Samhain Lord of the Dead

Tired of my many Halloween posts recently? I promise I'm almost done! This last one and I'll have gotten it out of my system ...for now.

In a recent post, "The Plain Truth About Samhain", we opened up the historical record and we dug in to find what it says, or more likely does not say, about Samhain. It was clear Samhain was a calendar event. Of course there's so much more to the story than one post can handle.

In the mid-1900s, there was another popular explanation for Samhain - that Samhain was a proper noun name of an ancient Druidic god titled "Lord of the Dead".
Woo! Spooky!
I avoided talking about this because it is complete and utter nonsense. I said I'd get to this later. Here we are! I want to go over this because the claim was quite popular when I was a kid. Something everyone needed to know. Promoted in the Plain Truth Magazine as God's own truth. Celebrating on Halloween was worshipping a demon lord! Even though few repeat this any more, it still has ramifications to this day. The damage was done. So, now I want to know where it came from. I find it interesting because of who was involved. Long-time readers of this blog, all two of you, will recognize some of these names.

Let's start at the end of the story, because that's the best part.

1950s ONWARD

Samhain Lord of the Dead (or similar phrases) was very popular in the Worldwide Church of God and its splinter churches from the 1950s through recently. The earliest written record I could find is in a Plain Truth article by Herman Hoeh from 1953.

“'The American celebration rests upon Scottish and Irish folk customs WHICH CAN BE TRACED IN DIRECT LINE FROM PRE-CHRISTIAN TIMES' - from paganism! 'Although Halloween has become a night of rollicking fun, superstitious spells, and eerie games which people take only half seriously, its beginnings were quite otherwise. The earliest Halloween celebrations were held' -not by the inspired early church, but-- 'by the Druids in honor of Samhain, Lord of the Dead, whose festival fell on November 1.'” (From Halloween Through Twenty Centuries, by Ralph Linton, p. 4.)

-Herman Hoeh, "Halloween Where Did It Come From?", The Plain Truth magazine, October 1953, p.7 [bold mine]

Given what we learned in my other Halloween posts, we can see several things are wrong there. Read the posts and you'll see. But the biggest thing for us right now is that Samhain is and always was a day; never a being.

Herman Hoeh, "most accurately informed historian in the world" right there. Almost accurately, anyway.

I'll believe anything you say! Just don't eat me!

The Worldwide Church of God ran basically the same article in The Plain Truth magazine through the 60s, changed it slightly in the 70s when John Schroeder retooled it (see the October 1975 edition), and was still making this claim as late as 1985 (see the Good News magazine, October/November 1985, p.11 - this is the famous edition with the giant, scary, red triceratops that captivated many an active imagination.) Philadelphia Church of God (a split-off from Worldwide) was still writing copycat articles with this claim in 2021.

Here's the real kicker. As it turns out, the Worldwide Church of God in general and Herman Hoeh in particular were at the forefront of this claim. The spearhead, so to speak. Who knew all of us with a past in Armstrongism were part of something instrumental in spreading the Samhain Lord of the Dead misinformation. If you are or were an Armstrongist, you can hold your head high knowing you were part of a group that promoted one of the stupidest things ever written.

Herman Hoeh and his source material helped to inspire many others outside of Armstrongism. One notable name that promoted the claim was Jack Chick (cartoonist and evangelist). He wrote several "Chick Tracts" attacking Halloween from the 1960s to early 80s. Because of this, many on the fringe of Evangelical Christianity heeded the entirely false information about Samhain.
Another source was Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (see volume 12, 1973, p.152). How can Jack Chick be wrong if it was in the encyclopedia? Their entry on Halloween was so thoroughly bad, I literally LOL'd as I read it.
Some claim Ralph Woodrow as a source, but I cannot find anything of the sort to prove this, so I do not believe he was a source, nor can I find anything from Alexander Hislop. Others claim Mike Warnke - the guy who was exposed as a fraud for starting the Satanist panic of the 1980s - but I could not verify this either.

By the 1980s, the claim had become so widespread it started leaking into pop culture. For example, the movie Halloween II mentioned it, then Halloween III mentions it in a more roundabout way. Slasher films would never mislead us, would they? And the infamous punk rocker Glen Danzig named his second band after Samhain. Well, he's back touring with the Misfits now, so no harm done.

I have found some fringe names online who have made this claim more recently. Later versions of Armstrongist material cite sources such as G. W. Douglas' "The American Book of Days" (which does not cite its sources). Plus, older publications a plenty are available online right now with this claim lingering inside like an old smell in a cellar, so I suppose that counts as the claim still being made today. I mean, they could take it down or even add some kind of retraction. But no.

It's important to keep in mind it was never true! I mean, yeah, it's "God's truth", sure. But it's not true truth. That's my point.
(If you are new to this blog, I am being sarcastic here, due to the multitudinous false claims Armstrongism has labeled "God's truth" over the years. We have articles on that.)

PRIOR TO 1950s

We've seen the end of the story, now let's see the beginning.
How did Herman Hoeh and Funk & Wagnalls get so wrong in the first place? Let's find out.

When Ronald Hutton, in his book "Blood and Mistletoe", moves into his section on Early Modern authors, William Stukeley is the first name he mentions.

Stukeley never used the phrase "Samhain Lord of the Dead" or anything similar. But what he did was (falsely) linked the Druids to cultures in the ancient Middle East. Stukeley claimed the Druids were practitioners of a pure, universal ancient religion from Noah's time. He believed most of the world abandoned that religion and devolved into idolatry, but the Druids did not. In his view, Druids were wise and benevolent, with incredible wisdom and skill equal to ancient Egyptians and Greeks in every way. The only people better than the Druids were the Israelites, and only because of divine revelation.

You might ask, what does that have to do with anything? Excellent question. It lays the groundwork for other "historians" to concoct new ideas tying the Celts to practices from the ancient near east; treating them interchangeably (when they are not interchangeable at all). One person in particular who accepted this was Charles Vallancey.

In 1786, Vallancey published the book "A Vindication of the Ancient History of Ireland" where he lays out his case. He associated Samhain with Baal and Bacchus, and calls Samhain "angel of death" and "judge of departed souls" (see pp.230-232 and 494-495 of that link).
Like a literary force of nature, while writing Vindication, Vallancey was also writing a multi-volume series of books titled "Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis". In volume III, he links Samhain with Baal and Pluto, uses the phrase "judge of departed souls" again, and even invents a whole new name: Balsab, by combining Baal (a Canaanite word meaning "lord") and Sab (a made up word he says means "death") (see pp.443-448 of that link). Now, for the first time, we have the Lord of death idea fully formed. And, as anyone who knows their Bible will realize, he has matched Samhain to the Devil.

As author Lisa Morton said in her book "Trick or Treat: A history of Halloween":

"There was just one problem: much of what Vallancey recorded was wrong." (p.9).

This is the guy who started it all. He's the one who turned Samhain from a day into a being and then into the lord of death.

Since I write about holidays too often, I need to clear something up before it ever arises. Vallancey is not personifying the day, as Father Christmas is the personification of the Christmas holiday. No. He is creating brand-new mythology and plugging it into real history. He is inventing history. Wrong history, no doubt, but in his mind that is how things really went. In his version of history, the day would eventually take its name from this being he invented.

If you are thinking this sounds a lot like Alexander Hislop and J. H. Allen, you're absolutely right. Birds of a feather, they are all products of the ideas of the 1500s to 1800s - shockingly bad etymology where any words that sound similar are similar, ancient one-world religions, interchangeable gods where almost all are one and the same, eastern nations populating Britain, customs specific to one culture could simply be applied to any other culture at will, and whatever pops into your mind gets printed as if it was God's own truth - no brain/pen filter at all. Exactly like Hislop, Allen, Hoeh, Collins, and etc etc. This is why you need to be very careful with information from this era. This is precisely why I dedicated a whole section to material from this era in my Samhain post. This is the main point of my post "Some Background On Hislop".

Vallancey was strongly opposed by scholars such as Sir William Jones (father of Comparative Linguistics and author of multiple books on Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit), Edward O'Reilley (author Irish-English Dictionary), and others. Some of the criticism was brutal. For example, Leslie Stephen, in his Dictionary of National Biography, wrote:

"Vallancey may be regarded as the founder of a school of writers who theorise on Irish history, language, and literature, without having read the original chronicles, acquired the language, or studied the literature, and who have had some influence in retarding real studies, but have added nothing to knowledge." (p.83).

Ouch!

But it is clear that his distortions found an audience. As P.T. Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute." Sadly, one such was James Bonwick, author of "Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions" (1894).

Bonwick used Vallancey's Vindication as a source and repeated his mistakes. There were a handful of other authors at the turn of the 20th century who reworked these claims, but none of any great import.

In the mid-20th century, Ralph Linton picks up the gauntlet and writes the book which introduces Herman Hoeh to the idea of "Samhain Lord of the Dead.”

I actually took the time to order Linton's book on intra-library loan just so I could see who he cites as his sources. He cites no one.

