Halloween II - Samhain

Think you know where Halloween came from? Maybe you do. Or maybe you've just heard the same story repeated often enough that it sounds like history. Here are some quick facts and observations to separate the historical record from the Halloween mythology.

---

In the previous post, we discussed who the Celts are and what the history of Halloween is. This time, we focus on Samhain. We shouldn't have to, but apparently, because of misinformation, we must.

Please take this quote from the Smithsonian (of all places) as our introduction:

"Halloween’s origins go back 2,000 years, to the Celtic holiday of Samhain, which marked their new year, according to National Geographic. Ancient Irish and Scottish people believed the veil between the worlds of the dead and living grew thin each year on November 1, allowing demons to roam the earth again. Along with displaying offerings and lighting bonfires for spirits, the Celts dressed up as the dead, hoping to blend in with real demons and therefore skirt spiritual confrontation."
-Rose Eveleth, “The History of Trick-or-Treating Goes Back Centuries” Smithsonian Magazine, originally published: October 18, 2012 | updated: October 24, 2023.

The Smithsonian is THE name in history in the United States, they had more than one person working on the article, and not just that, but National Geographic gets some credit. How on earth can it possibly be so wrong??
Yet it is. Let us turn aside and see.

What I am going to attempt to do today is give you a very, very simplified version of a very, very complicated topic. Anyone who studies Samhain professionally would likely tell you today's article is over simplified. Well, that's what you get in one blog post with scholarly material written for a casual audience. But I don't want to dive into details here. I only want to give you the overview that you need so you can better understand Halloween.

SAMHAIN HISTORY

What was Samhain? 

Samhain means "summer's end". It was the traditional last day of summer. The word is Irish. It might be better to think of it not as Celtic, since Celt is a very broad term, and instead think of it as Gaelic.
Besides the Gaels, no other Celtic group is known to have shared the concept of Samhain. This does not paint a picture of a day so widely popular that the Pope felt compelled to co-opt it.

We have no record from the Druids themselves. The oldest material on the Celts comes from the Greeks and Romans, but they do not mention Samhain. If the Druids marked the end of summer with a festival at all (and there is no solid reason to believe they did) that doesn't establish that they called it Samhain, or observed it on October 31 or November 1.

The oldest material that mentions Samhain arrives several hundred years after the Druids disappear from the record. The word samhain (it was spelled in a few different ways, but it's all the same thing) appears in several old Irish texts. The only surviving copies of those texts are in manuscripts which date from the 1100s to the 1600s. But, scholars believe those manuscripts are copies of earlier material. Based on the language used, scholars estimate those texts to originally come from the 700s through the 1100s. Old, yes, but even that is solidly within the Christian era. (For more details on these texts, see "The Plain Truth About Samhain".)

This dating causes scholars to debate whether that earliest material was preserved by Christians or wholly created by Christians.

These oldest Irish texts can be divided into two categories: Irish non-fiction, and medieval Irish legends.

Legends
The medieval legends - where human armies battled fairies, a corpse asks for a drink, and a supernatural being puts people to sleep with music then burns their buildings - do treat Samhain like a holiday. Any claim of a pre-Christian Samhain holiday is based on legends. Not a single word of offerings or dressing up, etc. It used to be widely thought that the legends are traditions from ancient Druidic paganism that survived into the Christian era. With modern archaeology and textual criticism, many folklorists and historians are abandoning that position.
Narrative
The non-fiction (a dictionary, a martyrology, and a list of events) does not treat samhain as a holiday. It treats samhain as a timestamp; a way to point out that something happened at the end of summer. The non-fiction aren't about samhain, they only use that word. Like I said, as timestamp.

So, we really have two very different ways to understand Samhain: a "samhain" (lower-case s) time-stamp that means "the last day of summer" and falls on November 1 but has nothing to do with a festival, and a "Samhain" (upper-case S) holiday from medieval legends that may or may not have been real.
A real Samhain festival hinges on two things:
1) Do the legends contain truth here, or are they merely fairytales, and
2) Were the legends created from stories that survived from Druids, or were they invented by the Christians who wrote them.
We do not know for sure, but modern scholarship is moving in the direction of fairytales invented by Christians.

Why might Christians write such fairytales? One possible answer is because they wanted to explain and expand the history of Ireland. "Why is that building in ruins? Ah! Because of a great battle in ancient times between men and fairies."

When was Samhain?

The medieval Irish legends do not give a date for Samhain at all. The Irish non-fiction puts samhain on November 1, not October 31.

It is important to understand a few things.

