Samhain Was Not On October 31

One thing As Bereans Did has never put through the patented gauntlet is Halloween. I personally am not all too interested in researching Halloween. Well, until recently, that is.

Two things have changed my mind somewhat.
The first is, when the God Cannot Be contained blog put up their post "Samhain and Halloween", I found a small desire to comment on a few points. It's a good post! Check it out.
The second is, last evening I decided to sneak around the internet for Armstrongist material against holidays. (I sometimes wonder if I do this to punish myself.) I started at COGWA's "Life, Hope, and Truth" blog, where they currently have a couple articles on Halloween highlighted. I wasn't looking for a Halloween post. I was hoping for a Christmas one. But, ya work with what ya got, I suppose. I poked around in the one titled "Answering Four Excuses To Celebrate Halloween". It has some terrible information. Surprise! Bet you didn't see that coming.

Here is a quote from the article:

"Both Halloween and All Saints’ Day originate from the ancient pagan Celtic festival of Samhain. Notice what History.com writes about this pagan festival (still celebrated by many Wiccans today):

'This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth' (History of Halloween). 

The Catholics changed the celebration of the dead to the celebration of dead saints in heaven. But, as we see on Halloween, many of the dark themes have remained.'"

-Eddie Foster. (10-8-2024) "Answering Four Excuses To Celebrate Halloween". Life Hope and Truth. 

Here are two points of many that I didn't agree with:

• "Both Halloween and All Saints’ Day originate from the ancient pagan Celtic festival of Samhain."
  False!
  Halloween comes from All Saints Day, and All Saints has nothing to do with Samhain.
• "On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain."
  False!
  Originally, the Celts did not use the Roman calendar. No one knows how they calculated Samhain, but it was according to their own methods not the Roman.

As you can see, the blog post references History.com article "Halloween 2024", which used to bear the title "History of Halloween". https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween
I like it that they at least cited something. Problem is, that article has some terrible information. We have seen that from History before.

Let's dig down into those points.

POINT #1 - ALL HALLOWS

Point #1 was: "Both Halloween and All Saints’ Day originate from the ancient pagan Celtic festival of Samhain." This is false. Let's explore.

Halloween comes from the Catholic holy day called All Saints Day. All Saints is also known as All Hallows and Hallowmas (hallow is an old word meaning holy). Halloween is the Eve of All Hallows. That is what Halloween means - All Hallows Eve. Halloween does not come from Samhain, it comes from All Saints Day. The day after All Saints is All Souls. All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls together became known as Hallowtide and Allhallowtide.

All Saints Day shares absolutely no origins whatsoever with Samhain. All Saints has roots in the Jewish practice of honoring martyrs. (For more, read "Martyrdom in Jewish Tradition" at Boston College.) From the start, Christian martyrs were honored on the date they were killed. (For more, read "How the Early Church Viewed Martyrs" on Christianity Today.) Open persecution by the Romans made more martyrs than was reasonable to honor on their individual death-dates. So, various areas decided to create a single day to honor all their martyrs. Different areas, different dates, same goal.
All Saints unified those various traditions and was enlarged to honor all the dead in Heaven. And that is why the day after All Saints is All Souls. Due to the doctrine of Purgatory, All Souls is dedicated to all faithful departed who have not yet entered Heaven.

Now that you have the summary, let's look at the details.

Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon in Rome (yes that Pantheon) to Mary and all martyrs on May 13 in 609 AD (Bede, "Ecclesiastical History of England", book II, chapter IV). That memorial was for the area of Rome only, and did not apply to the entire church. Various areas still held their own memorials. You can read about celebrations for all martyrs on days like April 20, or the first Sunday after Pentecost in Orthodox areas.

We can be confident Boniface IV did not do this to coopt Samhain, because 1) it was a church dedication, 2) to Christian martyrs, 3) it was half a year off, and 4) it was a local event to the region of Rome and had nothing to do with other areas.

The first time November 1st enters the equation is when Pope Gregory III dedicated an altar in a chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica to all saints on November 1, 735 AD. This changed the focus from martyrs only to all Christians in heaven. This is where the name All Hallows ultimately originates, because this dedication was about all saints -- all holies. And it still did not apply to the entire church. Notice that this did not necessarily "move" anything. The Pantheon is still dedicated to Mary and all martyrs to this day. If anything, all it did was duplicate days. There were two memorials in Rome now, one to martyrs and one to all saints in Heaven, in addition to memorials in other areas outside of Rome.