Oddly enough, Linton's book is recommended on Encyclopedia.com as, "An excellent account of Halloween, its evolution throughout the centuries, and how it is related to the Christian cult of the dead." (Hugo Nutini "Day of the Dead", https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/day-dead.)
Never you mind those glaring falsehoods and lack of citation!

I tried to hunt down where Linton may have gotten his claims (because that's what we do here at As Bereans Did). Was it directly from Vallancey, or indirectly through another author like Bonwick? Unfortunately, nothing was apparent.
One possible candidate is author Ruth Edna Kelley and her book "The Book of Hallowe'en" (1919). And whom does she obviously draw from? Charles Vallancey. Vallancey is not cited as a source (it seems she pulled more from magazines than scholarly sources), but the concepts she writes about (ie. judging the dead, fortuitous timing of All Saints) are obviously his and the language she uses ("lord of death") is his.
But another, possibly better candidate, is ... drumroll please ... the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 edition (specifically Volume XII, article "Halloween", pp. 857-858). Because of course it is! Anyone who has read articles here on As Bereans Did, or who is very familiar with Armstrongist literature, will immediately recognize this particular encyclopedia because it has been cited so often over the decades. I have the exact quote for you: “Further, it was a Druidic belief that on the eve of this festival Saman, lord of death, called together the wicked souls that within the past twelve months had been condemned to inhabit the bodies of animals.” This is bunk information, given respectability by being printed in one of the planet's most respected authorities. But it says what some people want to hear.

It all starts with and returns back to Vallancey.

That takes us right Back to the Future, to the 1950s and later, where Herman Hoeh will spread this mind virus to the world like a plague, all because he was too dedicated to his own pre-determined conclusions to bother verifying his source material. It sounded too good to pass up.
But Hoeh was paid to be a fanatic - what's Britannica's excuse?

CONCLUSION

Stukeley tied Druids to the Near East, which inspired Vallancey to mythologize Samhain and pair him with Satan, James Bonwick borrows and degrades Vallancey's ideas with even more horrific etymology, which makes it into resources like the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia and the Britannica 1911 edition, then Linton (and some others) pick this up and put some lipstick on it, which was read by Hoeh, and it all somehow made it into Chick Tracks, the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, and Halloween II.

That's how it happened!

So, what is the big lesson here?     Mind. Your. Sources.
How few and unreliable were the sources used to build one of the most popular claims about Samhain. Is it really a surprise that it was false?

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Writing in the AI Age

I want to think out loud to you.

I know many of you who will grace me with your time and energy in reading my "Plain Truth About Samhain" article will come away thinking that was a difficult read. Long, sometimes tedious, and not very sharp in tone like in other articles. I know. I agree. I can see it, even though I wrote it. But there's a method to my madness.
I used AI in that article. But what's more, I used that article as some kind of an experiment in AI.

In the recent past, I have used AI to help dig up information. Facts and figures and such. The Samhain article was the first where I asked AI for evaluation, and the first where I changed my writing according to its responses. (I went across multiple platforms.) This led me to a realization - this is how things are from now on.

People will be going to AI to ask it for its evaluation of various things. If those things are not written according to how that AI platform "thinks", then AI has a higher probability of returning a response that can be mistaken as negative - or even, as I found out, its responses might be straight up in error. That might affect an author in ways they feel are unfair. So, silly as this may sound, it is in their best interest to write for the AI system rather than for the human reader.

That isn't always going to go well.

As I ran my post past multiple AI solutions, I received multiple results. All of them said I was factually accurate. (Actually, they said "mostly accurate", because AI shies away from definitive statements.) None of them left me without a warning of some kind, and generally that warning was due to not being neutral enough. So, I rewrote until I was as neutral as I could reasonably be. Sometimes, an argument is so weak that neutrality becomes misleading. However, AI tends to treat neutrality as an end unto itself. 

What's more, I had to push back on one AI platform or the other at times, showing where responses were obviously incorrect. I took Microsoft's AI platform to task several times. Good thing the platforms were all big enough to admit mistakes. But I only caught those mistakes in the first place because I am the author. No general end-user is going to do that. When that happens, it will be damage done; too late.

Here are some things I've noticed about AI:

1) AI platforms often treat my post as if it is an academic paper, not a polemics blog post. My mix of tones confuses the AI system.
2) AI platforms often insist too much on neutrality. I feel there is a point one can reach where an idea is not just weak, but it is extremely weak, and keeping the door open for it in some pursuit of academic neutrality becomes counterintuitive.
3) AI platforms tend to say my post is factually accurate, yet warn that I overstate my case. I've found they do that based on my wording choices rather than the literal facts I've used or the arguments I'm making. And very small word choices make big differences. For example, AI sees "no evidence whatsoever" and "not a shred of evidence" in very different ways. The first is too absolute. The second is perfectly fine. (I think they're the same.)
4) AI platforms tend to switch back and forth between checking for accuracy about Samhain and checking for accuracy about all pagan origins regardless. But the post is specifically about Samhain, not all things whatsoever. I have found this is due to their inherent nature. They tend to generalize no matter how specific I try to be.
5) The feedback I get depends greatly on exactly how I ask my question. I was surprised what a huge difference a little change in question makes to the results provided.

As things stand today, I have found that ChatGPT is far more natural and intuitive than most other platforms. It actually engages with the argument and adapts to my style, whereas other systems try to force my writing into their own, more limited frameworks. That difference is worth noting. So, I mentioned the things from my list to ChatGPT. It responded:

You saw patterns:

• too much neutrality
• difficulty distinguishing polemic from academic work
• “overstating your case” warnings based on generic templates
• drifting from Samhain-specific analysis into general “pagan origins” tropes
• evaluating tone instead of argument structure

These are systemic artifacts, not personal flaws in your writing.
Large models are optimized for:

• avoiding conflict
• avoiding decisive claims
• avoiding “taking sides”
• smoothing edges
• interpreting everything through a generic academic lens

So your clear, polemical, courtroom-style presentation confused them.
In that tension — you discovered something important about how writing will be read in the future.

Well, that's going to be a problem.

Once people realize they are expected to write for an AI platform over a human audience (because that human audience is going to request feedback from AI), and once they realize how those platforms work (often not as expected), there will be discomfort and push back.

We had left the Space Age for the Information Age, and now the AI Age has come. AI isn't going anywhere. This is how things are now. This is how they'll stay for the foreseeable future. The only hope is for AI to progress to overcome its current limitations. The only alternative is for the general public to understand how AI works and to take that into account. Frankly, I have no confidence in that option.

Fantastic! Now it's only a matter of time until the Great Bwana Bob Thiel tells us how AI is an emissary of Satan here to buffet him, and he is THE most end-timey-est of end-time prophets for predicting it. (Unless he's already done that and I missed it. Either way, I really could not care less.)

Anyways, that's what's on my mind today, and that's why my last post was a bit more difficult than either of us would prefer. I apologize for that. Onward and upward! I do recommend you read it, though. I worked hard on it and it has a lot of good information to help you when you are being falsely accused of paganism for your simple Halloween fun.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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The Plain Truth About Samhain

Until 2024, I managed to avoid researching Halloween. I didn't want to. I have my disagreements with modern Halloween customs and I didn't feel there was any acceptable outcome for me. How could this possibly be anything other than what people say? I see now that "common knowledge" is wildly off mark. I find this disturbing.
Today, we are going to review what actual historical records say or do not say about Samhain. I mean Samhain particularly, not odd Celtic pagan customs in general. I've found two main problems that I want to go over: relying on bad source material from the 1500s-1900s, and treating folklore like non-fiction. These two things are responsible for more confusion than anything else I have found.

I'm gonna give you the Luke Skywalker summary right at the start:

Everything you thought you knew about pagan origins of Halloween is wrong.

You have no doubt heard, "The night of October 31 was known as Samhain, a Pagan festival which was later combined with Christian celebrations and renamed All Saints’ Day by the Catholic church." I got that quote from The Sun news.      Yeah. That is not how things really went.

For over a year, I've been reading into the Druids. It all started when I wanted to know even more about the particulars of Christmas traditions, like mistletoe. I thought learning about the more controversial traditions might be nice. I came across a very helpful video that mentioned an author named Ronald Hutton. I started reading Hutton's books. It gently blew the narrative on Druids apart, and mistletoe, and.....

That led me to want to know more about "Halloween comes from Samhain". I've been trying hard to find the evidence. There are books and websites and videos and newspapers and "experts" galore who make this claim. So very many sources, even Christian ones, say the same thing. I figured this is going to be easy! Low-hanging fruit for a quick post when I've got nothing better to write about. I'll just gather up some sources about how Halloween and Samhain merged. One of those "you'll be surprised what Herbert was right about" kinds of stories. So, off I went to track down the sources. (Always track down the sources.)

I've read Julius Caesar and Cicero and Pliny. I've read Sanas Cormaic and Félire Óengusso. I've read old Irish folklore like Tochmarc Emire and the Annals of Ulster. I've read Ronald Hutton and others. I've read multiple, often tedious articles advocating both sides of this debate. I've even gotten ChatGPT involved. What did I learn?

     THERE IS NO SOLID CASE THERE!

