Today is All Hallows Eve, more commonly known as Halloween. For most of the world it has lost its historic link to the Christian Feast of All Saints Day (Nov. 1), when the church remembers that we are all saints. The link to being the Eve (night before) the celebration of all the saints of God is largely forgotten or ignored now.
Now, these origins are so obscured that some consider the celebration of Halloween as just a secular or even pagan or diabolical holiday. However, the roots go back to the time before the Christian church came to the Celtic lands of what is now England and Ireland. Before the church adopted the practice of remembering the faithful departed saints, there was an even more ancient festival associated with the change of seasons and the end of October. Samhain (pronounced sow-in) was the time when Celts honored their ancestors. It is easy to understand how the early church would find a way to relate the remembrance of the faithful saints with the existing feast remembering ancestors. Around the 9th century, the early church wisely adopted and redeemed Samhain, just as happened with other many existing feasts and celebrations.
There are records of Christianity in Britain by the 3rd century and of course the legend of Joseph of Arimathea coming to Glastonbury soon after the crucifixion. The first Church authorized evangelism was under Pope Gregory I who sent Augustine to Britain in the 6th century. (This is not Augustine of Hippo, one of the famous theologians of the church, who lived 200 years earlier.) Augustine’s ‘holier than thou’ attitude did not sit well with the people of Britain who had developed their own form of Christianity in isolation from the rest of Christendom.
One cannot but wonder (at least I cannot help wondering) if the adoption of Samhain into All Hallows Eve was not a centuries later footnote at one of the church councils to offer an olive branch to the Celtic roots of Britain’s Christians. The change of the seasons was perceived, by the Celts and other ancients, as a ‘thin space’ or a time when the boundary between our world and the ‘Otherworld’ was translucent. Spirits (good and bad) could come and go at such times. The Celtic celebrations involved masks, body painting, and bonfires. From this comes the wearing of costumes and even the jack-o-lantern. Now, of course, Halloween is mostly about wearing costumes and getting treats or going to masquerade parties. We rarely pause to remember the saints who have gone before.
The Rev. Gary Kriss notes, “There can be little doubt that our Christian observances owe much to pre-Christian customs. Witches and ghosts, unseen demons and the souls of the dead wandering in the dark were very real to ancient people, and this should not surprise us…We may need to step back for a bit of perspective before we too quickly dismiss the quaint and ill-informed customs of the ancients as pagan nonsense. Indeed, as the days grow shorter and the hours of natural light are fewer, we would do well to reflect on the importance of light, literally and figuratively, in our lives. To shed light on a problem is to move towards a solution. To come out of the darkness into the light is to overcome fear and ignorance.” (http://fullhomelydivinity.org/)
Even in our modern life, we have things that frighten us. We may not pray, “From ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggedie beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us” as an ancient Scottish litany puts it. However, we do have to deal with the fears of our own time. Halloween is a time when we can lightly touch scary things—and bring them into the light where they aren’t so fearsome.
Perhaps another way to find God in the Halloween norm is to reflect on the lives of the saints we have known. Who has been influential in your faith growth? Give thanks to God for those persons.
I know I promised to talk about labels, but it is not often that Halloween falls on a Sunday, after all. Next week, we’ll get back to the routine, if you’ll pardon the pun.
