The Samhain thing is a myth
Redeeming Holy Days From Pagan Lies : Hallowe’en : A Short History
http://steadfastlutherans.org/2012/10/halloween-a-short-history/
The problem with allowing neo-pagan historic revisionism to get away with creating modern myths about one or two Holy Days is that they will eventually extend this to every church holy day and every rite from baptism to communion.
It’s actually better to teach what Halloween really is than to not celebrate it and the day following it points to at all. The word Hallowe’en is of Christian origin, a contraction of ‘All Hollows Eve,’ the word ‘hallow’ meaning ‘saint,’ and saint being a Christian who has passed on. So Halloween means the evening of All Saint’s Day [days traditionally began at sunset, not sunrise as we think of day today.] All Saint’s Day is when the church reflects on the Christians who, throughout the ages, took part in spreading the good news of Christ before their death. So yes, it has always been associated with death, martyrdom and the conflict between good and evil.
The failure to teach what it really is- running away from it and leaving a vaccuum- has allowed it to be corrupted into the secular holiday that it is treated as today and has allowed today’s pretend pagans to appropriate it as their own when in fact it has nothing to do with them at all- their ‘religion’ is really newly made up fantasy of what paganism is- in other words it’s about as genuinely pagan as Kwanza is genuinely African.