No ancient fiery rituals, no specters slipping through the veil, no cleverly carved vegetables, no wreathed Druidic feasts, no costumes to frighten the spirits - just folklore, educated guesses, opinions, inferences, speculations, anachronisms, forgeries, and the like.

ANCIENT ACCOUNTS

We have no records of Samhain from the Druids at all. Nothing. Zero. The Romans and Greeks do not mention Celtic holidays. So, no Samhain here. There goes anything truly ancient.
Well, that was a quick section!

EARLIER IRISH SOURCES

We must then move on to medieval documents. Samhain is Irish, so to Ireland we must go.

You can find mentions of Samhain that go back to second half of the first millennium. Bear in mind, this is a few hundred years after the Druids are believed to have disappeared. The reason why these are considered the oldest is due to a balance of the age of the surviving manuscripts and the estimated age of the content within those manuscripts.
Think of it like a New Testament manuscript. Let's say you have a New Testament manuscript from the 1400s AD, and it might be a copy of something from the 400s, but the content comes from the first century. That same sort of thing happens in these Irish documents. The manuscripts are from after 1000 AD (usually about 1400), they are copies estimated to the 700-1100s, and the content is from... well, we don't know. Could be 400AD; could be much older. It's anybody's guess.

The oldest mentions of Samhain come mainly from these documents. The dates here are estimates of how old the language is (in other words, this is the "copied from" date):

• Echtra Nerai (The Adventure of Nera) - 700s-800s AD
• Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer) - 700s-800s AD
• Félire Óengusso (Martyrology of Oengus) - late 800s AD
• Sanas Cormaic (Cormac’s Glossary) - 800s-900s AD
• Annála Uladh (Annals of Ulster) - 400s-1500s AD
• Acallam na Senórach (Tales of the Elders) - 1100s AD

I have put those in order of the estimated age of their mention of Samhain. These documents are not about Samhain, they just contain that word. (Félire Óengusso doesn't actually mention Samhain, but it's still a key document so I'm listing it.) I am only interested in the parts that contain that word. For example, the Annals of Ulster has content ranging from the 400s to the 1500s AD, but the part about Samhain is estimated to 900s AD. Even though it has the oldest content by far, I'm putting it later in the list due to Samhain.

Some of these documents are folklore and some are non-fiction.

Irish folklore (Echtra Nerai, Tochmarc Emire, and Acallam na Senórach) mentions Samhain in a way that treats it as an annual holiday. Samhain is depicted as a night of government activity, feasting and games, danger - since the world of the living and the spirits come close together and fairies could be dangerous, a time when certain foods are matured, and it is clearly mentioned both as a single day as well as a 'tide' (think holiday season). So, we get all of the elements together here. It is important to keep in mind that this is mythical history we're talking about, not real events of Irish history.

The non-fiction (Sanas Cormaic, which is a dictionary, Félire Óengusso, which is a martyrology, and Annála Uladh, which is a list of events) mentions samhain as a timestamp. The word samhain literally means "summer's end", and that is how these documents treat it. It is merely a mention that gives context to what time of year it was when other events happened. There is no mention of it being a holiday nor mention of anything festive happening on that day.

What can we conclude from this? It is reasonable (but not certain) to conclude Samhain is very old. It has been theorized that days like Samhain were not originally festivals, per se, but were days set apart to mark the progression of time in a lunar-based agrarian culture. "In this time we calf, and in this time we plant, and in this time we gather..." and etc. The oldest records say nothing at all about any real-world festivities or traditions associated with Samhain. Could there have been? Absolutely. These types of cycles usually come with some form of celebration. Just look at Judaism. Their entire holy day cycle is a crop cycle. But nothing explicitly says this for the Celts.
When we go rooting through the historical record of this era, in the real world outside of folklore, we do not find much obvious Druidic paganism. But where folklore is concerned, even if folklore did contain survivals from ancient Druidism, there is nothing to show those things were being acted out widely in Christian Ireland. Remember, the claim is that Samhain was so popular the Pope felt pressured to replace it with All Saints. That goes far beyond some pockets of Druidism hiding in rural Ireland, and is absolutely not what the record shows.
To claim "due to folklore we know medieval Irish were still practicing paganism" is a far reach. The claim "Halloween is Samhain renamed" is a gross overstatement of the facts.

MORE ABOUT LORE

I feel there are two main problems in how the origins of Samhain has been done in the past. The first is: using folklore as solid fact. We have several important details to discuss here.

First - folklore is fictional, not factual.
Many look at what happened in folklore and conclude those things happened in real life, too. Samhain developed a certain way in folklore but that does not mean people in the real world did the same. These aren't research papers we're talking about. Customs in folklore do not need to exist in reality any more than the customs in modern fiction do. It is not reasonable to assume life closely imitated folklore any more than it does comic books. Folklore builds on real things like places and days, and uses things the reader should be familiar with, but likely none of the actions in folklore happened at all. Folklore does not necessarily depict what the people of the time "believed", either. It's a mythical historical tale, not a religious textbook. Do these things have a way of affecting society? Yes. Undeniably. That's even part of the point. But we must look for evidence of that outside of the folklore. Alas, we find almost nothing for Samhain, which is why we are looking in folklore in the first place. That doesn't mean folklore has no value. It's just very difficult to pick out the valuable parts. Samhain is one of those familiar things the stories use. They never explain Samhain; they just assume the reader knows what it is. So, Samhain should be real - but are any of the actions done on Samhain real? We are left to speculate.

Second - these dates are estimates.
The manuscripts containing these folk tales date from well after 1000 AD. The stories are estimated to the 700s or later because of the language used. Could they be that old? Certainly, that is reasonable. But must they be? No. Using outdated language to make a document appear older is not unheard of. It’s simplest to accept the earlier dating, but we should remember it's a scholarly estimate not an absolute definite.

Third - Irish folklore was written down by Catholic monks.
The Druids left no writings of their own, so any ancient content would have been transmitted orally at first. When Christian missionaries taught the Irish to write using the Latin alphabet, in about the 3rd-5th centuries, the old tales could finally be recorded - but only after the Druids were gone, and after society filtered through many cultural waves. We know the monks sometimes made alterations. Now, there is no way to be certain what is ancient, what is more recent past, and what is purely Christian. If it is difficult to translate folklore to real life, how much harder would it be, then, to translate folklore to real life that was erased or changed?

Fourth - the stories are meant to explain Ireland.
Irish folklore is not just stories for the sake of entertainment. They have a greater purpose. They are intended to build and reinforce a cultural identity. The point wasn't to describe Ireland as it was at the time, but as it had been; and by describing what had been, explain Ireland as it was at the time. In other words, they tell stories about how Ireland came to be and why some things were the way they were, and they elevate Ireland in comparison to other regions. Many of those themes are pagan, but some of those themes are definitely Christian. You can say the same about Lord of the Rings.

Fifth - there was no single, unified Celtic culture.
There is no Samhain at all in Welsh folklore. For the Welsh, their start of winter is Calan Gaeaf - which translates to the "first day of winter" (in contrast with "last of summer"). The Welsh had days similar to the Irish but with Welsh names and priorities. The first day of winter was not nearly as significant to them as the first day of May. In Gaul (France), there is no Samhain or any known day like it. The "three nights of Samonii" are often mentioned, but they were mid-summer days not associated with Samhain whatsoever. Britain also has no record of a day similar to Samhain. Why is any of this important? Because from what we've seen about Wales, Gaul, and Britain, we can be sure that there was no single unified Celtic culture. The various Celtic regions have clear similarities but significant differences as well. We must be careful when we say things like, "The Celts did this or that." It would be better to say, "The Irish did this or that," or "In Gaul, they did this or that."
This also does terrible damage to the "Samhain was so popular the Pope moved All Saints" claim.

Why did I go over all of this? To show that the many, many people who make claims like "it can be traced back" do not really trace back. There is a lot more uncertainty and speculation going on here than it might seem. True scholars put a lot of time and hard work into their conclusions, but even they can be wrong. It's the armchair scholars I'm referring to here - the Herman Hoehs of the world; the ones who say "Pagan! Pagan! Pagan!". All of these things we just went over, and there are more that I didn't list, give us a very good reason to say "scholars think" or "might be" or even "could use a complete reconsideration".
Let's go over a specific example of something needing a complete reconsideration.

NOVEMBER 1

Since samhain means "last of summer", it is reasonable to conclude it refers to late-October / early-November. Other nearby cultures started winter then. Bede tells us the Anglo-Saxons started winter on the full moon in their month that falls in October. It's possible the Celts did similarly. But ancient Celts did not use the Roman calendar, therefore they did not have a November. The only Celtic calendar we have, the Coligny Calendar, is lunar. No lunar calendar would align with the Roman solar calendar. If Samhain was set to November 1, it would have to have been changed to that, and only after customs had been significantly altered to become Romanized or perhaps even Christianized. So, how did it become so?

