Comment by throw0101d | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw0101d | Hacker News Reader

The History for Atheists weblog has a good entry called "Is Halloween Pagan?":

> The short answer is “no”. Contrary to Seth Andrews’ claims about “the Catholic Church” stealing a pagan festival “involving the druid priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks and treats”, the date and most of the traditions are firmly Christian in origin. The November 1 date that is the centre of “Allhallowmas” was not derived from any “Celtic” original and the original Irish date for an All Saints feast moved from April 20 to November 1 due to the influence of Continental and English liturgical practice. That this meant the new All Saints Day fell on the “quarter day” of Samhain was pure coincidence. Contrary to repeated insistence in popular sources, scholars can find no clear indication of any ritual or religious practices on Samhain, and certainly none that can be traced to later Halloween traditions. Masks, costumes, trick or treating, Halloween games etc. all either have known traditional Christian origins or simply cannot be linked to anything definitely pre-Christian.

* https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/

YT video/audio equivalent of the article if you want a more podcast-y experience:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fVWAWQxKpM

* https://historyforatheists.com/2022/10/pagan-halloween/

Halloween has always been a feast at the end of the harvest season. The weather changes around now. Its the end of Autumn for us, the start of Winter. There's berries and nuts etc. It was always going to be a massive party. I really doubt the coming of Christianity changed it in any significant way.

The bonfires and wildness of the night are still there, its always been a night were the rules seem looser.

> Halloween has always been a feast at the end of the harvest season.

[citation needed]

Because the weblog goes to primary sources (amongst others) and finds that:

> The Félire Óengusso or “Martyrology of Óengus” is another martyrology, attributed to Saint Óengus of Tallaght. It seems to date to the ninth century and is based on earlier English martyrologies (like that of Bede), but with significant local Irish additions. It mentions a feast of All Saints in its listing for April 20:

> Under November 1, on the other hand, we do find – finally – a reference to “Samhain”. But it is not associated with commemorating All Saints, but rather with three Irish saints only:

> So while the English were already celebrating All Saints Day on November 1 in the eighth century and that date became predominant in Frankia by the mid ninth century, the Irish were doing so on April 20, with “stormy Samain” the feast of three local holy men only. As esteemed historian of folklore, Ronald Hutton, summarises it in his Stations Of The Sun (Oxford, 1996):

[…]

> For Frazer, Samhain had been nothing less than the pagan Celtic feast of the dead. Like Rhys, he saw it as marking the death of the old year and also as a numinous time when the supernatural was abroad. But he argued that it was common for many cultures to honour their dead at the close of the year and so argued that the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls on November 1 and 2 had to have their origins in this posited earlier Celtic festival. Of course, this is based on the idea that All Saints began in Ireland and the Celtic tradition and transferred to the rest of Europe. But, as discussed above, this does not seem to be the case, with the earlier Irish celebration of All Saints (April 20) giving way to the date established in Frankia in the ninth century (November 1). Frazer got the influence completely the wrong way around.

> the coming of Christianity changed it in any significant way.

The 95 Theses changed it in a huge way in 1517. Recall that many Protestants don't believe in saints at all!

Halloween, in the sense of the eve of all saints, is after Easter in the eastern churches, which is the 'old' date but was changed to coincide with the day that the poe consecrated the Pantheon as a Christian church (the Pantheon having used to be a temple to all gods, is now dedicated to all saints).

The bonfires are a Catholic thing dating to when they were outlawed in England. They couldn’t light candles in churches so they lit bonfires in fields instead.

A lot of this can be said for most, if not all, of the stolen-Paganism claims, not Halloween. If you excuse the inherent bias, Fr. Casey Cole has a good recent video on the matter, however, he focuses more on Christmas than Halloween: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpYNQgb_IAE

Ironically, most of the anti-Christian and Pagan symbols you see today were actually copied from Christianity. The upside down cross was originally the Cross of St. Peter (St. Peter asked to be crucified upside down because he thought himself unworthy to die as Christ did), until anti-Christians used it in intentionally sacrilegious mock-rituals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mass).