We can be confident Gregory III did not do this to coopt Samhain, because 1) it was an altar dedication, 2) to Christian departed in Heaven, 3) he seems to have done it in protest to Emperor Leo III's iconoclasm, 4) he held a conclave to counter the Emperor's iconoclasm on that very same day, and 5) it was a local event to the region of Rome and had nothing to do with other areas.
(For more, read the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Pope St. Gregory III. Also see Horace K. Mann "The Lives of the Popes" volume 1 part 1 p. 205.)

Finally, in 835 AD, Pope Gregory IV made November 1 the official date for the Feast of All Saints for the entire western church. Applying the feast to the whole church is what he did differently than his predecessors. He didn't do it coopt anything, since he chose a date that had been relevant in his own area for 100 years. He did it for uniformity. He was merging multiple scattered but related traditions into one.

We can be confident Gregory IV did not do this to coopt Samhain, because 1) all he did was unify all western traditions into one, and 2) he chose a day that already had this significance in his area.

(For more, see Horace K. Mann "The Lives of the Popes" volume 2 p. 230.)

To summarize what we just read:

• In 609 AD Pope Boniface IV created a memorial to all martyrs on May 13.
• In 735 AD Pope Gregory III created a memorial to all departed saints in Heaven on November 1, apparently as part of his dispute with the Byzantine Emperor.
• Lastly, in 835 AD Pope Gregory IV expanded the all saints memorial to the whole church.

That is how All Saints began. Notice how I said nothing about Samhain. It did not factor in.

You should know, Samhain was uniquely Irish; not French, Welsh, English, or Turkish for that matter. There is no Irish festival that was so popular the Pope changed a holiday for all of Christendom to coopt it. (For more on the history of Samhain, see "The Plain Truth About Samhain".)

POINT #2 - OCTOBER 31

Point #2 was: "On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain." This is false. Let's dig into why.

Samhain was not originally on November 1. Samhain was not originally on October 31 either. Hard to coopt a festival by getting the date wrong.

We can say Samhain was not on these dates because the luni-solar calendar the Celts used did not line up to the Roman calendar. I've said this so very many times in other articles, but here we go again. The Celts did not have an October or a November. The Celts had a luni-solar calendar (possibly more than one) with its own dates and months. Nothing the Celts did was always on any particular Roman date. 

Judging from the only Celtic calendar we have, the Coligny Calendar, we can see their calendar was more like the old Jewish calendar than the Roman. No one knows exactly how the Druids determined when Samhain was to occur, but we don't have to know that. All we need is their calendar. We can be completely confident they didn't use the Roman calendar, ergo we can be completely confident nothing they did was always on such and such a Roman date. We will expand on this idea later on. But that the Pope set a fixed date at all demonstrates he wasn't coopting Samhain. Setting a Roman date is not going to coopt anything from another culture that didn't use Roman dates.

CELTIC CALENDAR vs JULIAN vs GREGORIAN

I promised to come back to the calendar issue. We need to talk about this.

The popular claim is that Samhain was always on October 31, and that forced Pope Gregory III to move All Saints to November 1 to coopt it, and therefore Halloween/All Saints is really Samhain. None of that is true.

I want to warn you that this is going to be a bit technical. I apologize in advance. To summarize what we will do next - I am going to walk you through three Roman calendars. The point is, no foreign calendar matched any one Roman calendar, let alone all three. This is the most important point in my entire article. I want to show you why no Druidic festival was always on such and such a date in our calendar.

Roman Republic Period

Imagine yourself going back in time. Back, back, way back. The year is 100 BC (a date I chose completely at random). The Druids are in their heyday. Celts populate central and western Europe and the British isles. They were also pushing southeast, to the Mediterranean and into Turkey (think Galatians). It is October 31 on the calendar of the Roman Republic.
Now I ask you - what calendar are the Romans using?
Answer: the pre-Julian calendar.

Why is that important? Because, as I've discussed in many other posts, that Roman calendar was a hot mess. I will quote from my article "Quotes Before Christmas":

"Rome was founded in the 700's BC. For the first few centuries they had no winter months at all. In the 500's BC, February was in the place of December. Around 450 BC they moved December to the end of the year. After that, the calendar was regularly manipulated for political purposes. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar completely revamped the calendar. In 8 BC Augustus corrected the calendar."

