Halloween 3: The True Connection (Or Disconnection, Rather) of Halloween with All Saints Day

Halloween 3:  The True Connection (Or Disconnection, Rather) of Halloween with All Saints Day & Some More Primary Sources Regarding Samhain

     This is my last in a series of three articles on Halloween and its true origins.  My purpose is to cite the primary sources that are behind my research and information, as well as to re-emphasize the importance of the truth being spoken about this holiday, especially by our churches and pastors.   When we participate in the spreading of false information, we do ourselves, our Church, and Christianity as a whole a great disservice.  We make ourselves appear to the world as people who are preaching a message of ignorance and intolerance, instead of people who have the precious Pearl Without Price, the holy faith as witnessed and passed down by the apostles.  Many people in the world struggle with accepting Christianity anyway.  When clergy, bishops and even saints of the Orthodox Church preach against a certain thing based on faulty historical information, they just give those who doubt or disbelieve the faith one more reason to dismiss Christ.

    Faith is as much about free will and choices as about inner daily conversion and sanctification.  But how can human beings exercise their free will and make intelligent choices without getting all the facts?   Any Christian confession—be it Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, non-denominational, etc.—that distorts information and doesn’t give out correct facts to those who have questions about the Way, is hampering the free will of people to choose Christianity or not.  

    Last night, I received a link via e-mail from a monastic father who sends out spiritual teachings to various people, his own spiritual children and people like my husband and me who are on his mailing list.  While I have the greatest respect for this monastic father, I was very disappointed to see that he is propagating the same misinformation about Halloween that many others of my fellow Orthodox Christians have bought into and spread about.  The most dismaying aspect of this is the source he used:  he quoted the writing of one of our 20^th-century saints in the Orthodox Church, St. Nikolai Velimirovic.   St. Nikolai wrote a small letter to his flock on Halloween, and in the letter, alas, our revered father in the saints puts forth objections to Halloween using the same false sources of information that have been perennially promoted by certain fundamentalist Christian groups.  These groups in turn got their false information from Renaissance and Victorian historians, and this information was also promoted and spread widely from the 1960s to the 1990’s by members of the Wiccan and Neo-pagan movement.

    The text of St. Nikolai of Velimirovic’s letter can be found on this web link, which was sent to me via e-mail last night.  Here is the link for all who wish to read it, and it unfortunately represents the perception that many Orthodox Christians have about Halloween:  http://www.stgeorgehermitage.org/stnikolajvelimirovicionhalloween.html

     I want to emphasize to everyone reading this article that I have great love and veneration for our saints, from the saints of the early Church to those who have been recognised in our present time.  But since the whole point of recognising saints is that they are regular human beings who have been transformed by Christ’s grace into His living vessels, I would remind my readers that all saints lived on earth as ordinary people with as much of a tendency to make mistakes as any of us.   Even saints can write letters and books based on faulty information.  Our father in the saints, St. Nikolai Velimirovic, got his information on Halloween and the Celtic feast of Samhain from erroneous sources.  At the time in which he wrote his pastoral letter against Halloween, these sources were commonly accepted, even by historians from respected universities such as Oxford.  But the fact is that these sources were nothing more than folklore and speculation.  Most significantly, those sources are still widely accepted today, to the point that some of the information they contain is considered common knowledge.

    The primary sources (sources written from the actual time periods in question) from the ancient world and literary sources from Ireland prove the following:

(1)   There was no Lord of Death named Samhain (again, pronounced “Sow-when,” not “Sam Hane”).  Samhain was a harvest festival.

(2)   There is no historical evidence that Samhain was ever a festival of the dead.  We know very little about how it was actually celebrated by the Irish.

(3)   The Coligny calendar that mentions Samhain as “Samonios” was lunar, which means that the very day of Samhain did not even always fall on October 31.

(4)   The Druids left no written records, so anyone, saint or scholar, who claims that the Druids celebrated Samhain has no archaeological records or historical writings on which to base this idea.  The only ancient sources we have on Druids come from the Greco-Roman classical world.  The picture painted of druids from Roman sources is very unflattering.  Romans also make no mention of a celebration of the dead called Samhain, and Romans did not even occupy Ireland in the first place.