The first place where we can tie Samhain to November 1 is not from Bede, who did not write about the Irish, but from the Félire Óengusso - a list of Christian martyrs estimated to the late 800s AD. On an entry for November 1, the phrase used is "cétamain geimredh" (“first day of winter”). This is usually translated, or rather transliterated, into English as "Samhain" or sometimes "Allhallowstide", but Samhain is not actually written there. (Newer manuscripts have the word samuin, but the oldest do not.) So, the association between Samhain and November 1 is indirect. The thinking goes - if November 1 is the first day of winter, and Samhain is the end of summer, then November 1 must be Samhain. Seems legit.

But notice something - there is no hint of anything pagan here; only Christian. The only thing Oengus' Martyrology tells us is the start of winter was associated in Ireland with a Christian feast day for martyred saints on November 1.

This is a game of speculation, so let's speculate a bit. It is possible Félire Óengusso does not refer to Samhain in any way. All it refers to is the start of winter. Another timestamp. Samhain must be read into it. Therefore, it is possible samhain was associated with November 1 even later on than this. To take it one step further, the folklore says Samhain was a single day and a tide (a holiday season). Many authors claim Samhain was a three-day festival. It is possible the original samhain was more general - a short period of time when summer was ending, rather than a single "last day of summer". That Samhain was a single day is only an educated guess
...but a reasonable one. It is simpler just to stick with Samhain as a single day. And a simpler explanation is usually a better one. I only speculated like this to demonstrate how many things are built on assumptions.

One potential explanation for the November 1 date is that it's halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. And that's true. But here's the catch - it's only true in the Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar didn't exist back then. In 700 AD, under the Julian calendar, November 7th would have been the halfway point. That date just drifts later in the year with time. Samhain was on November 11th in 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was first adopted in Ireland. This eleven-day change caused there to be two Samhains for a while. There is no evidence the ancient Celts in Ireland measured equinoxes to begin with. They were a lunar society. Therefore, this explanation for the November 1 date is one we can move past comfortably.

Another potential explanation for the November 1 date is that the Druids absorbed a festival from the Romans, and the favored target is Pomona. This claim was invented in the 1700-1800s and web searches propagate it as if it were legitimate. Pomona was so minor that she had no known festival. Old Roman calendars - Chronography of 354 and the Fasti Antiates Mores - list nothing for November 1. Web searches will mention August 13th rather than November 1, but even that is wrong. The August 13th festival was dedicated to Diana. There is no real support the Druids in Ireland borrowed anything from the ancient Romans where Samhain is concerned. Therefore, we can move past this as well.

The most reasonable conclusion left is the traditional start of winter was not originally on November 1 but was moved there by Christians who used a Roman solar calendar rather than moon cycles. Romanization + Christianization = November 1. That is the simplest and least problematic explanation.

EARLY-MODERN MARVELS

That leaves us with Early Modern writings, from the 1500s AD forward.
I feel the second of the two main problems with Samhain history is: not discerning the source material. Most of the problem comes from right here in this era.

As we've seen, earlier documents did not mention Samhain traditions in the real world at all. The oldest surviving mentions of Samhain traditions in the real world appear from this period. That said, we must be careful.
Many of these practices were already common in other holidays throughout the year. Bonfires, decorations, dressing in costume, going door-to-door, carving root vegetables (ancestors of the jack-o-lantern), and the like were all medieval or later Christian customs used at Christian holidays throughout the year. When we say, "Samhain traditions in the real world appear from the 1500s AD forward," it is not necessarily that they are invented here, but that older Christian traditions are first applied to Samhain here.

One can speculate that Christians borrowed these customs from pagans originally and are just giving them back, but there is absolutely no support for an origin in Samhain, therefore I will reject it. Many of these customs do not originate in Ireland, therefore they cannot come from Samhain. Most of them genuinely appear to be Christian novelties. Most of these traditions are first recorded after 1,000 AD. (We have articles on that.) And some of them, like jack-o-lanterns, aren't mentioned until the 1700-1800s.

There is something else you should know about some of the documents from this era - they were written by people known to have forged documents and invented claims.

Take the most well known name from that period for instance: Edward Williams, aka Iolo Morganwg. Folklorist, known forger, Druidic Bard ...and Christian. Iolo didn't just forge manuscripts. He invented a history going back to Noah, Druidic traditions and customs, an "ancient" Bardic order complete with titles and costumes and annual meetings, and an alphabet, to name a few. It seems he was trying to live out the fantasies from the documents he so loved. Ironically, as noted by Ronald Hutton, one of Iolo's favorite quotes was, "The Truth Against The World" ("Blood and Mistletoe" p.295).

Look Iolo up and see for yourself. I will quote the Wikipedia article on Edward Williams (which is my habit to do when I want to demonstrate the information is readily available): "...it emerged after his death that he had forged several manuscripts...". That quote is wrong. It emerged while he was yet alive. Most notably, Edward Davies wrote "Mythology and Rites of the British Druids" in part to expose Iolo. Iolo countered that Davies' knowledge was shallow and future scholars would laugh at him. I laugh when Ronald Hutton says they were both right.
Sadly, Hutton mentions that Davies was unsuccessful in finding out all of Iolo's forgeries and ended up using some as authentic in his own conclusions ("Blood and Mistletoe" p.330).

Iolo has been a leading source for Druid customs since the 1700s. You can still find people citing Iolo as authoritative to this very day. But he's not the only questionable source. Iolo was inspired by William Stukeley, and in turn Iolo inspired others such as John Rhys, Charles Vallancey, and Margaret Murray, to name but three. Each of these had things right, but also many things grossly wrong or completely invented in their writings.

Then, into this prepared soup of truths, half-truths, and outright lies comes James Frazer, of the German History of Religions School and author of "The Golden Bough". Frazer was very influential and taken quite seriously in his claims that Christianity borrowed heavily from paganism. I don't blame people of the time for believing him. What other evidence did they have? Remember, we are talking about a time when archaeology, linguistics, textual criticism, and comparative religion were fairly well in their infancy. Frazer's conclusions have for the most part been abandoned in the past 50 years. However, much like Iolo, people cite Frazer to this day (looking at you, Living COG).

Of the two main problems I have found in tracking down Samhain, not discerning the true from the false in source material is by far the more egregious. Authors from the 1500s to early 1900s must be taken with more caution than that.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Finally come the Wiccans.

It was Gerald Gardner who founded Wicca - drawing on the misguided ideas of discredited historian Margaret Murray, the occult claims of Aleister Crowley, the since discarded theories of James Frazer, and a smattering of Freemasonry. Gardner, along with Ross Nichols, created the Wicca calendar of eight high days and formulated Wicca's base liturgy. Later, Alex and Maxine Sanders promoted and expanded this new neo-pagan faith.
It is these four who can be said to have elevated Samhain to a major pagan holiday. The root of the claims that "Wicca is older than Christianity" come ultimately from these four - especially Gardner, who was known for making and encouraging unfounded claims about the history of the movement. They are responsible for the mainstream claims about Halloween and Samhain in our time.

This entire business is a game of one person writes something false, then another quotes them, then on and on it goes until it appears to be true. Now, they all just quote one another in a giant circle. People no longer need proof; they are their own proof.

This begs the question: is the Samhain of the 1500s onward the same event as it had been, or is this a new thing with an old name fashioned entirely from tales and assumptions about the past? It seems Samhain has come full circle. It was a day whose name was recycled into Christian society, only to be recycled back out again 1,000 years later. In other words, what we think of as "ancient" Samhain might really be a clever remix of old ideas, not a living tradition passed down from time immemorial. Something of a J. J. Abrams version of Samhain.
This would be the exact opposite of Halloween originates in Samhain.

In my last post, "Real History Of The Druids", I wrote how Druids are a puzzle that you can put together in many ways. What you go looking for is what you will find. The more I read the more I believe this is true. It shocks me how very many claims are built on such very little evidence, or even none at all. I do suggest you read it.
One might ask, isn't that what I'm doing - finding what I intended to find? No. I've found the opposite of what I expected. I am not trying to build anything. I am merely reporting to you what evidence existed (or not), and when, and then I'm giving a few of my thoughts.

Note I have avoided anything about "Samhain Lord of the Dead". We'll get to that another time.

CONCLUSION

Let's see here. Is this accurate: "The night of October 31 was known as Samhain, a Pagan festival which was later combined with Christian celebrations and renamed All Saints’ Day by the Catholic church."? Not even close.

To recap:

· Nothing ties later Samhain customs definitively back to the Druids.
· Most Halloween traditions (costumes, begging door-to-door, carved veggies, fires) are modernizations of medieval Christian customs.
· Samhain likely began as a yearly time-marker closely associated with farming.

· That Samhain originally referred to a single day rather than a period of time is only an educated guess.
· Exactly when samhain was or how it was calculated, originally, are unknown.

· Samhain was not associated with November 1 until after Ireland's Christianization.

· There was no single Celtic culture. Samhain is distinctly Irish.

· The claim "Samhain was so popular the Pope felt he had to move All Saints to coopt it" is baseless.

· There is no mention of a festival of any kind in the oldest non-fictional works.

· Most info about Samhain comes from Irish folklore, which was copied or even created by Catholic monks.

· From the 1500s on, Druidic history was romanticized and many documents were forged to create a past that never really existed.

· Earlier historians tried to sift out the truth, but were not entirely successful.

