Christian??? I don’t think so. Its a pagan festival going back thousands of years, with antler dance orgies, no doubt
“Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1”
“This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.”
https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween
Indeed carved pumpkins were supposed to scare off the dead. Kinda a Celtic night of the living dead pre plot.
“Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1”
This is simply not according to real history. First off, the Nov. 1 date was developed by Christians only.... FAR, FAR away from Celtic Europe, rather in Rome and Southern Europe. Secondly, Samhain was a LUNAR festival—which means it’s holiday moves around, according to the phases of the moon. Apparently Nov.1 lines up with Samhain about once every 30 years or so...so they are NOT the same holiday, or even related. Thirdly, the information we have about Samhain, comes from AFTER Nov. 1 was designated All Saints Day in the AD 700s...
MUCH of the disinformation on All Saints Day (or All Hallow’s Eve) comes from cultic, or occultic sources....who WANT to make it an evil holiday, to discredit the Christian martyrs who it was originally for. They’re happy to lie about things like “Samhain” in order to scare silly Christians...away from their own holiday honoring holy people of the past.
I’ve done quite a bit of research into this and I think the pagan connection is baloney.
The connection to Samhain is tenuous at best...and just revolves around their being around the same time of year.
The name itself is not even Celtic but Anglo-Saxon (All-Hallows/Alle Heilige is plainly Germanic).
The earliest Irish martyrologies have All Saints in *April*, and the Irish only changed it to Nov. 1st to get in line with Roman usage. The Romans, of course, didn’t care about Celtic holidays and had it on that day because that’s when the Church of All Saints was dedicated.
On this “dead walking the earth” on Oct. 31 business....I’ve heard the same thing about Mexican paganism and Filipino...where there were no Celts. How likely is that? Far more likely is that the idea of the dead walking the earth came from *Christianity*, as the very first line of Vespers for the Dead, which was said on Halloween, is this: “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living”.
Plus we don’t get any mention of paganism until...coincidentally...the Reformation, when people like Henry VIII decided they didn’t like the festivals of All Saints that much and needed an excuse to get rid of it.