Do you see how the Celtic calendar could not match up with the mess of a calendar used in the Roman Republic in such a way that we can say Samhain was always on such and such a date? You couldn't rely on the Roman calendar to be the same year to year. Samhain was not always on October 31 in this period. The farther back in time you go, the worse it gets. If it was, it was only in some years, only because of sheer dumb luck, and we can never know which years. We cannot be sure Samhain was ever on October 31. We cannot claim it never was, because it might have landed there at random in some years, but we can be sure "Samhain was always on October 31" is not an option.

Julian Period

Now, we move forward in time. The year is 735 AD. Imagine yourself in that time. Pope Gregory III just dedicated a chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to all saints. The western Roman Empire has come and gone. Gregory III is in a dangerous struggle with Byzantine Emperor Leo III regarding religious imagery. He has called a conclave from all areas of the west to protest the Emperors iconoclasm. The Christian Celts in the British isles have been pushed north and west by the Germanic Anglo-Saxons. The Druids are practically extinct, except possibly in quite remote areas. It is 550 years since the first Christian King in Britain (Bede, "Ecclesiastical History of England", book I, chapter IV). The Venerable Bede is said to have just died. Charlemagne won't be born for 12 more years. Vikings will be coming to raid Britain in the next few years. It is November 1 on your Roman calendar.

Now, I ask you - what calendar are you using?
Answer: the Julian calendar.

Why is that important? Because you are now on your second Roman calendar system, and it loses time. 

The Julian calendar is not like the pre-Julian calendar. Dates on the Roman calendar have moved because the whole system was replaced. The entire math behind it is new, it went from lunar to solar, days were added, months were rearranged, it was an overhaul. Did that move Samhain? No (not if Samhain was a Druid festival). The Romans changing their calendar wouldn't affect any other calendar at all. If there was any alignment between Samhain and October 31 before the Julian calendar, that alignment is now even harder to achieve. Not only that, but due to a flaw in the Julian calendar, the dates slip by one day every 130 years. November 1 to Pope Gregory is 5 days off from that of Julius Caesar. But dates are not moving around on the Celtic calendar. The farther forward in time you go, the farther apart they get.
Given these conditions, how can anyone say Samhain was always on October 31 or November 1? They cannot.

Even if the Celts tied their festivals to the sun (which most people do not think they did), it still wouldn't match the Roman calendar because of what we just talked about.

Gregorian Period

Now, we move forward in time again. The year is 1582. Pope Gregory XIII has just implemented a correction to the Julian calendar that fixed its math problem and will stop the time drift the west has endured since 46BC. Most pagan groups in Europe are long gone. No one observes Samhain as a festival according to the Druid calendar anymore. Chris Columbus has sailed the ocean blue. Martin Luther and King Henry VIII are dead, and the Protestant Reformation is in full swing. The date is Friday, October 15. And yesterday was October 4. No, not 14th; fourth. Gregory's correction moved the calendar 10 days.
Now, I ask you - what calendar are you using?
Answer: The Gregorian calendar.

Why is that important? Because you are now on your third Roman calendar system, and this one is ten days off from the last.

If Samhain could not match up to the first or the second periods, how much less the third? By 1582, the Julian calendar had lost almost 13 days. This was seriously affecting Easter. The Gregorian reform advanced the calendar by 10 days. The position of the year was reset back to the way it was in 325 AD, the year of the Council of Nicaea. Samhain didn't move, but October 31 and November 1 did. By ten days! Thursday October 4, 1582, was followed by Friday October 15. There was no October 5 through 14 that year. Not on the Gregorian calendar, anyway.

And the Gregorian calendar did not catch on all at once because the Protestants and Orthodox didn't care much for the Pope. It took centuries. People used the Gregorian or the Julian depending on where they were. And they still do! The Orthodox Church still uses the Julian. Two October 31sts. Every year. Which is the right one?

The 'Samhain was always on such and such a date' crowd are now faced with a terrible problem. If Samhain is on October 31 today, then it was not on October 31 when All Saints Day was established on November 1 in 735 AD. And if Samhain was on October 31 in 735 AD, then it is not anymore today. Pick your fail.

Your only other alternative is to say Samhain was changed to match the Roman calendar, like Germanic days were (ie. Yule), which completely undermines the claim that All Saints was changed to coopt Samhain. It's literally the opposite. Consider how important a point this is. It also screams out loud that the original details of Samhain are unknown (which is true), and people should really stop making unfounded claims.

CELTIC CALENDAR

We have looked at the Roman calendars, now let's look at the Celtic.

In 1897, in Coligny, France, a bronze calendar was found. It is now called the Coligny Calendar. (I mentioned this earlier.) It was in pieces, apparently purposefully destroyed. The chief suspect in its destruction is Rome. As it turns out, this is the only known example of a Celtic calendar.