     But, guess what, folks:  we also have Christian primary sources from the early Church.  Our Christian sources from the early Church prove to us, by their very dates, that the celebration of All Saints Day predates the mention and celebration of Samhain.  The first mention of days commemorating the saints and martyrs of the Church is the account of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, from 150 A.D.  Other historical accounts about the observance of All Saints day can be found in writings ranging from the second century to the eighth century.   In Ireland, the earliest historical account of the celebration of All Saints Day occurs in the Martyrology of Oenghus the Culdee, which dates from the 8^th or 9^th century. The Irish were commemorating the martyrs on the seventeenth of April, and the saints of Europe on the twentieth of April.   I would ask my fellow Orthodox Christians reading this article, does that sound familiar?  Did not the Eastern Church always celebrate All Saints Day after Pascha (Easter)?  Do we not still do so today?

     So, when was the Celtic celebration of Samhain mentioned?  It was mentioned in early Irish medieval sources of the tenth century---200 years later, folks!   If the Celtic celebration of Samhain isn’t even mentioned in Irish literature until 200 years after the documented Irish celebration of All Saints Day, then how can Samhain be connected with the eve of All Saints, All Hallow’s Eve?  A little logic goes a long way here.

      I have a list of the primary sources that prove all of this, but thankfully, I did not have to compile the list myself.  It was already compiled in a couple of brilliant articles written by a Lutheran pastor, Joseph Abrahamson.   Pastor Abrahamson puts his own Lutheran spin on one of his articles, but the primary sources he has provided are the very ones we need to prove that there is no actual connection between Samhain and All Saints Day.  His articles also help very much with proving that there is little connection between our American Halloween and the original Catholic feast of All Hallow’s Eve.  Here are his two articles, with his list of primary sources and the direct quotes he has provided from those:

http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=33364    This article contains a list of the following primary sources: (1) documentation from the 2^nd to 9^th centuries of All Saints Day, celebrated in the East and in Western Europe; (2) the documentation showing the shift of the date from spring to November 1^st in the Western Church; (3) a list of folklorists, mostly Victorian, who fabricated a lot of nonsense about Samhain, beginning with the name of the first historian to mention what he believed to be actual Samhain practices, a late 16^th/early 17^th century Irish priest named Geoffrey Keating; please note that his work has been discounted now, but many Victorians based their ideas on his writing;  (4) medieval Celtic references to Samhain:  Mr. Abrahamson came up with some of the same medieval Celtic references as I did.

http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=33326  In this article, Mr. Abrahamson addresses the false claims about Samhain and Halloween made by Wiccans and Neo-pagans.  He lists primary sources for his refutation of their claims.  Then, he briefly touches on the history of customs such as the Jack-O-Lantern and trick-or-treating, using one or two more primary sources.   At the end, he puts his unique Lutheran spin on the whole issue, pointing out something I didn’t know: Halloween was the date that Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenburg.  Apparently, some people view Halloween as Reformation Day!   I find that very amusing.

     How does All Saints Day relate to Halloween?   I believe, based on my research, that the connection is speculative at best.  The reason I believe this is that the Western European medieval practice of going “souling” on All Hallow’s Eve, going from house to house to beg for and share soul cakes in honour of departed family members, is far removed from the practice of trick-or-treating, which was started in America during the 1930’s.   There is also no mention that I’ve found in early American sources about people going souling on All Hallow’s Eve.  The medieval European practice is too far removed from the American practice, by a few centuries and by the Atlantic Ocean.

     Here are some primary sources on American Halloween:

(1)   Various American historical images collected by the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/search/?q=halloween&fa=original-format%3Aphoto%2C+print%2C+drawing&st=gallery

(2)   Here is a link to a newspaper article from the National Republican, October 31, 1861.  It mentions folklore associated with All Hallow’s Eve, mainly from England, and has a somewhat negative slant on the Roman Catholic practices of All Saints Day.   But it also mentions that the major American custom on All Hallow’s Eve is to go from house to house, knock on the door, and pelt whoever answers the door with turnips and cabbages!  What was that about trick-or-treating originating in the Middle Ages and spreading to America?  If that claim is true, why is there no mention of it in this article written in our nation’s capital just seven months into the Civil War?

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014760/1861-10-31/ed-1/seq-3/#words=Halloween+Hallow+Hallowmas&date1=1860&rows=20&searchType=advanced&proxdistance=5&date2=1863&ortext=halloween+hallow+hallowmas&proxtext=&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&index=0

(3)   For more nineteenth and early twentieth-century articles on Halloween in America, see this link: http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/halloween.html    These are more sources collected by the Library of Congress.

(4)   This website has a list of primary sources, and some historical music.  But it also has a lot of nonsensical blog articles that repeat the same false information against which I’m making my case.  The primary source list, however, is good:  http://primarysourcenexus.org/2011/10/today-in-history-halloween/

(5)   Ruth Edna Kelley, The Book of Hallowe'en, Boston: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co., 1919, chapter 15, p.127. "Hallowe'en in America." 