· In the 1900s, the founders of Wicca drew on ideas of their time to create a new Samhain day.

· The founders of Wicca popularized the claim Halloween came from Samhain.

· Today, with the onset of more rigorous scientific disciplines and standards of evidence, a great deal of those past claims are being left behind.

I am throwing away these absolute claims that Halloween traditions come from the Druids. I suggest you do as well. It is far and away more reasonable to say: I will no longer let these claims bother my conscience because I know now what they are made of. I remind you, we reject "once pagan always pagan" here at ABD.

Thank you for bearing with me, dear reader. Hopefully, after all this, you can see why I am frustrated. I am tired of being told one thing only to find something entirely different, and, through it all, knowing minds will not change no matter what I write.

I can hardly blame Herbert Armstrong for not figuring all of this out on his own. (Not that he would have if he could have, but that's beside the point.) We today have the benefit of living after the 1980s when scholars made great strides in disproving old ideas, and we have the internet to put all this information at our fingertips. Ol' Herbie didn't have that to ignore. But modern Armstrongist splinter-churches have no such excuse! And, frankly, neither do the other mainstream churches out there who parrot false ideas, not to mention newspapers whose journalists are paid to research things (or so I am told).

Seriously, people. If I can spend one year reading in my free time about this and come to these conclusions, then anyone can. Most of all, well-funded churches should be able to pull this off.

I’ve spent a good deal of time tracing this topic through sources old and new, and I want to be open about the process. I used ChatGPT along the way - mostly to check sources, verify claims, and organize my thoughts. But every argument, conclusion, and sarcastic remark is my own.
This post isn’t heavy on detail, but behind the scenes I’ve done my best to stay honest, unbiased, and careful.

AI repeatedly recommended that I avoid claiming anything too definitive because it lacks nuance. "Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack", I am reminded. I agree completely! I mean, the indefinite nature of Samhain is most of my point. But I counter by saying the evidence is so weak there is no solid case here and therefore no good reason to definitely conclude Halloween actually "comes from" Samhain, historically - which is exactly what has been claimed in the wide world. And if we cannot show it did from the evidence, then we should not say it did. Erring on the side of "Halloween did not come from Samhain" is the more reasonable approach given the evidence we have today. AI agreed, in principle, stating: "...when a claim lacks supporting evidence, and when reasonable efforts have been made to find such evidence, it is rational to treat the claim as unproven or highly unlikely, even while acknowledging that absolute certainty is not possible." AI has responsible intentions, from an academic point of view. Therefore, if I were to give you the academically responsible conclusion, I would say it like this:
I urge extreme caution in concluding Halloween traditions come from the Druids, since the case is so very weak and the two options are not equally plausible by any means. But we should leave the possibility open that maybe some day in the future something could be discovered that changes our conclusions here.

If anything in today's post challenges a familiar story, that’s not my fault - it’s history’s. History hasn’t changed; only my view has. Hopefully yours, too. And that, I think, is what makes it worth studying.

I couldn't possibly end this post in a better way than how it was put by a good friend of mine:

"I do think at the end of the day, despite what anyone thinks they know about it, it’s a matter of conscience - if YOU think something is WRONG, then it is WRONG for YOU to do it, full stop. The problem is many lack discernment and think if THEY believe it’s wrong, then everyone that does it is wrong." 

That, dear reader, is the entire ballgame right there, in 60 words or less.

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Some sources for more reading on your own later on:

Sanas Carmaic (Cormac's Glossary): https://archive.org/details/cu31924071173474/page/n101/mode/2up. See p.102 of that link, under Gamuin. Note: items in parenthesis are not original.

Annála Uladh (Annals of Ulster): https://archive.org/stream/annalauladhannal01royauoft/annalauladhannal01royauoft_djvu.txt. See p.158 of that link. Note: English translations use "Samhain" or "Allhallowtide", but that is not in the oldest manuscripts.

Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer):
https://www.paddybrown.co.uk/pdfs/The_Wooing_of_Emer.pdf. See pp.7 & 13 of that link; "Samain".

Félire Óengusso (The Martyrology of Oengus):
https://archive.org/details/martyrologyofoen29oenguoft/page/232/mode/2up. See p.232 of that link.

Acallam na Senórach (Tales of the Elders of Ireland):
https://archive.org/details/silvagadelicaix00gragoog/page/77/mode/1up?q=Sam.

Echtra Nerai (The Adventure of Nera):
https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/academic/seanmeanghaeilge/cdi/texts/Meyer-Echtra-Nerai.pdf. See pp. 4, 10, & 14 of that link. Note: This translation transliterates samuin as Halloween.

Bede's "De Temporum Ratione" (The Reckoning of Time):
https://old.katab.asia/special/De_temporum_ratione.pdf. See pp.53-54 of that link for "Winterfylleth".

Nathan J. Harris, "Debunking Samhain: Undoing the Misinformation of Wicca", PDF file, Academia.edu, accessed 11-4-2025, https://www.academia.edu/144624704/Debunking_Samhain_Undoing_the_Misinformation_of_Wicca.

Ronald Hutton, "Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain", (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p.95. Note: I cannot find an online, free version.

"Scribes and Kings: Religion, Politics and the Medieval Manuscripts of Ireland." On Mythical Ireland. https://mythicalireland.com/blogs/news/scribes-and-kings-religion-politics-and-the-medieval-manuscripts-of-ireland. Note: This is a fine example of a reasoned attempt to identify the balance between old and new in the old Irish folklore.

Catholic Encyclopedia. “Irish Literature”. NewAdvent.org, accessed 11-8-2025. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08116a.htm

"Internet Medieval Sourcebook". Fordham University.
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/sbook1g.asp. Note: Tons of old works here from Celtic regions.

"The Truth About Halloween". Eternal COG.
https://www.eternalcog.org/media/The-Truth-about-Halloween.pdf. Note: This is a fantastic example both of what to do and not to do in a study. Good: cite lots of sources. Bad: Treat any and all sources as authoritative. People, please mind your sources! Quality over quantity.

Lisa Morton, "Trick or Treat: A history of Halloween". Internet Archive .
https://archive.org/details/trickortreathist0000mort/ Note: I found this after doing this post. It has a ton of info on customs, but does at times draw on some bad sources. Overall, an interesting read.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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The Real History Of The Druids

For the past year, I have been reading two books by Ronald Hutton (not non-stop): "Blood and Mistletoe - The History of The Druids in Britain" and "Stations of the Sun". I wanted to pull out some choice quotes specifically from "Blood and Mistletoe" to emphasize one thing -- our understanding of the Druids is a lot less solid than many understand.
I particularly have in mind the writers of Armstrong splinter-churches' published material and the many definitive (and outright false) claims they make therein. Because of course I do.

I am going to try to not make this one of my long and drawn out posts, even though I would really like to. The entire point is to illustrate how claims about Druids are not as solid as they might appear. This includes certain holiday traditions. They are speculations at best.

It's worse than you might suspect. Our understanding of the ancient Celts is so shaky that Hutton wonders if there even were Druids as we have come to know them.

"There is a real possibility that a thorough study of the material evidence for ritual in the Iron Age will produce conclusions regarding the nature of the Druids - or whether the whole category of 'Druids' should be discarded by specialists in the period - that can be sustained or generally accepted. Furthermore, it is true that only an archaeologist - or team of archaeologists - can undertake this task. To date, however, it has not been achieved."
(p. 73)

Of course, Hutton is not seriously denying there was a priestly caste among the Celts. His point is, the entire case for Druids is built upon a very small number of records left by the Romans and Greeks, and those records are questionable.
Only two of those sources could possibly have been eye witnesses to Druids: Julius Caesar and Cicero. Both of whom were known to write whatever suited their needs at the time. The later works all copy from these two, but mostly Caesar. So, you see, the sources are very few indeed and they inter-relate.
It was the Greeks and Romans who called them Druids, and the word Druid itself seems to come from a Latin base word. What if that isn't even the right name? It was the Romans and Greeks who told us what Druids do, versus for example the Bards. What if that was wrong? We have nothing else at all from the Druids. Archaeology has given us nothing truly uncontested besides the Coligny Calendar. We might have been using the wrong name this whole time and saying the wrong things about what they did this whole time. But then again it might right. Without records from the ones we call Druids, there is no way to know for certain.

The only other material we have are the Irish and Welsh folklore. (Scottish folklore about Druids is taken from Irish, which effectively makes it Irish, and the British didn't care for writing about the Druids until about 1490.) They mention Druids quite a lot. One might wonder, what of them?

"...Irish and Welsh texts have always been considered less trustworthy [than the Roman and Greek], as the surviving versions were all produced centuries after the conversion of the peoples concerned to Christianity, a process usually presumed to involve the abandonment of Druidry. As such they represent retrospective accounts of a long-vanished culture..."
(p. 74)

The folklore, if understood correctly, is no better than speculation and guesses by a different culture hundreds of years after the fact. It might contain bits of truth, it's possible, but which bits are the truth and which are not? Much of the time, we do not know. Maybe none of it is. Anything is possible in the game of speculation.