I recommend attending a traditional Catholic requiem mass for the dead on all souls day. It explains everything about Halloween decor.

The church is draped in black and lit only by unbleached beeswax candles, hence the black and orange for Halloween.

And there might be skulls or bones (relics) if the church is important enough.

Mozart's Requiem - All Souls Solemn High Mass https://www.youtube.com/live/9bRSLZQr7kU?si=TzyHzkJvV5-L2Mi6

Nice. Here's the one from last year and you can see all the elements:

https://www.youtube.com/live/D8x3s6h5f5M

1. The orange candles around the coffin and the altar

2. The black draped coffin and black garments worn by the priests

3. On the left and right side of the altar you can see what I presume are relics (bones and personal accoutrements of saints)

> If you excuse the inherent bias, Fr. Casey Cole has a good recent video on the matter, however, he focuses more on Christmas than Halloween: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpYNQgb_IAE

History for Atheists has posts on 'pagan origin' topics:

* https://historyforatheists.com/2020/12/pagan-christmas/

* https://historyforatheists.com/2023/12/interview-dr-philipp-...

* https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-...

* https://historyforatheists.com/2023/04/interview-andrew-henr...

Middle-Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate a festival called Eid il-Burbara (Saint Barbra's festival) on the 4th of December, which has lots of similarities to Halloween and trick-or-treating but has been celebrated a lot longer than Halloween [0]

I wonder if this tradition influenced Halloween in any way

Note: my family are Orthodox Christians from Jordan, but we celebrate this festival slightly differently than what is described in [0], but I know predominantly some Christian towns celebrate it as the article describes even today

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_il-Burbara

Thank you for that site. As an atheist who is frequently extremely annoyed at other atheists for being hypocritically intellectually lazy when it paints faith negatively (i.e. "Christians just believe what they're told without any critical thought" and "somebody told me Christmas was pagan, which would be embarrassing for the Christmas, so I immediately believed and repeated it" from the same person), reading many of these articles is extremely satisfying and cathartic.

It reminds me of many of the negative but obviously false stories that were flying around about Trump before he was elected. I strongly dislike Trump, but I really hate bullshit. It's a shame that so many people who consider themselves to be critical thinkers and above the impressionable are just as susceptible to lazy confirmation bias as the rest.

I'm going to slightly disagree. The facts are probably correct, but celebration of spirits, evil, and the other things are clearly against teachings in the bible. Thus I'll have to claim that it came not from Christians, but from Pagans pretending to be christian. (which is rather common anyway)

It came from Protestants pretending not to be Catholic, actually

Catholics and Protestants both have their own ways of pretending to be Christian while ignoring teachings in the bible. (though protestant has enough different sects that you can't draw a blanket on any one thing that they all do wrong)

Have you read much about the history of Catholicism and Protestantism? It sounds as if you’re speaking a bit out of your depth, admittedly.

I really don't think that HN is the place for pushing one's own dogmatic definition of Christianity. The people who celebrated Halloween have always considered themselves to be Christian, and there's no logical reason to give preference to your definition of the religion over theirs.

I have no problem with you having strong opinions about what the Bible teaches (I have similarly strong opinions myself!), but arguments about what counts as Christian invariably turn on dogma alone, which kills curiosity.

In Catholic tradition, which predates sola scriptura, the Bible gets legitimacy from the church, which predates the Bible, not vice versa.

The idea that the Bible ought to be the only source of Christian teaching is a very new idea. The apostolic churches don't buy it.

Not to say it's right or wrong but there's a two thousand year array of evidence that this is how the Catholic Church sees things.

From your reference to "the apostolic churches" I assume that you understand this, but to clarify for any less familiar with Christian denominations: both the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches (between them representing about 60% of global self-identifying Christians) deny the supremacy of the Bible for the same reason.

As someone on the OrthodoxChristianity subreddit put it [0], "show me where the table of contents comes from." Both Orthodox and Catholic Christians believe that because the list of books that make up the Bible is an output of some combination of history, tradition, and church councils, it can't be treated as superior to them.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/OrthodoxChristianity/comments/14y7f...

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