The chapter listed in this entry can be found online here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/boh/boh17.htm

Ruth Edna Kelley wrote the first history of Halloween in America.  In this chapter from her book, she references various folk customs in different parts of America.  Sometimes she mentions certain folk customs as having their root in Ireland or Scotland.  The customs she mentions appear to be mostly from her own time.  A lot of them sound very superstitious and silly, and some of them involve divination, which I as an Orthodox Christian don’t condone.  None of them are “druidic,” nor would I define them as satanic, per say.  I would just call a lot of them stupid and foolish, interesting but absurd.

(6)   The first reference to trick-or-treating as we know it is mentioned in this 1927 article entitled “Trick or Treat Is Demand” from Blackie, Alberta, in the November 3 issue of the Herald, on page 5: “Hallowe’en provided an opportunity for real strenuous fun. No real damage was done except to the temper of some who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels, etc., much of which decorated the front street. The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word “trick or treat” to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.”

(7)   There are many more references to newspaper articles from the 1930’s and 1940’s in a Wikipedia article on trick-or-treating that actually has a bibliography with some primary sources.  Wikipedia articles are suspect as resources because of a general lack of proper citing of sources.  However, this article not only has the names of the newspapers and the dates in the bibliography, but also the quotes themselves.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trick-or-treating

     I could go on and list many more sources, but I think that my point is made.  There may be some things about Halloween that are very incompatible with Christian practice, such as the folk practices of divination mentioned by Ruth Edna Kelley.  There can be spiritual problems for Christians if too much emphasis is placed on the dark and macabre. Actually, I think that too much gore and horror can be bad for anyone, Christian or not.  But overall, the evidence I’ve found points to the fact that Halloween is nothing more than a secular holiday with most of its practices rooted in the United States.  When we trick-or-treat, we’re not imitating the dead in some so-called “druidic” celebration of wandering spirits.  When we watch movies about ghosts, werewolves and vampires, we’re not glorifying demons, because the fact is that most ghost-sightings are caused by deception and delusion, and the traditional monsters of Halloween are products of the human imagination and writers such as Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker. 

     Halloween is what we make of it.  As Christians, we can make it into a big, bad bogey-filled holiday that we shouldn’t celebrate, or we can make it a fun, fall holiday celebrating mythology, the harvest and the fun of dressing up.   I, for one, am enjoying this holiday as a celebration of the harvest and the human ability to tell stories.  Even the Irish myth of Samhain might just be considered yet another story that has been passed down.

     In Orthodox Christian terms, this is the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist on the Julian Calendar.   This is also the pre-schism Western feast of All Saints.   For those celebrating Halloween, I say “Happy Halloween!”.   For those not doing so, I say, “Happy Saint Luke’s Day!” or “Happy Western All Saints Day!”.

                                                                              With love in Christ,

                                                                                           Gabrielle Bronzich

    

Halloween 2: The Primary Sources (or Lack Thereof) for the "Celtic" Background of Halloween (As Opposed to Unreliable Sources and Victorian Poppycock)

     This is my second article in a series about Halloween that I started this year.  To recapitulate from my previous article, I basically became tired of Christian articles and videos that used inaccurate historical information and unreliable sources for discouraging other Christians from celebrating Halloween.    I will reiterate what I said before: if you, as a Christian, choose not to celebrate Halloween for spiritual reasons—that you don’t find it spiritually beneficial for you, that the premise of the holiday conflicts with the personal practice of your Christian faith and beliefs, etc.---that’s fine.  But if you’re going to either accept or reject Halloween as a Christian, then do so based on accurate historical facts.  Don’t base your approach to Halloween on information from New Age sources that have scanty scholarship, absurd books by Victorian writers about so-called “ancient Irish” practices with no basis in archaeology and no bibliography of primary sources, or writings from the Middle Ages that are woolly at best.   Granted, not all medieval sources are unreliable, but they must be read with discernment.  After all, the people of medieval Europe are the same people who wrote stories about dog-headed people whom they believed to live in the Far East, and strange green people who came up out of the earth.  They’re also the same people who cut the heads off of corpses when they buried them, because they were afraid that the dead person might rise from the grave and walk about, terrorising villagers (British spelling),  or possibly causing the plague.  For a really good exposé on what medieval people in Western Europe believed, watch this really excellent BBC video by English history professor and medievalist Robert Barlett, who quotes primary sources from the period throughout:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1dfht1_bbc-inside-the-medieval-mind-1of4-knowledge-pdtv_tech

     If the above link doesn’t work, this video, entitled “Inside the Medieval Mind,” can be found on YouTube as well.