One of the odd things about Irish and Welsh medieval folklore is that they don't agree with each other. Just for one example, in Welsh folklore the festival at the start of winter is not called Samhain at all. Yet, both say Halloween comes from their tradition. How can they both be accurate when they don't agree? It requires two separate yet related traditions. The implications of this are far-reaching. (For more about Halloween traditions, I recommend "Samhain Was Not On October 31")

Hutton speaks of how, until the 1980s, Irish and Welsh folklore was presumed to be based on stories that originated in pre-Christian times and preserved in an oral tradition. That was called into question by textual criticism and archaeology.

"During the 1980s these attitudes [that folklore survived from pagan times] began to wane among specialists, under the impact of the two main scholarly tools that could elucidate the matter: textual analysis and archaeology. The former drew attention to the fact that the medieval Irish epics showed none of the familiar features of orally transmitted stories, so apparent in other works from early literature such as the poems of Homer. The Irish works are mostly in prose, not verse, and lack a formulaic structure, or the repetition of key phrases, or alliteration, rhyme, metre, assonance and other devices used to commit works to memory. They bear, in fact, every sign of works that had been composed as literature from the beginning. Archaeologists discovered that the royal centres that featured in the stories had indeed existed in pagan times, but not as the residential halls confidently portrayed by the medieval writers. They had instead been complex ceremonial centres, often open to the sky. The later authors either knew of their former importance because of a lingering tradition that had not preserved an accurate record of their form or purpose, or else were simply making guesses based on the sight of ruins in the landscape. ...
This begs the question of why medieval Christian Irish writers would have tried to recreate the stories of a pagan and prehistoric world; but it is one which has now been effectively solved. It is clear that by the seventh century Irish monasteries had already become some of the powerhouses of Western civilization, outdoing the inhabitants of Britain in their knowledge of Greek and Latin texts and production of manuscripts. They were familiar not only with the Bible and other important early Christian writings but with some of the most celebrated works of pagan Greece and Rome. During the succeeding half millennium they worked hard both to produce a great literature of their own and to locate themselves within the broad framework of European history as established by classical writers. In this wholly successful venture, they drew on ideas and images from the Bible and other Christian texts and from classical Greek and Latin works, mixing them up with a great deal of native tradition. We have no real idea, however, of how much of this tradition was genuine and how much was invented for lack of anything better. ...
The passages referring to Druids - which are more numerous than those in the classical texts - all fall into this category of data that may be either authentically remembered or the product of medieval fantasy."
(pp. 75-78)

So, the Irish and Welsh folklore, which so many Armstrongist writers believe tells us accurately about the Druids, is not really so solid after all. They were written by Christians, for Christians. Some parts may be accurate but other parts are definitely very inaccurate. There is good reason to doubt everything the folklore says about Druids. Maybe not throw it all out, but definitely take it with an entire shaker of salt.

What you and I as casual readers get from the learned experts depends on what author you read, and what that author wanted to get from it in the first place.

"So this is how an Iron Age Druid is fashioned: from selected parts of Greek, Roman, Irish or Welsh texts usually mixed with archaeological data. The process of selection made to compose the result is more or less an arbitrary one, determined by the instincts, attitudes, context and loyalties of the person engaged in it. Virtually none of the ingredients employed have the status of solid material, judged by any objective standards of textual or material evidence, and the little that has that status is not sufficient to produce a detailed or finished result. This is the case today, as has been suggested by the survey made above of recent publications, but it has been equally true ever since the inhabitants of Britain began wanting to have Druids in their thought-world again about half a millennium ago [around 1490]. The manner in which these ancient and medieval images of them have been put to use is therefore a perfect case study of the way in which the modern British have liked to think and feel: about humanity, nationhood, morality and the cosmos. The raw materials for the construction of ancient Druids, so frustrating for a prehistorian or ancient historian, have resulted in a wonderful subject for a student of modernity."
(p. 106)

In England, savage Druids is what they wanted and so that's what they got. In Wales, noble Druids is what they wanted and so that's what they got. In the German History of Religions School, what authors like James Frazer and Franz Cumont wanted was Christianity copying from paganism and so that's what they got - and that's what you get reading Armstrongist literature. This is what Hutton means by "a wonderful subject for a student of modernity". What people mold the Druids into tells us far more about them than the Druids. And that is usually the motive for bringing up Druids in the first place. It often has far less to do with the ancient Celts and far more to do with how Druids can be employed to better understand or even try to change what is happening in our own time, for better or worse.

All of this goes a long way to explain how we got epic failures like the old claims that Samhain was the name of a Celtic demon-god, now solidly abandoned, to mention but one of many wild and unsubstantiated claims that "everyone should knows is true". It's because the historical record is spotty, and authors have given us what those authors wanted to find in the first place.

"This means that, when later ages took an interest in Druids, there existed no single, authentic and authoritative portrait of them. Instead there were a number of competing options, between which modern people could choose according to their own tastes, needs, purposes and prejudices. As a result to an extreme extent, Druids have always been a contested subject. Anybody who has sought to write about them, whether to dismiss them, disparage them, abhor them, admire them or imitate them, has had to do so despite some feature of the evidence. The fact that the traditional literary sources have been so few, so well known and (from quite and early date) so readily available, has made this appropriation and disputation all the more widespread and intense. The many-faced and controversial nature of the sources has provided easy opportunities for people to employ Druids for the wide range of purposes discussed above. At the same time they render any such employment open to challenge, provoking further debate and redeployment in a seemingly limitless process."
(p. 765)

I think Hutton is quite right about this. He makes a solid case which I see playing out before us in Armstrongist literature to this day, even though Armstrongist authors are not really experts and are just borrowing the bits they want from any source that suits them.

I want to emphasize again, Hutton never denies there were ancient Celts, or that they had an entire society including priests, or that they warred with the Romans and etc etc etc. He isn't even dismissing popular claims outright just because the case is weak. A running theme throughout the book is (and I paraphrase here), "It could be true but it could be false, we aren't sure". Hutton isn't trying to build a specific Druid. He is more interested in what evidence we have. The book is about the evidence itself - what it is, where did it come from, who wrote it, how did we find it, and etc. And he is bluntly honest about it. (I think that's why I like him so much.)
So, if what you read here today makes you think Hutton is denying the evidence, that is a misunderstanding of what I am saying to you. He simply tells us the truth about the strength of the evidence - some things are definitely true and many things are definitely false, but we aren't sure about the rest of it.

What is the real history of the Druids? We don't know. We could already have it ...or not. This is going to have to wait until archaeology can settle things definitively.

Remember that the next time you read a post like "Is the Occult Influencing Your Family?" by Mr. Jim Tuck of the United Church of God, or "The Plain Truth About Christmas" by Herbert Armstrong, or any number of other publications with strong claims about the Druids. The case is not nearly as open and shut as they might want it to appear.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Sin And The Law

Anyone who has read my earlier posts know I was raised in a mixed-faith family. Being raised like this, I was always aware of systems outside Armstrongism. One of my big problems is, both systems I grew up with are quite legalistic. To me, church = laws, and God = angry. Even after leaving Armstrongism and Old Covenant law behind me and accepting a system of grace in the completed work of Jesus Christ, I struggle to this day over my upbringing. And let me tell you about what a failure that makes a person feel like inside where it really counts. Because there is this thing called "sin" in me, and any law points that out, and I am aware of it, and I hate it, but the way to solve this "sin" is far beyond me. Quite literally! Because sin is part of my nature, and nothing in this nature can solve this nature.

I am painfully aware of Paul's lament:

(ROM. 7: 21-24) 21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

How I feel that right this very minute, as I type. I had a terrible past couple days. Someone did wrong by someone very close to me, and I was pretty angry about it. I confronted them, and they were belligerent and unapologetic. That absolutely filled me with anger. I am angry still.

I know my attitude is wrong. To be this angry inside is to flirt with Matthew 5: 21-26. I know I have failed to represent Jesus. I know I am failing to love. I want to do something that is wrong -- but I don't want to want to do something wrong. (Yes, I wrote that sentence correctly. Had to triple check it.) I wish I did not feel like this. I wish my instinct was not to handle things this way. I pray and I pray for God to remove this attitude from me, yet there it is. Events replay in my mind, ruminating, preventing my sleep. It makes me think about all my many failures. And I wonder to myself, how can God ever use a person for good when this is inside them?

This is the problem with the law I grew up with. It can only show us our weaknesses. It cannot ever do anything about it. It cannot change us. It cannot wish for us to do better. Try to keep it. Don't try to keep it. It's all the same. The heart remains beyond its reach. The law doesn't want to kill us. It simply has no choice. The law demands we do the very thing we cannot do. The law is not the problem; we are. The weakness of the law is the weakness in us, but the strength of sin is the law (I COR. 15: 56). We cannot solve this problem on our own.

This is what Paul was trying to tell us. We are utterly incapable in and of ourselves to solve this issue. Mankind needs something else.

(ROM. 7: 24-25)  24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

God through Jesus. That is the answer.

(I COR. 15: 56-57) The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

(HEB. 7: 18-19) 18 For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, 19 for the law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.

The law is the power of death, because of us, but Jesus the power of life.