• No one knows for certain exactly when summer's end was to the Druids. Remember, the Irish non-fiction was written by Christians during the Christian era. Exactly when the Druids believed summer ended is anybody's guess, but it could not have been tied to November 1 originally because the Druids didn't have a November.
• November is a Roman month. We don't know what calendar the Irish Druids used. A Celtic calendar was found in France. It is a luni-solar calendar. But that could be specific to France. We have no such example from Ireland.
• When the earliest material was being created by Irish Christians, around 800 AD or so, they were using the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar we use today. Our November 1 today is 4 days ahead of November 1 from 800 AD. What was November 1 then would be November 5 now.

How was Samhain observed?

If we pull from the legends again, it was a time of feasting, royal gatherings, acts of courage, and, of course, encounters with fairies. There you go. Not so much like Halloween after all.
Again, not a single word of offerings or dressing up.

Most of what people claim about Samhain and its traditions doesn't come from the oldest sources. It comes from material written much later, beginning in the 1500s. That's a pretty important distinction. The writers of that time were trying to reconstruct an ancient past they no longer understood, and they were doing it before modern historical and archaeological methods had been established. The disciplines of history and archaeology wouldn't become systematic, evidence-driven fields until the 1800s. Much of what earlier writers presented as pre-Christian Celtic history was actually speculation and romanticized reconstruction, not established fact. Rigorous disciplines did not correct the issues at first. On the contrary, well-known scholars like James Frazer and John Rhys made it worse. Specialists today are still working on that. Many of those claims from the 1500s through the early-1900s have since been disproved, abandoned as implausible, and rejected by modern scholars. Yet, articles like the one from the Smithsonian are helping to keep that questionable information alive.

Samhain is currently a festival for Wiccans and neo-pagans. No denying that. Some people use that as evidence that Samhain is ancient (and Halloween, of course). But as I said in the last post, Druidism, and by extension Samhain, was recently reinvented. Most of these groups popped up in the 1700-1900s. That isn't evidence of ancient age at all. The Samhain they observe today bears little resemblance to the Samhain from the Irish legends. The same goes for Halloween. It was these groups that popularized many of the misconceptions about Halloween that this article was intended to clear up. (For more, see "The Plain Truth About Samhain".)

Did Irish Celts believe the dead walked the earth on Samhain?
Yes and no. Remember in the last post where we learned that Celts were a people group, and Celt is not the same thing as Druid? The Irish really did believe the dead walked among the living. It's true! ...But probably not the Druidic Irish, because it looks like this might be a later development.
None of the oldest material supports this. The ancient Greek/Roman sources tell us the Druids believed in reincarnation. The medieval legends do not portray the dead returning to the earth. What they portray is the human and fairy worlds coming close. The fairy world was not a horrific place. Quite the opposite. 

"The Irish otherworld was no hell, either. In medieval tales, it is a sunny place in perpetual spring. Everyone who lives there is beautiful, powerful, immortal and blond. They have good teeth. The rivers flow with mead and wine, and food appears on command. No sexual act is a sin. The houses sparkle with gems and precious metals. Even the horses are perfect."
-Lisa Bitel, "The Ancient Irish Get Far Too Much Credit for Halloween", on USC Dornsife, October 29, 2024.

It was Christians who clearly believed in an afterlife and a realm where the dead are. It was All Saints' Day that honored and brought the mind to the realm of the dead. "Memento mori." Taken together, this information strongly indicates this 'dead walk the earth' superstition developed from Irish Christians.

Was Samhain a demon lord?
No. I wanted to include a mention of this because it superbly illustrates the problem of bad source material and common knowledge. That claim originated with one Charles Vallancey, a self-taught authority in Irish history. Vallancey mythologized Samhain into a demon lord and paired him with Satan. His claims about Samhain were false, and even his contemporaries knew it. Later, James Bonwick borrowed and added to Vallancey's ideas with even more horrific etymology, which made it into publications from other authors, and eventually resources like the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 edition. Still more authors picked this up and put some lipstick on it, which was read by the likes of Herman Hoeh, and it all somehow made it into Chick Tracts, the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, and Halloween II.
And, like many other claims about Samhain, it was never true to begin with. (For more, see "Samhain Lord of the Dead".)

CONCLUSION

What did we learn about Samhain? The real story is not at all what you've been told. If you go with the version found in non-fiction, then it was simply the last day of summer. If you go with the version in legends, then it was a time of fairies and kings. It was only after that when we start to see costumes, bonfires, and worlds of the dead. But then, after 1500, the back story was considerably altered.