Coligny Calendar

I have done some reading on this calendar and I would like to give you some details on how it worked.

It seems to have been made in the second century AD. It is a luni-solar calendar - which means it is a lunar calendar with corrections meant to keep from drifting too far out of synch with the solar year. It is a peg calendar, much like the kind used in Rome around that time. It has roman numerals. So, it is definitely influenced by Rome. It has several measurements of time, including days and nights. It has 5-day weeks, six-week months, with either 29 or 30-day months (as any lunar calendar will), 12 months in a year, a 5-year annual cycle with leap-months every 2 1/2 years, and a 30-year great cycle (exactly as Pliny mentioned in his "Natural History"). It has names for the months. The month names have meanings, somewhat similar to the German calendar. It does list some festivals.

Some problems include, several pieces are missing, no one knows when the new year was (all claims are speculation only, but the top choice is in autumn), no one knows how the names of the months line up in the year (e.g., is the month of Samonios in the spring or the fall), and we know this calendar is not representative of all Celts.

And let us not overlook the fact that the Celtic calendar was luni-solar. That means leap-months - like our leap day, except it was a whole month. All lunar calendars need leap-months or they cannot stay in synch with the solar calendar. Just like the Jewish calendar has leap-months, the Celtic calendar did too. Leap months change dates. That's the whole point! That means the Celtic calendar was out of synch with the Roman solar calendars regularly.

You have a choice here. If Samhain was based on the Celtic calendar, then it was often out of synch with solar events like the equinox and the solstice. But if Samhain was based on solar events, then it was often out of synch with their own calendar. Pick your fail.

19-YEAR TIME CYCLES

You can tell from some of these details that the Coligny Calendar behaves similarly to the Jewish calendar. It also has the amazing ability to work in more than one way. If you work the calendar just so, it can count the nineteen-year time cycles necessary to keep the lunar year in alignment with the solar.

Does that phrase "nineteen-year time cycles" seem familiar to you? It was a favorite phrase of Herbert Armstrong's. He said understanding those time cycles was key to understanding prophecy. (For an example, read our post "All Systems Are Go!".) Yet, here we have the pagan Druids using nineteen-year time cycles. Doesn't that make it ... "once pagan, always pagan"?? So, the Worldwide Church of God went around promoting paganism?

I wonder how many people are trying to excuse away their belief in "once pagan, always pagan" right now. Well, welcome to the club! I've rejected it years ago.

UNBROKEN

I have one more small bone to pick with the "Answering Four Excuses" article.

In his article, Eddie Foster said, "Wiccans still celebrate Halloween today." Yes, they do. But that is not to say it's an unbroken continuation. Not even remotely.

Wicca was invented in the mid-1900s. They take upon themselves old pagan practices from various cultures that they've read about in history books. Some pagans in the United States and Europe had read through histories and decided to celebrate Samhain. Because they didn't think about the prior calendar changes (same as most everyone else), and because they didn't know much about the calendar the Druids used (same as most everyone else), and because many of those history books they relied on were terribly unreliable, they decide to just go with the current thing and put Samhain on October 31. They start spreading the idea that Halloween is Samhain.
But that means what they celebrate is not really Halloween or Samhain. It's a new thing, made up to look like an old thing.

Armstrongists come along and say, "Hey! We don't like Halloween anyway. This explanation affirms what we want to hear! Let's publish it like it's true." So, they sell you this story about how it was always like that. But it wasn't always like that. Because it couldn't be! So much for Life, Hope, and Truth.

Do you see how people today take what they see today and then project it backwards in time? That's not right. Don't do that. They also take what was in the recent past and project it backwards into the distant past. We will see that in the next section. That's not right, either. Don't do that.

CONCLUSION

"Samhain was always on October 31" is not an option, so choose only one:
A) Samhain was never on October 31.
B) Samhain was accidentally on October 31 anciently, only sometimes, only before 46 BC.
C) Samhain was accidentally on October 31 in the past, only sometimes, for less than 130 years, only somewhere between 46 BC and 1582 AD.
D) Samhain is accidentally on October 31 today, but not every year, only since 1582, but nobody celebrated it during this period until recently.
E) Samhain was actually the one that was changed, so it could be on November 1.

With your choice, you automagically get these two bonus choices:
F) No one really knows exactly how Samhain worked, so we all should stop making unfounded claims.
G) All Saints Day has nothing to do with a Celtic harvest festival.