This answer requires faith, because He made this promise for the future. He isn't going to change this world right this minute. We have to trust Him in order to follow the Spirit. We have to trust Him in order to be His disciple. Have you ever tried to follow Romans 12: 19? I bet you have. I have! And let me tell you, when someone does you properly wrong, it is one of the hardest things there is. Keenly you feel your true nature in that moment. It requires faith to choose the Lord's way, knowing you may never see the benefit of this choice in this lifetime over the immediately gratifying way of nuclear wrath, knowing you may one day even come to pray for forgiveness for the very ones you long to burn utterly to the ground. It means battling over justice vs mercy - knowing that to get justice from a God of justice when you are wronged means you also receive justice for what you've have wronged. It's a humbling thing.

Does Christ crucified mean we have been fixed now? Clearly not. If by "fixed" you mean we are perfected. Paul was writing some time before his death. Was he not a Christian? Of course he was. Yet, there he was, struggling with the sin inside him, same as me. What did Paul have, then? As a Jew born in the Old Covenant period, he had the law, all of it. What was his conclusion about the law? From the law he had awareness of his sin and failures, but not righteousness. So, from the law he received only condemnation. The law forbade him from drawing close to God. From this, he had the truth that he needed someone outside himself to resolve his issue. And he had the answer: God through Jesus. What Paul needed, what we all need, is the righteousness of God in us and credited to us. We have no righteousness of our own, and following laws isn't how we get it (or rather, trying and failing to follow laws). Righteousness is in God alone and faith is how we obtain it. In this hope, we draw near to God.

The law demands we do what we cannot do. Why demand it do what it cannot do? How is that the solution? It is not.

Does not looking to the Old Covenant law mean we have no standards or requirements for righteousness? A moral free for all? Absolutely not. We do have standards and requirements. But those standards and requirements are not centered on Old Covenant law anymore, they are centered on the Holy Spirit. There is law. The law is love and faith.

And yet, here I am, still failing at it.

(ROM. 7: 19) For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.

But in my failing, I cannot let myself lose hope and give up. I look to One who can save me from myself. (Although I do not understand why He wants to.)

There is some good to come of all this. My sin testifies that God alone is righteous and His judgments just and true. I have earned judgment. As have we all. That's the riddle of forgiveness - in order to get it you have to not deserve it in the first place. His will is going to come about in the end, and my failings will prove He alone is truly worthy of honor. How can anyone accomplish anything good through a heap like me? He can do even this. I am not certain how and I am even less certain why, but I believe He is capable.

(II COR. 12: 9a) ...My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.

So, my motivation is no longer vain fearfulness in the law but thankfulness in salvation, allowing the Holy Spirit to work. Discipleship is a lifestyle.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Review - Is the Occult Influencing Your Family

While doing a quick overview of Armstrong splinter church websites for a recent article on tithing, I noticed many seem to be much less doom and gloom than in years past. I was going to praise them for it. Then, I decided to check if the the same old church I remember was merely hidden beneath the surface. I did a search for Halloween on the UCG website. First thing that came to mind. It is that time of year, after all. Sorting for date, there are so many recent ones. No surprise they're all negative. I don't mind if they side against Halloween. Halloween has so much going against it these days. What I mind is why they side against it. Do the articles absolutely have to be so filled with misinformation?

Today, we are going to do an article review. I am going to review "Is the Occult Influencing Your Family?" by Mr. Jim Tuck of the United Church of God from September 12, 2025. All of the bolded quotes come straight from that article.

In 2024, I wrote the post "Samhain Was Not On October 31st". I will admit it was long and densely packed. Today's post will be more summarizing.

Ready?  Here we go!

"Halloween can be traced back all the way to the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain."

FALSE

The origins of Halloween are known, and they are in All Saints Day not Samhain. Not only are the origins of All Saints not in Samhain, but it is not in the Celts in any way.
Bear in mind throughout this review, we are talking about origins.

The people who say things like "it can be traced" have not really traced. How can I be so bold? Look through as many books, articles, videos, etc, as you want. There won't be any truly ancient primary source or trusted secondary source information proving the claim. That's because there is no such evidence. It does not exist. Therefore, it cannot be traced as the author said. Best you can get are medieval Irish legends, tertiary commentators, opinions, or worse. Yet, that doesn't stop thousands of websites from claiming this as an obvious fact.

The Druids left no records whatsoever. All we have are questionable records written about them by the Romans and Greeks. What they wrote says nothing of the sort. No mention of Samhain, or costumes, or ancestor worship etc at all. Not once. So, people link Halloween to Samhain with a bit of sleight of hand. Halloween as we see it today is compared to much more recent accounts of Samhain, and conclusions are extrapolated backward into the past.

But Halloween is very different than it was even 200 years ago, and we cannot trust recent depictions of Samhain because there is too much absolute garbage written about the Celts from the 1600s to the 1900s. The vast majority is imaginary nonsense and forgeries. Don't believe me? Look up Edward Williams, aka Iolo Morganwg. One person makes up tales and another references it until the whole false account is accepted as true (I wrote about this in "Layers of Deception"). But it's all imaginary. In the absence of real details, people make things up. It's all in Ronald Hutton's book "Blood and Mistletoe: The History of Druids in Britain".

Ronald Hutton tells us, in his book "Stations of the Sun", p.411:

"The notion of a distinctive 'Celtic' ritual year, with four festivals at the quarter-days and opening at Samhain, is a scholastic construction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which should now be considerably revised or even abandoned altogether."

This doesn't say Samhain itself did not exist, it just means swaths of the currently accepted details around it are recent additions. Celts in various areas celebrated the end of summer in so many different ways, there was no single Samhain. Not only that, but it is possible there was originally no organized Samhain celebration at all. The earliest mention of samhain is in a document from the 1200s AD. There is absolutely no indication there was a celebration of any kind. It was quite matter of fact. Summer ended and winter began (samhain means summer's end). It is reasonable to assume there was a harvest festival, because that seems to be universal, but if it was so organized as to be called a "holiday" is not certain.

Now, if we have no ancient source material, and if Halloween is very different than it was, and if Samhain is very different than it was, and if most of what you may have heard about Samhain was made up in the past few hundred years, then how can we trace Halloween back to Samhain using those claims? We cannot.

This we can do: trace Halloween's origins to the Catholic Church in Italy. And that's precisely what I did in "Samhain Was Not On October 31st". The history of All Saints Day is well documented. It had nothing to do with the Celts or the Druids.

"Samhain was seen as a time when the boundaries separating the spiritual world and the real world were reduced."

FALSE

As I said, the only contemporary records we have of the Druids come from the Romans and Greeks. Almost all of those say the Druids believed in reincarnation. It was central to their whole way of life. If the ancient accounts are accurate, then the Druids believed souls were re-embodied in this world rather quickly after death. In other words, there was no spiritual world where the dead were. If the ancient accounts are not accurate, then the Druids believed souls were re-embodied in another world quickly after death. From archaeologists digging up graves with items needed for the next life, this second way seems to be the correct one. Either way, there is no good reason to accept that the ancient Celts believed in a spirit world where disembodied souls are and that it came close to earth on certain days. That might be what recent stories say, but there is no reason to accept that is what actual Druids believed. That is the kind of thing that was likely made up later on by Christians who believe in a spirit world where disembodied dead ancestors are.

What people are doing is looking at medieval Irish, Scottish, and Welsh folk legends (but mostly Irish) and concluding they came from the Druids. Not so fast. That has not at all been established. It's one thing to say something could be, it's another thing entirely to say something definitely is. Hutton mentions this in his book ("Blood and Mistletoe" pp.616-631). In one place, Hutton says specifically:

"Within the narrower world of scholarship, folklore rapidly lost ground as a discipline as its doctrine of survivals was discredited, while archeology gained in strength; so a view of prehistory that relegated Druids to the margins was upheld." (p. 620) [emphasis mine]

The idea that medieval folklore and customs are survivals from the Druids was once very popular, and is still with us to this day, but it is based on opinions and inferences not actual proof. In fact, it is often contradicted by proof. On top of that, the Druids themselves keep being refashioned. There was a clear and well documented push in the 1600-1800s to remake the Druids in the image of Judeo Christianity. Ronald Hutton's walks us through this in excruciating detail in his book "Blood and Mistletoe: The History of Druids in Britain".

Point being, relying on folklore is a risky gamble at best, especially when that folklore doesn't agree from area to area and age to age.

In the 9th century A.D., the Catholic Church began to influence and displace old pagan rituals within the Celtic regions. 

FALSE

The Catholic church began to influence the Celts in the British Isles in the 500s, not the 800s. And in France much earlier yet. Did the Catholic Church displace (and by that I mean coopt) old pagan days? Sometimes, in some areas. It's true! But there is no evidence for it in this case, with the Celts of the British Isles. This is simply a baseless conclusion built on wishful thinking.
Here is how All Saints Day actually went:

• In 609 AD, Pope Boniface IV created a memorial for the dioceses of Rome of all Rome's martyrs on May 13.
• In 735 AD, Pope Gregory III created a memorial for the diocese of Rome of all departed saints in Heaven on November 1, as part of his dispute with the Byzantine Emperor.
• In 835 AD, Pope Gregory IV expanded the all saints memorial to the whole church.
• Late 800s AD, first recorded mention of samhain.