     Anyway, let’s get down to business.  The purpose of this article is to actually give my readers the promised primary sources I said I would give them with my last article.  Allow me to repeat the definition of a primary source.  A primary source, for the use of studies in history and archaeology, is a source dating directly from the period of history being studied.  It can be an inscription, a record of a business transaction, a birth or death record, a written account of an event or events from the time, or any other number of non-fiction sources from writers of that period.   An archaeological find also counts as a primary source, as do any number of archaeological discoveries with accurately recorded data, not speculation or guesswork.  Works of fiction are sometimes cited as primary sources, but because fiction has often been written with an idealised view of a given society or sometimes might be a work of fantasy, I personally don’t believe fictional literature can be used as a primary source.  

     I mentioned earlier that medieval sources must be read with discretion.  Actually, this statement applies to all primary sources.  For example, Plutarch’s work on the story of Antony and Cleopatra cannot be taken to be totally accurate, because Plutarch was writing with the purpose of pleasing a most powerful person, the Emperor Augustus.  There are several examples of Roman histories being written from a certain slant because of political motivations.   This is nothing new, of course.  It even happens with histories today, such as some current histories being written about the United States.  But that’s another discussion.  My point here is that we must always read primary sources with a keen sense of the mindset of society at the given time, the political realities of that time, and the religious beliefs of the people from that period.  

     Some people say that Caesar’s writings about the Druids aren’t reliable, because he was trying to politically promote his war against the Celts, and he had a Roman penchant for putting down societies he considered inferior to Rome.  While Roman society at that time certainly believed itself to be more civilised than most parts of the world (the same opinion voiced by people in Western European and American society time and again, throughout history), Caesar did not need to impress anyone or sell anyone on his war.  Because of his unique political and military position in Rome, that of being a Roman consul, he could make war on whomever he pleased for whatever reason that seemed justifiable to him.  For most Romans, if a certain tribe of people attacked Roman soldiers or citizens, that was reason enough to send legions to fight them.  (I’m reminded of how Bush reacted to the terrorist attacks of 9-11—but, that’s another discussion!).

     In reverting to the subject of Halloween, in this article I’ll list the sources I’ve found on ancient Celtic religion, since there has long been a popular notion that Halloween was based on an ancient Celtic “Day of the Dead” festival called “Samhain.” Before we continue, please note that this word is not pronounced “Sam Hane.”  It is pronounced “Sow-when” (e.g. “I had an old sow once who had many piglets, but I sold her when the time came for the county fair.”).  It is pronounced “Sow-when,” with the accent on the first syllable.

      First of all, let us be reminded that in the Irish dictionary, the word “Samhain” means “November.”  There is a tenth-century Irish story called Tochmarc Emire (“The Wooing of Emer,” from the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology) wherein the heroine of the story, Emer, refers to Samhain as the time “when the summer goes to its rest.”  This may be why some people think that “Samhain” means “summer’s end.” Secondly, let us be reminded that the only ancient sources we have about Celtic religion are those from classical Greece and Rome.   I should point out here that neither Greece nor Rome ever colonized Ireland, and Rome never annexed it.  There is debate about whether or not Rome actually invaded Ireland, but no definitive sources have been found that state this.  Some archaeological finds in Drumanagh have been interpreted as proof of a Roman military presence, but not everyone agrees with that interpretation of the artifacts. 

     The relationship between Ireland and the Classical world appears to have been primarily commercial.  The Graeco-Egyptian geographer Claudius Ptolemy (Klaudios Ptolemaios), who was from the city of Alexandria and lived between 90 and 168 A.D., made a map of some coastal settlements and tribes of Ireland.  Roman coins and jewelry have been found at Tara and Cashel, and Roman coins have been found at Newgrange (Carson, R.A.G. and O'Kelly, Claire: A catalogue of the Roman coins from Newgrange, Co. Meath and notes on the coins and related finds, pages 35-55. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, volume 77, section C).  Some silver plate was also found in Ireland, cut up in pieces.  Other places where Romano-British artifacts have been found include Leinster, notably a site called Drumanagh that is fifteen miles from Dublin, Lambay and Clogher.  Tacitus writes about the Roman governor of Britain from 78 to 84 A.D., stating that Agricola had plans to someday invade Ireland (Tacitus: Agricola). But Agricola never did so.  There is a vague reference in the writing of the Roman poet Juvenal referring to Roman armies having been to places beyond “Hibernia” (Ireland).  This is found in Juvenal’s Satires 2.

