Today is Halloween, the 31st of October, the eve of all Saint's Day in the Catholic church.
So is this "holiday" have christian roots behind it or is it a pagan festival? Well both. But let's dive into the history of this peculiar festival and see where it actually came from. This festival started in Ireland in pre-Roman times, meaning before Rome settled the British isles. This was first a Gaelic festival, called Samhain, that celebrated the end of the harvest. They would take their harvested crops and slaughter animals to save in their winter stores. Also, they believed that on October 31, the realms between the living and the dead would coincide with one another letting the dead rise and cause havoc among the villages and crops. To ward off these spirits they had huge bonfires, where they threw the bones of the animals they slaughtered, and wore masks and cultural costumes. When the Romans started settling the isles they brought some of their traditions into the festival such as the celebrating Feralia which celebrates the passing of the dead and the Goddess Pomona. The symbol of Pomona was an apple which is where the tradition of bobbing for apples came from.
This became a Catholic holiday when Pope Gregory the 3rd moved the All Saint's Day Feast from May 13 to November 1st to keep the pagan festival celebrations but with now a christian meaning behind it. Today, these celebrations are taken place on different days but back then they were celebrated on the same day so that people would celebrate the All Saint's Day instead of the pagan Samhain festival but still celebrate it with the Samhain traditions...costumes, jack-o-lanterns, apples, etc. This was done to another holiday that I love, Christmas, with Christ most likely being born in the Spring to the reference of the Shepard's present at Jesus' birth, which was originally a pagan Roman holiday of the solstice and celebrations of gods' birthdays and festivals....etc. More on this subject during Christmas time. Anyways, in both instances the Catholic church declared these days christian holidays to entice people to convert to Christianity without losing there cultural celebrations. More of a political move than anything else, but not a bad idea.
My family never celebrated Halloween and they still don't due to the scriptures in the Bible where it says to stay away from witchcraft, black magic, celebrating spirits, etc. I need to research where these verses are to determine for myself if celebrating Halloween is going against the Bible when it says to stay away from that kind of stuff. Did I miss out on anything, the trick-o-treating and the like? Nope, not at all. We always did something else that night. We use to go to Busch Gardens every year during that weekend around the 31 and just had a blast spending the day riding the rides and with each other. Then Hallow-scream came along so we stopped going to Busch during that time, we did however go every year but it was during the summer instead of the Fall. But we always did something fun whether we played board games or watched movies or make and eat lots of food.
I'm now starting to think that when I have kids, will I let them celebrate Halloween. Again, I need to read those verses and determine for myself if Halloween is something that the Bible says to stay away from, but I can see how it can be confusing for kids that are learning about Christ and God and not participating in black magic kind of stuff to go out that night and dress up as a witch or zombie or undead, etc. Hmmm...something to think about.