Look at those dates. Is 609 in the 9th century? No. Is 735 in the 9th century? No. Is 835 in the 9th century? Yes! But what happened in 835? Pope Gregory IV took a local day that had existed for 100 years and applied it to the whole church. That's it. We know who created it, when they created it, and why. And it all happened prior to the first extant record we have of Samhain.

As I said, the earliest mention of Samhain is in an 13th century manuscript of a dictionary called Sanas Cormaic (Cormac’s Glossary), which claims to be from the late 800s. I have to take it at its word to put it as early as I have. The mention comes in the entry for the word Gamuin, a year-old calf. It's a farming reference. Hence why the entry for samhain (samuin) is so matter-of-fact. It merely intends to say summer ends and winter begins. So, the first mention of samhain isn't really a mention of Samhain at all. We have to go even later for that.
It could be argued the first mention of samhain was in the Annals of Ulster. The Annals of Ulster is a 15th century compilation of much earlier works (about 1480 AD or so). The earlier works are technically older than the Sanas Cormaic, but the Annals of Ulster itself was written much later. So, take your pick which one you want to call the first mention of samhain.
It's the same thing in both of them -- samhain was purely a matter-of-fact mention of the beginning of winter. There is no reference to any celebration at all.

I want to point out one final timeline contradiction here. The official line from Armstrongism is that the Catholic Church with all its traditions is secretly a continuation of an ancient Babylonian religion. If we are playing a game of who is older, Halloween or Samhain, then the Halloween wins. I reject all of this, too, because it is equally baseless. I bring it up to shine light on the game being played.

The entire claim that Halloween comes from Samhain rests on Samhain being such a popular celebration the Pope was all but forced to coopt it. Yet, no mention of Samhain exists until after All Saints was created. The first mention is a farming reference which could possibly be 300 years after All Saints. So popular that we can't find a trace of it! And if you read my articles, you know Samhain wasn't on November 1 in the first place. So, how strong a claim do we have here? Absolutely not strong in any way.

I go over this in great detail in "Samhain Was Not On October 31st".

"At the behest of Pope Gregory VI, “All Hallows Day” was assigned to the date of November 1, the first day of the Celtic new year."

FALSE

He means Pope Gregory IV (4), not VI (6). Pope Gregory VI was Pope from May 1, 1045 until his resignation on December 20, 1046. He didn't do much of anything. I will accept this is merely a typographical error.
However, Pope Gregory IV is still wrong because it was Pope Gregory III who assigned the feast of All Saints to November 1 in 735 AD. In the 8th century, not the 9th. What Gregory IV did was expand that day from only the area of the city of Rome to the entire western church. It wasn't a new day; it was 100 years old by that time. And it wasn't done to coopt any pagan day; it was done to coopt Christian days. It was simply done to unite the various memorial traditions from around Christendom into one.

I remind you again, November 1 was not the first day of the Celtic new year.
The Celts did not use the Roman calendar. Druids did not have a November. What calendar the Celts in the British Isles used is not known, but we do have an example of one from France. The Coligny Calendar was a lunar calendar, unlike the Roman in many respects. We can be certain the Celtic calendar and the Roman did not align. Point being, the Celts did not have any day that regularly aligned with November 1, or any other Roman date for that matter.
And to which Roman calendar are you referring, the pre-Julian, the Julian, or the Gregorian? It makes a difference! With the Roman calendar changing and losing time, any hope of alignment goes completely out the window.

Truth is, no one knows when the Celtic new year was. The best guess is in the Fall, the next candidate is mid-summer, the Coligny Calendar has nothing to indicate, and Pliny said it was on the 5th day of the month but he doesn't say which month. To definitively say it was on November 1 is simply false.

Wrong Pope, wrong century, wrong calendar, wrong date, wrong new year, wrong details. I mean, seriously. Do better!

"When the lines were blurred between the worlds of the living and the dead, Celts used the opportunity to honor and worship their ancestors. However, many were concerned about accessing darker evil spirits’ influence on those in the real world. This is why many Celts dressed their children as demons. They believed it would confuse the evil spirits."

FALSE

We have no ancient evidence that Druids did any of this.

We have a shell game going on here. Notice the author says "Celts" not "Druids". Two related but different things. All Druids were Celts but a tiny fraction of Celts were Druids. It's the Druids we're interested in, because origins. We have no record from the Druids. There is no way for anyone to come up with these details.
So, the author punts to Celts instead. The Celts are still here to this day. They've been Christians since the 500s AD. I myself am part Celt. Appealing to Celtic folklore is not necessarily the same as tracing back to the Druids. Remember, we're talking origins here!

We've already discussed the "blurred lines between the worlds of the living and the dead", but the Halloween costumes we see today do not come from the Druids or Samhain. The costumed trick-or-treat traditions we know today is really an American invention of the early 1900s.
But did they get their inspiration from ancient pagans? Unlikely. The most likely inspiration is from medieval Christian traditions. Celtic Christians, that is.

The history of dressing in costumes and going door-to-door is rather interesting. It comes from the Christian practice of Guising, Masquing, Souling, and Mumming. You can read more about these things in "Samhain Was Not On October 31" and "Christmas Eras Tour - Part II". These are the all but certain inspirations for our modern Halloween traditions.
Other related practices that may or may not have given some inspiration are Catterning and Clementing, where people, especially children, would go around begging for food and drink at feast days in November.

We are talking about dates hundreds of years after the Christianization of Celts in Britain and almost a thousand years after the Christianization of Celts in France. These traditions appear to be thoroughly Christian. Folklorists can speculate they came from earlier traditions, but this can never be proved out. The Greeks and Romans make no mention of Celts doing these things.

These traditions are not at all exclusive to Halloween, either. Many of the customs we think of as Christmas or Halloween traditions today were done throughout that autumn and early winter season even as recently as a century ago. People will correctly say, "at Allhallowstide, people used to dress up and go door to door," but what they leave out is the fact that these things happened at multiple holidays through the year. That some have migrated to Halloween since does not mean they began there. This line of thinking trick-or-treat happens at Halloween, and Halloween is the same time as Samhain, therefore trick-or-treat comes from Samhain is just not how history worked out.

Did some pagans also dress up? Certainly! But commonality does not prove causality. It is not reasonable to punt to speculative stories about traditions in distant times when we have well-documented records of traditions available in the target time and place.

And even after all this, we must be clear that every one of these are later additions. All Saints Day did not start with these traditions. I say this over and over here - you cannot take something as we see it today and assume things going backwards in time.

CONCLUSION

I think that's enough for today. Point made.

Mr. Jim Tuck is probably an upstanding fellow. I don't know him, but I believe he means well. I am not singling him out. He simply had the misfortune of writing the most recent article I found on a website. Nothing about today's article is intended as a dig against him.
But it is against the abysmal claims and lack of sources across the board in Armstrongist material. I do not blame Mr. Tuck for this. He probably got his claims from other UCG articles that didn't do their homework either. I can think of no one who needs ABD more.

It's hard to believe in this day and age - 17 years now I've been doing this and it's the same thing every time - I am still finding terribly researched and cited articles from Armstrongists. The ABD article on Samhain has been out for a year. Ron Hutton's books have been out for many years. Information is readily available. It just doesn't get used. A church like UCG has time and resources to devote to digging up history - history that has been there for centuries - yet they won't. I mean, ABD does it for free in our spare time. Surely a church could do this better than we can. The later we get in time, the less excuse there is for being so very wrong all the time!
And if you want a second opinion, I still wholeheartedly recommend you read "Samhain and Halloween" over at the God Cannot Be Contained blog.

Mr. Tuck wanted you to make sure you aren't letting the occult into your life. A noble goal! One I agree with. But how can one protect against the occult with bad information and outright falsehoods? They want us to believe telling our kids about Santa is wrong because it's not true, but this equally false information is very good? Or worse yet, God's truth? How can I possibly accept this? Especially when he closes with, "We are challenged to not allow ourselves or our children to be tainted by the false ideas of man". Hello!!

I am not writing this article in some attempt to convince you Halloween is all goodness and light. It's not! Not anymore anyway. But when I say that, I don't accompany it with false information! At least, I try very hard not to. I tell you the truth a best as I can. Costumes and jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treats do not come from the Druids, best as I can determine from the best information we have available. Even so --- Halloween has without a doubt been to a large degree turned into something ugly that should be approached with caution. Ugly because of the Druids? No! Ugly because of people alive today!! Don't go blaming the Druids for this.
Observe Halloween if you will, there is freedom in Christ, but in all sincerity I appeal to you, much as Jim Tuck did, to really consider your celebration and avoid the gore and murder and demonic and occult. You can have an even better Halloween without any of that sort of thing. There are plenty of ways to pull this off! I try to have a funny Halloween. Very kid-friendly. I try to make people laugh rather than scream, and I give treats to parents. They love it!

Jim Tuck and I want mostly the same things. My question is - why can't we be against the ugly parts of Halloween AND tell the truth about it at the same time?

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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