     Ergo, if you read some so-called historical article claiming that there are ancient writings about Irish religion from Rome or Greece, that article is nonsense!  The writings from Rome and Greece refer to Celtic practices on the European continent only.  Therefore, do ancient writings confirm the practice of an ancient Irish festival of the dead called Samhain?  No!

     Here are the primary sources on ancient Celtic religion, and I urge you to read them for yourself.  You’ll have to excuse the fact that my bibliography format isn’t perfect. 

(1)   Caesar, Julius, 1980 (new trans.) The Battle for Gaul, Boston: David R. Godine 

OR

(2)   Caesar, Julius, 1951 (revised 1982, Jane F. Gardner) The Conquest of Gaul, Great Britain: S.A. Handford

(3)   Diodoros Siculus, History

(4)   Strabo, Geographica

(5)   Tacitus, Agricola & Annals XIV  (See this link for his account of the attack on the Druids on the island of Mona: http://resourcesforhistory.com/celtic_druids.htm)

(6)   The Coligny Calendar, a Gaulish calendar found in Coligny, Ain, France in 1897. Inscribed on a Bronze tablet, this artifact dates to the late first century/early second century A.D.  It mentions an autumn feast called Samonios.

     These are the ancient primary sources I’ve found so far.  If anyone finds more, please feel free to let me know in the comment line of my blog.

     Now, here are some medieval Irish literary references to Samhain:

(1)   Tochmarc Emire, “The Wooing of Emer,” a text dated to the tenth century by Kuno Meyer;  here’s an electronic copy of the text: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/G301021/

(2)   Balor of the Evil Eye, a story from the saga text Cath Maighe Tuireadh (“The Battle of Magh Tuireadh”), which dates from the Old Irish period, ca. 600-900 A.D., and is preserved in a sixteenth-century manuscript; here’s the electronic copy: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/T300010/ and here’s another online version: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/cmt/cmteng.htm

(3)   The Fenian Cycle, mythological stories of the famous band of Irish warriors known as the Fianna and led by Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhaill), which was written down roughly in the twelfth century or so;  here’s a link for online texts: http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/index_irish.html

(4)   Leabhar Gabhála Éireann, “The Book of the Taking of Ireland,” dating to the eleventh century in its earliest version which was compiled by an anonymous writer. Here is the reference to Samhain: §44. Two thirds of the progeny, the wheat, and the milk of the people of Ireland (had to be brought) every Samain to Mag Cetne. Wrath and sadness seized on the men of Ireland for the burden of the tax. They all went to fight against the Fomoraig (Lebor Gabala Eirinn Ed. Trans. R. A. S. MacAlister. Irish Text Society 1832).

(5)   Cath Crinna, “The Battle of Crinna,” from “The Book of Leinster,” ca. 1160, the manuscript of which is kept in Trinity College, Dublin; there is a reference to Samhain being the time when produce and crops were most mature.  Here’s an electronic version of the text: http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/cathcrinna.html

     These are the references to Samhain I’ve found so far.  By the way, none of these references link Samhain with All Hallow’s Eve in any way.  I have not been able to find any primary sources indicating that Samhain ever became All Hallow’s Eve.  There is a book by history professor Nicholas Rogers (at York University in Toronto), entitled Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night.  It was published by Oxford University Press in 2003.  In that book, Rogers states: “There is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship.”   Based on what I’ve found so far, I would have to agree with his statement.

     The evidence I have found suggests that Samhain was a harvest festival, and that’s it.  So, if a Christian wanted to celebrate a harvest festival, he/she could celebrate Samhain separately from Halloween.   I personally celebrate Halloween as a type of harvest festival.  The stories of ghosts, goblins and witches associated with Halloween are just like the medieval Irish stories mentioned above:  they are mythology.  As such, they’re just part of the fun. 

     Again, as an Orthodox Christian, my lack of belief in ghosts does not mean that I don’t believe in life after death.  I just believe in the living experience of my Church, which is that people who die don’t come back to visit as floating ghosties.  When the Lord allows them to visit, they do so as fully resurrected people who confirm the holy Resurrection of Christ.  And again, resurrected people aren’t zombies.  Was Christ a zombie when He rose from the dead?  Certainly not!

      My next article will deal specifically with All Hallow’s Eve, whether or not the original All Saints and All Souls Days in Western Europe were actually connected with Halloween, and the primary sources that show how our present American celebration of Halloween developed.   Until then, Happy Halloween and Joyous All Saints Day of the West!

                                                                                    In Christ’s Love,

                                                                                                       Gabrielle