To have any hope whatsoever of understanding the history of Samhain and Halloween, you absolutely must, at the very least, understand the timeline (the dates given are very rough):

• 200 BC–400 AD: Druidism was practiced in the British Isles, and we know next to nothing about it.
• 400–700 AD: Christianity flourished among the Celts of the British Isles.
• 700-1000 AD: We get two versions of Samhain from this period: the non-fiction, where it's a timestamp, and the legends, where there be fairies.
• 1000–1500 AD: Christianity develops many traditions and customs, some of them bizarre to our modern minds, including the worlds of the living and the dead coming together.
• 1500–1950 AD: Some individuals reconstruct Druidism into a new, highly romanticized version that never existed before. Some widely-recognized scholars appear and inadvertently make the problem worse. New religions emerge and promote it.
• 1950 AD–present: Scholars reverse course, stripping away much of the mystique surrounding this reinvented Druidism. The debate about the real Samhain continues.

Articles like the one from Smithsonian Magazine, citing National Geographic, which we saw at the start of this post, blend all these periods together and treat everything as if it were ancient and Druidic. It simply wasn't. They also seem to treat the word Celt as synonymous with pagan. It just isn't. This misshapen version is the one you see in popular knowledge.

Here's the thing ... I have given you links in this series so that you can chase down every claim I've made. I encourage you to follow those links and see for yourself. When you happen across some "helpful' peddler of paganism on the internet who is trying to convince you that all the elements of Halloween come from Samhain, and you are worshipping Satan because of it, you feel free to ask them if they can prove their claims - not from some magazine article, but from primary source documents or trusted secondary source material.

Next time, we will look into those modern Halloween traditions that we are told were born of pure evil. Were they?

************

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

************

Revealed Faith, Resisted

(Galatians 3:23) But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.

Here’s the 64 dollar question for you to answer — Did Jesus come and reveal (unveil) this faith?

And if He came to reveal this faith, then what would the merchants of evil; the children of the devil, wish to do in this regard?

Keep this faith UN revealed. Obscured. Nullified. Rejected, by placing a “veil’ before the eyes of men so that they do not see; do not comprehend this faith that was to be revealed.

Why? Simple. So that people remain under the law, still shut up in regards to this faith to be revealed. Under lock and key, imprisoned by the law; a gilded cage, without bars, made to look inviting and comfortable, right up to the day one are led off to the gallows.

The law kills. It is the Spirit that imparts life. You cannot mix life and death. You cannot embrace the “tree of Life” (Christ Jesus) and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whose fruit is death and that is the fruit of the law. It imparts a knowledge of good and sin. It provides a modicum of wisdom.

The Hebrews, who were given the law, and heard the book of the law read to them, never made the connection between the law and that tree. They never made the connection between the tree of Life and God and the One who was to come. They knew the law, and liked what they saw; the sense of security it emanated. They took that rope, and gladly hung it around their collective necks; the faithless Hebrews with the deceitful and desperately wicked hearts of unbelief.

************

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

************

Faith, Law, and Deception

There are commonalities among the deceived; commonly held traits that cause people to reject Scriptural truths and accept lies and deceptions, all the while totally convinced what is believed is true, for from a strictly humanistic perspective, they are what is naturally assumed to be true.

But we are dealing with things outside the realm of the physical world we live in. What you grew up in; the environment, and the experiences based in the physical world, have an impact on the thought processes you develop over time.

In order to “get ahead” in this world, you have to do what it takes to get ahead, educationally, as well as other factors that can even include where you live. A competitive nature develops that can reflect itself in a number of ways, some of them following dishonest endeavors, criminal in nature. In many businesses, there develops a “department” of “pencil pushers” who seek to maximize profits while minimizing costs, so that the end product, whether it be fast food or widgets, people may well refuse to buy what they are selling.

In religion, specifically false religions, they are selling a lie; a “cheapened” product, where the difference however is that this trend can be reversed where salvation is sold as an expensive product that is going to cost you, plenty, and the real thing is compared to their more expensive product as merely cheap knockoffs.

And so, the truth of the matter when it comes to religion and Salvation is that the wolves, in order to achieve their goals, inflate the price of the product, while “exposing” the true product as the cheap copy; “cheap grace” if you will.

What Scripture reveals is that the cost of Salvation is beyond the ability of any man who ever lived to pay it. The deceiver’s work-around is to actually cheapen it, some, but still present it as achievable, albeit expensive comparatively, where human nature agrees with the assessment. You have to give up; surrender something in order to acquire something.

