Some Christians complain, but the government leaves Halloween alone

Roanoke recently decided that even though Halloween falls on a Sunday this year, it will celebrate Halloween on Halloween, rather than on Saturday, Oct. 30.

Back in 1999, when Halloween also fell on a Sunday, the city changed the celebration to the Saturday before, as a result of some Christians complaining about celebrating a pagan or “evil” holiday on the Sabbath.

Okay, it’s time to get the story straight.

First of all, although a few gory movies have been made about Halloween, and some costumes and decorations are over-the-top deathly, Halloween is not a celebration of evil or Satanism. The scary images mostly come from ancient traditions that involved confusing the spirits of the dead to keep them from inhabiting the living (I explain this more fully below).

Secondly, when the government moves Halloween because Christians don’t like it on Sunday, is the government then discriminating against people of other religions who were prepared to celebrate it on that day?

I applaud the city government in its stance to leave the day alone, even though it’s not even the government’s business to designate when we should celebrate a holiday in the first place. We should celebrate a holiday on the day it falls.

To address those who hold the misconception that Halloween is inspired by the devil, here is a short primer on the origins of this now virtually secular celebration:

Halloween began with the Celts who lived 2000 years ago in an area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France. Originally called Samhain, the Oct. 31 holiday was a celebration of the end of the summer harvest and the end of the year. As an end-of-year celebration, it also marked a time to remember the dead who had passed on.

The Celts believed that during this time of remembrance, the spirits of the dead rose from the ground looking for new bodies to inhabit, therefore, the villagers would dress up in ghoulish costumes to fool the spirits into thinking that they were dead, too. This is most likely where the tradition of Halloween costumes began.

As Christianity spread throughout Europe and into the Celtic lands in the 600s, the church wanted the Celts to focus less on their pagan holidays, such as Samhain, and more on Christian celebrations. In the 700s, Pope Gregory III created a competing holiday, All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1 – a day to remember and celebrate the saints of the church. It was widely believed that he did this to shift the emphasis from the Celtic festival with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday.

All Saints’ day was also called All Hallows’ Day, referring to the hallowed (revered and holy) saints. A vigil was held the night before every holy day in the church, and included the faithful gathered to prepare themselves with prayers and a Mass. The pagan festival combined with the church’s vigil on the eve of All Saints’ became known as “the eve before All Hallows’ Day,” or “All Hallow Even” in later centuries, then ultimately “Halloween.”

In the early 1000s, the church instituted Nov. 2 as All Souls Day, to commemorate all the Christian dead who were waiting in Purgatory. Purgatory is the place where Catholics and early Christians believe souls atone for their sins before entering Heaven.

The tradition of trick-or-treating likely finds its roots in early All Souls' Day parades in England. During All Souls Day, poor citizens would beg for food, and people would give them pastries called "soul cakes" in return for their promise to pray for their families’ dead relatives to expedite their journeys from Purgatory to Heaven.

As European immigrants came to America in the 1600s, they brought their many Halloween customs with them – from celebrating the fall harvest to celebrating the saints and the souls of the dead. In the mid-1800s, millions of Irish fleeing the potato famine helped popularize the celebration of Halloween. Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's trick-or-treat tradition.

Today, Halloween has remained for some a religious holiday, as the vigil of All Saints’ Day. Though for most it is a mainly secular holiday, with more ancient tradition than evil overtones.

Sources: About.com, Historychannel.com, Newadvent.org, Fact-index.com