HISTORY
Every October the question comes up — usually in online debates, sometimes in schools, occasionally in church newsletters: is Halloween a pagan holiday? Should Christians celebrate it? Is it really about worshipping the devil?
The short answer is: yes, Halloween has deep pagan roots. But the full story is more complicated, more interesting and ultimately more human than any of the arguments on either side tend to acknowledge.
Halloween's primary ancestor is Samhain — the ancient Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, observed on the 31st of October across Ireland, Scotland, Wales and parts of Britain for at least two thousand years before Christianity arrived. Samhain was a festival of fire, feasting, ancestral remembrance and the acknowledgement that on this night, the boundary between the living and the dead grew thin.
The Celts were not Satanists. They did not worship evil. They were a sophisticated culture with a complex cosmology, a reverence for nature, and a rich tradition of seasonal ritual. Samhain was sacred to them in the same way that Christmas is sacred to a Christian — a time of community, spiritual significance and connection to something larger than everyday life.
When Rome conquered Celtic territories in the first century CE, two Roman festivals began to overlap with Samhain. Feralia was a late-October Roman commemoration of the dead, during which offerings were made to ancestral spirits. A festival honouring Pomona, the goddess of orchards and fruit, brought the apple into the seasonal mix — which is why apple bobbing became a Halloween tradition. Neither of these festivals was sinister. Both were normal expressions of seasonal religion in the ancient world.
As Christianity spread through Europe in the early medieval period, the Church had a choice about how to handle existing pagan festivals: suppress them or absorb them. They largely chose absorption. Pope Gregory I famously advised missionaries not to destroy pagan temples but to repurpose them as Christian churches. Pagan festivals were given Christian meaning and placed in the calendar alongside or over the existing dates.
In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III moved All Saints' Day — a Christian feast honouring all saints and martyrs — to the 1st of November. All Souls' Day, honouring the Christian dead, was placed on the 2nd of November. The eve of All Saints' Day became All Hallows' Eve, and the folk traditions of Samhain — the candles, the costumes, the leaving of food for spirits, the acknowledgement that the dead walk closer on this night — continued underneath the Christian framework.
By the time these traditions reached America through Irish and Scottish immigration in the 19th century, Halloween had already been through two thousand years of cultural blending. The jack-o'-lantern evolved from the Irish tradition of carving turnips to ward off spirits (pumpkins, found in America, were simply larger and easier to carve). Trick or treating evolved from the medieval practice of "souling" — going door to door offering prayers for the dead in exchange for food. Costumes evolved from the Samhain practice of wearing disguises to avoid being recognised by spirits.
Yes — in its origins, Halloween is unambiguously rooted in the Celtic pagan festival of Samhain, with additional layers from Roman and Christian tradition. It is not a Christian holiday, though it has been given Christian framing. It is not Satanic — that association came primarily from 20th century moral panics rather than from any historical reality. And it is not a single, unified thing — it is two thousand years of human beings marking the same turning of the year in whatever language and framework made sense to them at the time.
For modern pagans and witches, reclaiming Samhain is simply returning to the oldest layer — acknowledging the end of the year, honouring the dead, sitting with the darkness and finding it sacred rather than frightening.
Explore our Samhain ritual collection. ✦