Salvation does not follow the physical patterns everyone becomes accustomed to dealing with. Salvation is a gift, not given to criminals. It is given to the family members of the family of God, sold by the deceivers as the kingdom of God in the sense of those in the kingdom being subjects of the kingdom, and not family members, constrained by law even as the Hebrews were when they were established as a nation; a kingdom.

The analogy given regarding salvation being a gift is that which is bequeathed to the children in the testament of the father, inherited from the father.

Take a concordance and look up and read all the passages of Scripture that use the words “inherit” and “inheritance.”

Understand that you acquire an inheritance upon the death of the one who bequeaths those things of his or her possession to you upon their death, where Jesus died in order to pass on to you an inheritance of eternal life if you be one who belongs to His family through a new birth of the Spirit and where your sins that made you a ‘criminal’ in the sight of God freed from your sins also by His death.

The price of your salvation is paid for by the One who in turn gives it to you. You cannot pay it, in full or partially, like some “matching funds” transaction.

The argument is put forward that people need to keep the old covenant law; the ‘works’ of the law, whether as a condition of salvation (compliance or ‘payment) which is in keeping with the conditioning we all received growing up in a physical environment described above in the opening statements. It is part of our conditioning received in the environment we all were born into.

The function of the law; its purpose, comes down to two things of note:

1. It produces wrath and makes all guilty before God. It lets it be known that no man can measure up to the standard of God and the perfection of God. All have sinned and have been found wanting when it comes to the glory of God.
2. It provides the way out of man’s dilemma through Christ Jesus paying the debt of sin prescribed by the law, that law being a blood covenant law where the sinner; the transgressor was to be put to death; their blood spilled out, which for a man produces a final and irreversible death where recovery is impossible, once the blood is drained out, seeing as the life is in the blood.

In this manner, the sin-debt is paid. You sin, you die. With Christ standing in for you, you do not personally pay the debt of irreversible death whereas Christ could do so, where He, being God, could not suffer irreversible death, being primarily a Spirit Being to begin with. He could survive what you could not, and where His death in the flesh made you legally dead to sin and dead to the law that prescribed that death, now freed from both, as Scripture declares.

Deceivers, who seek personal gain; wolves in sheep’s clothing (altered exterior appearance) have no leverage to use against those so freed from sin and the law. Their power and control revolves around there being a law that can still condemn, thereby instilling fear within people who are influenced by them, who manipulate the conditioning we all normally receive in this physical world and build on this. Faith in God who gifts us eternal live with Him through what He has done for us is supplanted by deceivers who insist it is you that must comply with requirements you must perform in order to acquire or qualify for eternal life, and they are there to guide you in the process… for a price.

Such people are led to believe, as a result, Jesus did not pay the price; the full price, and this is indicative of faithlessness in what He did and accomplished.

The price you pay the wolves so that they can feed their own bellies is both monetary and spiritual. You abandon faith in God even as Eve believed the serpent, thereby compromising faith in God and what God had declared; that partaking of that tree would result in death; a death penalty, no matter how attractive the fruit appeared; how beneficial appearing it was sold to them by the serpent.

The parallel here is the law. The typology of that tree was the law. When it comes to salvation, that was to be derived from the other tree; the Tree of Life, which was not available after choosing the other tree whose fruit was death.

The Devil is framed as the father of lies AND deceit. He used God’s tree as the means of subverting Eve, followed by Adam.

God gave them a life of relative ease, with abundant food resources. There was but one negative commandment; do not eat of that tree. Condemnation would result. You can perceive it either as a violation of the commandment of God, like the law, or look deeper and see that the real violation was in not believing what God had declared would be the consequences.

Now look again at the law; the consequences of the law as spelled out, plainly. The law produces wrath and makes all guilty before God. The only way to no longer be guilty before God is to pay the DEBT of the law; not try to keep the law that already establishes it’s sole fruit as wrath; condemnation and a death sentence. The solution is to actually believe God and what His inspired, written ‘testament’ states about the law and faith; that our salvation is tied to faith and not the law. There is no such thing as faith in God AND faith in the law. A faith in the law that the law will not condemn you; produce wrath with you by embracing the law is a fantasy put forward by deceivers that have something to gain by your disobedience to the faith. They gain, financially, and personally through power and control over your life, and the devil gains by having you abandon faith in God, even as did he.

************

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

************

Who / What Are You Listening To?

Jesus the Christ in the flesh was God Incarnate. He came on the scene 2000 years ago, and the people He went to; the Jews of the time, were as careless about listening to Him as their forefathers where who came out of Egypt. God communicated to them through Moses. When He came among His own and spoke to them directly, they too took little heed to what He said.

