How Christianity And Paganism Collide In Halloween

This Halloween, as millions of people dress up as spirits and ghosts, neo-pagans will try to commune with actual spirits through the rituals of Samhain.

The holiday Americans know as Halloween actually began as two divergent religious festivals, one Christian, called All Hallows Eve, and one Pagan, known as Samhain. While the Catholic church eliminated the liturgical season called Allhallowtide, during which the church celebrated All Hallows Eve, practitioners of Celtic variations of neo-paganism have kept the celebrations of Samhain very much alive. Here is the religious heritage of Halloween — both what has passed away and what has remained undead.

The Triduum Of Death

All Hallows Eve was originally a vigil that the early Christian church held before a feast honoring all saints and martyrs called Hallowmass or All Hallows, according to Church Pop. The name Halloween is a contraction of ‘All Hallows Eve,’ and the vigil itself involved prayer, fasting, and a mass in preparation for the following day’s feast. St. Odilo of Cluny expanded the liturgical celebration with the church-wide popularization of All Souls Day, held on Nov. 2, during which members of the church would pray for the souls of all the dead.

The three celebrations – All Hallows Eve, Hallowmass, and All Souls Day, created what the church referred to as The Triduum of Death – a three day liturgical season focused on the communion of saints and the meaning Christ gives to human mortality. Pope Sixtus IV expanded the Triduum to an eight day liturgical season called an Octave in the mid 15th century. The season lasted well into the 20th century and was celebrated in different ways by both Catholics and Protestants.

Pope Pius XII eliminated Allhallowtide in 1955, however, with a liturgical reform called ‘Cum hac nostra aetate,’ that remained even after the Second Vatican Council. Most Catholics, therefore, do not celebrate the liturgical events involved in Allhallowtide. The Eastern Orthodox church still maintains some observations of All Hallows, as do some Protestant denominations, such as the Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, and others, though in truncated form as only All Saints Day. The Christian connection to Halloween has been largely forgotten in popular culture, partly as a result of the de-popularization of the liturgical season once known as The Triduum of Death.

The Witch’s New Year

The orginal form of the Celtic celebration of Samhain, pronounced Sow-in and held Oct. 31, predates The Triduum of Death. The ancient Celts celebrated Samhain roughly 2,000 years ago in the areas now known as the U.K., Ireland, and parts of France. Practitioners of the festival celebrated the end of the harvest and the coming of winter, viewed as a spiritual “in-between time” of life and death, during which the Celts believed that the veil separating the seen world and the spiritual world was thinnest, according to History.

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