literally mean in Hebrew but "The Glory Has Departed"? 

If Halloween to you is an occasion to go out to a party dressed as a scantily clad witch or a serial killer and get drunk, then, ok, maybe you should steer clear of Halloween. I would argue that's a perversion of All Saints Day and Allhallowsmas. That is not making fun of evil so much as trying to be like evil and celebrating evil for a night. Speaking as a Christian, that's morally a whole different ball game. 

But, whatever you do, don't get sucked into the fake history that always comes from Echo Chamber Season. Make an informed decision. Maybe even use Halloween as an evangelism tool instead of ignorantly condemning it out of hand when the historical evidence does not support such a claim.