(Matthew 17:5) While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.

(John 10:27) My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

(Hebrews 1:1-2) God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, °Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

Odd, don’t you think, that given this information, Sabbatarians would resort to substituting what Jesus said and taught with what God spoke to the Hebrews upon coming out of Egypt; the Decalogue spoken from Mt. Sinai, overlooking why God spoke to them at Mt. Sinai.

(Exodus 19:9) And the LORD said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the LORD.

God thundered out the Decalogue from the mount, knowing full well they would not believe Him as they had already proven. This was for the express purpose of them believing Moses.

Sabbatarians are very careless with what God spoke directly to the people. Alterations are made with the actual quotes from Scripture, as well as alterations of the meanings of what He spoke.

(Matthew 5:17-19) Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. °For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. °Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Everything Jesus said here is altered on a wholesale basis.

Jesus references the law and prophets and what is located in both with the potential to be destroyed or fulfilled, but Sabbatarians will cite this passage sans the prophets so as to imply He was talking about the legalities of the law, seeing as there are no laws codified in the prophets. Then, they substitute the Hebrew idiom about heaven and earth with a modern definition of cosmology so as to also alter the meaning given there so as to negate what the context reveals about prophesies in both the law and prophets He came to fulfill, following up with claiming “these” commandments which grammatically requires cited commandments, with “the” commandments of the old covenant law where the transgression of any of those resulted in a condemnation and death sentence, and not a situation or condition of entering into the kingdom of Heaven in a lesser capacity.

“These” commandments follow; commandments of His, where He contrasts them to old covenant commandments, even to the point of negating one located in the law.

Sabbatarians claim He is saying here that the law remains inviolate right down to the jots and tittles, then ignore His alteration of some of those commandments way beyond the scope of jots and tittles, with the crowning touch that, upon His death, He even went so far as to destroy over 98% of the law, claiming all those commandments were ‘ceremonial’ and done away with.

It is a masterful stroke of contradiction carried out in just a few verses, and Sabbatarians themselves are blind to the manipulation.

But wait! There’s more! … Much much more.

Jesus declared Himself Lord also of the Sabbath, where Sabbatarians cite this, usually with the exclusion of the word “also” so that people don’t conclude He is Lord “also” of the other days of the week; part of His creation, specifically the first day of the week, aka “Sunday” in the Roman Catholic calendar, used by many nations for the sake of standardization.

While acknowledging Jesus as the Lord of the Sabbath, they overlook and ignore what all He had to say in relation to the Sabbath, specifically that good works are lawful on the Sabbath, as contrasted to evil works. For once again, what He had to say flies in the face of Sabbatarian dogma.

In cults, like Adventism and the Worldwide splinters, fear and phobia induction is crucial to control. This is where the OC law comes into play. It is the means by which such religious cults control and manipulate their members. It is about the “management” of sin in order to manage the members. By defining sin as the transgression of the law, thanks to the poorly translated passage found at 1 John 3:4, and then citing only half of it while re-defining the law to mean just the Decalogue, the membership can be managed through fear by managing the law. If sin is the transgression of the law, then the avoidance of sin is through keeping the law; their interpretation of it, where they set themselves up as the administers of the law, however defined, where the law is presented as “do-able” and where the law serves the administrators of it. There is profit in being a prophet.

But take careful notice, even though the translation of 1John 3:4 is sloppy, for it begins declaring sin “ALSO” transgresses the law, where the passage in Greek defines sin, not through the transgression of the law, but through the words “hamartia” and “anomia” both of which need to be understood in their Greek context.

There is sin, and sin transgresses the law, where we would define sin, based on the terms presented in the Greek as evils and iniquities, often lumped together under the English word “lawless(ness) which reflects the Greek “anomia” from a transliteral perspective.

Regardless of how you want to define sin, the law was what gave “strength” to sin so that the law, in concert with the sin, condemns the sinner to death, and where Scripture declares that all have sinned, therefore all are under that death penalty.

It is here where Christ Jesus stepped in, and solved the problem of condemnation by taking upon Himself that condemnation so deservedly earned by all mankind. And it is also here that deceivers in religion must overcome; mitigate the sacrifice of Christ by convincing people they are still subject to the consequences of sin, should they sin again.

Faith in Christ Jesus regarding His sacrifice is compromised, should you “continue in sin” sin again, which all do also. It is defined as though you paid the penalty for your previous “crimes” and now, you’ve committed another crime, resulting in another round of condemnation, denying the fact that Christ paid the debt, once, for all, for all time.