I declare the whole claim of Samhain always being on October 31, or November 1, or any day on our calendar for that matter, as well as the claim All Saints Day is a continuation of Samhain, did not survive the patented As Bereans Did gauntlet. It simply is not possible, given the details of the Celtic calendar and the three Roman calendars used in the past 2,700 years.

Once again, we see false history being passed off as true in Armstrongism. Once again, we see confirmation bias in place of responsible research. Once again, we see reliance on the un-biblical notion of "once pagan, always pagan". Once again, we see the people who say "the TEN COMMANDMENTS, God's great SPIRITUAL LAW" are bearing false witness against their neighbor. I think it is safe to say COGWA might want to rename their website to 'Life, Hope, and Fiction", or else actually start insisting on truth. Either way is fine with me.

Notice how this post relies mainly on simple logic and math - if one culture's calendar keeps changing, another culture's calendar cannot align with it. Simple. We didn't need to know lost details about Druids and their practices. All we needed was a teensy bit of common sense. Common sense also tells us that people are taking conditions as they see them now and applying them backwards in time thousands of years. We don't agree that's a good idea.

And, yet again, I am supremely disappointed with History (aka the History Channel). *facepalm*

I hope today's post helped you in some way. This is our first post about the whole Halloween thing. You may have noticed this post is not really defending modern Halloween. I spent time defending All Saints instead. Well, that's because I think secular Halloween decorations are disturbing, and I don't agree with them. Remember in my posts like "Where Do We Draw The Line?", I say things like, "If you want to know what my own personal line is, knowing what I know and having experienced what I have experienced, I draw the line at well-informed conscience. Not scrupulosity, but scruples. If I feel guilty about it, I don't do it. Easy peasy. But then I research it. I need to know if I feel guilty reasonably or unreasonably; rightfully or mistakenly." Well, truth is, parts of Halloween make me feel guilty. The bloody, demonic, frightening imagery of secular Halloween is not something I am comfortable with. I don't mind cute little comic book heroes and pretty princesses going trick-or-treating. I don't even mind the vampires and mummies. That doesn't bother me at all. I even read Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" every year. I am not entirely against Halloween because I don't believe in "once pagan, always pagan". But the winged demons and axe murderers and bloody offal and such turn me off. I do not tend to defend Halloween because of all that. Today is the exception. I need to research and ensure I have a well-formed conscience. When I do, I inevitably find some Armstrongist peddler of paganism is out there making a mockery of the truth. For Eddie Foster to denounce it as dark, he had to first invent a way for it to be dark. Then he had to do something dark with it, by which I mean falsely accuse people of paganism. Seriously though, are you really going to go around calling people pagan for made up nonsense while you fail your own definition of paganism for talking about how great 19-year time cycles are? Pot, meet kettle. (Not just Eddie Foster, though, I mean all Armstrongist peddlers of paganism.)
My advice to you, dear reader, beloved of God, is to not offend your conscience. To the Lord do, or to the Lord do not do. But do not judge and condemn your fellow Christians who disagree with your choices. Have a happy Halloween if that's your custom, but I advise avoiding that dark stuff. No, you are not a pagan for keeping Halloween. Dedicate your celebration to Jesus and seek His glory, and it will be well with your soul.

I might as well toss in some helpful links as a parting gift:

"Is Halloween Pagan In Origin And Evil?" on Crosswalk.

"Halloween Hysteria" at Life After WCG blog.

"Halloween - Sifting Historical Facts vs 'Christian' Myths" at God of Green Hope blog.

"Samhain and Halloween" at God Cannot Be Contained blog.

"It's Time For Catholics To Embrace Halloween" on Word On Fire.

"The Origins of Halloween: A Catholic Celebration Rediscovered" on EWTN.

"Souling" on Medieval Histories.

"Souling for Cakes and Beer: The Catholic Tradition of Trick-Or-Treating" on Aleteia.

"Why Christians Can & Should Celebrate Halloween" from InspiringPhilosophy on YouTube. Thanks to ericsjca for this one.

"Is Halloween A Pagan Holiday (And Should We Celebrate It?)" from ShamelessPopery on YouTube.

"Ecclesiastical History of England" by Bede. Available on Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

"The Ancient Irish Get Far Too Much Credit For Halloween" on Ancient Origins.

"Samhain Is Not A God" on Learn Religions.

"'It’s all just a big joke': Halloween, Samhain, and Moral Panics in the 1980s" on Dig Podcast.

"Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages" volume 1 part 1, book by Horace K Mann, on Archive.

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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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