XPost: alt.atheism, alt.pagan, soc.history
XPost: alt.christian.religion, alt.religion.christianity
From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net

History for Atheists
New Atheists Getting History Wrong!

Halloween: Is Halloween Pagan?

October 17, 2021 Tim O'Neill

https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/

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.
Is Halloween pagan?

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.
Is Halloween pagan? - All Saints

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. 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

[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)