A believer is removed from the law, through death, so that the law can NEVER charge them again. They exist now, and forever, in a state of Grace, like ‘diplomatic immunity’ from prosecution which concept is met, not with biblical evidence, but with rationalizations; human reasoning designed to actually overthrow the facts of Scripture:

“Why, if we (you) were free of the law, then you could sin with impunity without fear of any divine reprisal!”

You could, and you might, if it were not for another matter associated with that sacrifice, that being the issuance of the Holy Spirit to those who actually believe God and Christ for what Christ did; removing their sins; forgiving their sins, and preserving them in a state no longer subject to the condemnation of the law, especially those points of law specific to the law; “works” of the law, where the transgression was not against either God or fellow man, but the law itself.

One of the common mantras of Sabbatarianism is that the law (that remains) is how one expresses love; for God and fellow man. The works of the law, specific to the law itself, effect neither God or fellow man; rather, they affect the law itself, so that following the Sabbatarian logic, keeping those works of the law would be a reflection of one’s love of the law; not God or fellow man.

The unspoken real issue here is hidden in all this distraction over the law by those intent on administering it, illegally, I might add, for once Christ’s sacrifice was “finished” it was finished. Done. Completed, so that the law could never affect anyone’s condemnation again.

“Blasphemy!” Screams the Sabbatarian, usually followed by more rationalizations sans biblical evidence. For in the eyes of Sabbatarians, it is by and through the law God will be judging all mankind. Their theology demands it; their theology and control are dependent upon it.

This is perhaps then the greatest distraction or deception in all of Scripture, for its claim means that God does judge mankind as does mankind itself, with what God stated was UNRIGHTEOUS judgment, according to appearance, where the appearance of sin can be manipulated by man.

What did God say, Himself, was the means whereby He judges mankind?

(1 Samuel 16:7) But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.

God judges according to the heart.

When you broach this subject with Sabbatarians, it’s like holding a cross up to a vampire, figuratively speaking. They don’t want to discuss the heart. They want to keep the focus and attention on the Decalogue, specifically the Sabbath.

Christ came and took away the sin(s) of the world. The law, despite the best efforts of Sabbatarianism, Catholicism, and a few more .isms cannot judge anyone. Only one judgment remains, to be conducted by God, who judges righteous judgment, and not according to appearance. He will judge all according to the heart of a man, and this revelation does not bode well with those who have used the law to cloak their evil hearts.

The heart is associated with the Spirit; the “heart, soul, mind” of a person. That non-corporeal aspect of a person, addressed in the Great commandment of the law that Sabbatarians have relegated to the artificial division of law referred to them as “ceremonial” and not applicable in their theology, and no wonder, for it destroys their legal construct of “moral” law.

(Matthew 22:36-40) Master, which is the great commandment in the law? °Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. °This is the first and great commandment. °And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. °On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

One’s whole focus is on God and a total dedication to Him; not a split devotion between Him and the law that could only expose the evil heart one will be judged by, and the law that could only condemn sins committed by those with an evil heart… of unbelief. It is not the function of that law to regulate the lives of the righteous, whose righteousness is derived through faith. What guides and leads the believer, with the new heart, is the Holy Spirit.

(John 16:13) As long as those with the evil hearts of unbelief are kept occupied with the law, convinced the law will lead and guide them, they won’t be looking elsewhere. But truth is found in the Spirit; not the law.

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

(John 14:6) Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

(John 1:17) For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

************

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

************

Abraham And The Exclusion Of Merit

It might be supposed that Paul had now made his point, proved the universal need of righteousness, the impossibility of man providing that righteousness for himself, and the revelation through the gospel of what alone can meet the need, a righteousness bestowed by God. He might now proceed to the triumphant exposition of “all the good things that are ours in Christ” as we find it in ch. 8, the chapter which, with the possible addition of ch. 12, represents the crowning purpose of his writing. But again his sensitiveness to the point of view of others leads to a digression. What about Abraham? Abraham was indeed, on the surface at least, a strong case for the Jew to appeal to. He was the Founder of the People, the Friend of God; and his life had been marked on more than one occasion by conspicuous obedience to the will of God. “When he was called, ... he went out not knowing whither he went”; “when he was tried, he offered up Isaac” (Heb. 11:8, 17). And the fact that the writer to the Hebrews traces his obedience on both occasions to “faith” (though he uses the word in a different sense from that peculiar to Paul) is evidence that these works of obedience were regarded as proofs of his faith. On this it would not be difficult to found an argument that in this classical instance justification had followed on a combination of faith and works or on works alone, as, indeed, we find it in the First Book of Maccabees: “Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was reckoned it to him for righteousness?” (Cf. Jas. 2:21, 22.) Paul faces the possibility of such an argument, and admits. If Abraham was, as perhaps you say, justified on the ground of merit, then, of course, he had a ground of claim (contradicting 3:27). But it cannot be really so from the point of view of God; for Scripture itself connects his justification with his faith, and says nothing about his works. Indeed, the text tacitly excludes any question of merit. For if justification was granted in answer to faith, it was granted out of grace and not as something which had been earned. The text in Genesis could in fact apply only to a case where all idea of earning righteousness by merit had been abandoned (v. 5). The verses quoted from Psa. 32 are relevant in so far as their silence as to any condition on the side of man suggests that the divine forgiveness was unconoditioned, in other words, of grace."

C. Anderson Scott, The Abington Bible Commentary, p. 1144-1145, on Romans 4:1-8

************

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

************

Halloween I - Origins

Think you know where Halloween came from? Maybe you do. Or maybe you've just heard the same story repeated often enough that it sounds like history. Here are some quick facts and observations to separate the historical record from the Halloween mythology.

---

I don't feel the need to post about Halloween every year. The day is simply a bridge too far for some people. Some love to hate Halloween, even if much of what they believe about it is based on misinformation and outright lies. I am personally not very fond of modern Halloween as it is lately. So why write about it? Because I love history and I want to know the truth about it. How can we say we love the truth if we won't look at the truth? And God is truth. So, I persist.

I just so happened to have some extra material on Halloween that I've been wanting to post somewhere. I thought an article hitting the highlights sounded like a better idea than digging into a single detail. So, today I offer you a rapid-fire bunch of interesting facts and observations. Any one paragraph should give you something good to consider. 

At first, I had this all as one post. When I read through it, I thought it would be unlikely that anyone would read through it all, and if they did, they would never remember what was at the start of the article by the time they got to the end. So, I've decided to turn this into a series. It's easier to digest that way. I will put links at the end for more information.

Please take this quote from The Sun as our introduction:

"Trick or treating may seem like a modern event, but it can actually be traced back to Celtic Britain and Ireland in the 9th century. 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. At Samhain, our Pagan ancestors believed the souls of our dead came into our world – and were appeased by offerings of food and drink."
-Josie Griffiths and Jennifer Roback, “When Did Trick or Treating First Start, What Is the Meaning Behind the Phrase and How Does It Vary Around the World?” The Sun, October 31, 2021.

I bet most of the readers here are familiar with that kind of material.
There is so much to fix here. How can it be wrong if it's in the mainstream media?? (He said, knowingly.) As we've seen in my "Samhain Lord of the Dead" article and elsewhere, even the Encyclopedia Britannica can be wrong.

First, we have to know who we're dealing with.

THE CELTS

What is a Celt?
Celts are a people group, same as Romans or Anglo-Saxons or Danes. They lived in the British Isles, France, and across Europe into Turkey. The Galatians were Celts (yes, those Galatians). I am part Celt. But as the Roman Empire had many nations, there were many and diverse tribes who were considered to be Celts. In the British Isles alone there were at least 25 named tribal groups (Iceni, Brigantes, Silures, Trinovantes, Dumnonii, etc), and probably more when smaller groups and northern peoples are included. It wasn't one unified group.

The word Celt is not synonymous with pagan or Druid any more than Italian is synonymous with Catholic. Saying a tradition is Celtic says nothing at all about whether or not it was pagan or Druidic or even religious at all.

What is a Druid?
Druids, real Druids, were (past tense) priests in ancient Celtic paganism. We know almost nothing about what they genuinely looked like or what rituals they actually performed. Only two sources are believed to have been actual eye witnesses to Druids: Julius Caesar and Cicero. And we must take their accounts with a grain of salt.

Druids first appear in historical records in the second century BC, and they disappear from the record roughly around the 400s AD. In the first century, Rome tried to stamp out Druidism in Britain, claiming the Druids engaged in human sacrifice. (This is one example of why we need to take the Roman accounts with a grain of salt. We cannot be sure if this was accurate or just propaganda.) Druidism survived in Ireland and Scotland in part because Rome never fully conquered those areas. Christianity first arrived in the British Isles by 200 AD. Over the following centuries, Christianity spread throughout the British Isles. By the 6th century, Christianity was flourishing in the British Isles. No trace of the Druids remained. Medieval Christian writers reimagined them as wizards (think Merlin).

Aren't there Druids today? No. Not real Druids anyway. Starting in the 1500s, some people in the British Isles began to romanticize the Druids. A great deal of material was written about them which was, shall we say, less than accurate. A good amount of it was extrapolation, imagination, or outright fabrication. They created costumes, songs, holidays, traditions, etc etc. Later writers built upon and added to the claims of earlier writers, until all they had to do to appear legitimate was to quote one another. It turns out that Druids can be whatever you want them to be. Modern Druidism is a revival movement, not a demonstrably unbroken continuation of the ancient priesthood. Modern Druids draw on many sources, including this questionable material, along with later developments of their own. The same goes for Wicca. Its founders relied heavily on that same material.

Modern scholars, such as Ronald Hutton for one example, are moving away from claims made from 1500s through the mid-1900s.

Now that you know what Celts and Druids are, let's move on to Halloween.

HALLOWEEN ORIGINS

What is Halloween anyway? Halloween is short for "All Hallows Eve" which is the evening before All Saints' Day (aka. All Hallows). All Saints' Day is on November 1st and honors all Christian dead in Heaven. All Saints' Day is the real holiday here, not Halloween. Halloween is to All Saints' Day what Christmas Eve is to Christmas. The day after All Saints' Day is All Souls' Day. All Souls' Day honors all Christian dead who have not yet entered Heaven (remember, Catholics believe in Purgatory). Together, Halloween, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day make up Hallowtide or All Hallowtide. A "tide" is a festive period of time as opposed to a single day.

Here is a super-condensed timeline of how Halloween developed:

• Christians had been honoring martyrs ever since there were martyrs. It eventually became difficult to honor them all individually.
• In 609 AD, Pope Boniface IV created a memorial for the dioceses of Rome of all Rome's martyrs on May 13. Other areas had their own days.
• In 735 AD (approximately), 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, estimated date of the first recorded mention of samhain. (We will get more into this in the next post.)

You may have heard something like, "The Pope moved a feast to November 1 to coopt Samhain." Is that true? No.
Scholars debate whether Samhain was a festival at all in this time period, let alone a popular one. Pope Gregory III did not move the May 13 date to November 1. All Saints' Day was not intended to replace the May 13th memorial to all martyrs. The May 13th observance took centuries to end. Some sources say it was Pope Gregory IV who transferred the observance to November 1 to better facilitate the many pilgrims to Rome, but other sources say it was Pope Gregory VII who put a final end to the May 13 observance.
This claim about the Catholic Church co-opting Samhain was popularized by James Frazer, who built on ideas from writers such as John Rhys and Edward Tylor. His work helped make the claim widely accepted, and later writers continued spreading it. There is no primary source or reliable secondary source evidence for this claim. Not only is there no valid evidence in support, but there is legitimate evidence against it. Recent scholars have since moved away from the claims of these authors.

You should understand something about Halloween - it wasn't originally a holiday in its own right. The records show the phrase "All Hallows Eve" being used as far back as the 1300s (which means it's older than that), but it was used in reference to All Hallows Day. It wasn't until the mid-1500s that Halloween starts looking like its own holiday in its own right. It wasn't until the 1800s that it became a distinct social celebration in Scotland and Ireland; the area where our attention will focus in the next post. People tend to treat Halloween anachronistically, as if how things are today are how things always were for the past 2,000 years. That simply is not so.

Halloween was brought to the United States by immigrants. It changed over time, as most things do. Due to the influence of such things as Protestantism and the Industrial Revolution, to name but two, customs that were once spread over the entire Fall season began to coalesce into single holidays, like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Really, it wasn't until the 1900s that Halloween began looking like we know it today (much the same as it was with Christmas, as we saw in the post "Christmas Eras Tour - Part IV"). We will see more of that in the third and final post in this series.

CONCLUSION

So, now you have a better understanding of the origins of Halloween.

Next time, we will dive deeper into Samhain. It is unfortunate that we must always investigate Samhain when we investigate Halloween, but such is the power of a lie told often enough.

---

I promised some sources at the end of the article.

Material on ABD:

Samhain Was Not On October 31
Samhain Lord of the Dead
The Plain Truth About Samhain
The Real History Of The Druids
Review - Is the Occult Influencing Your Family
Peddlers of Paganism

Material off ABD:

"Samhain and Halloween". God Cannot Be Contained blog.
https://godcannotbecontained.blogspot.com/2024/10/samhain-and-halloween.html
Note: This is Lonnie's post which got me started reading about Halloween in the first place.

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 medieval Irish legends.

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.

"Halloween’s True Origins: A Christian Vigil, Not a Pagan Remnant" on Theology In Five.
https://johndaniels.substack.com/p/halloweens-true-origins-a-christian

************

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

************