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 make the claim but does not cite its sources), and Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (which is a false citation because it does not make the claim at all, that I could find). 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.

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.

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).

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, Dugger, Dodd, 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".

Lisa Morton isn't alone in her critique. 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.
And, yet again, we see how 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.

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 encyclopedia 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. Warriors battled fairies at castles. The castle may be real, but I'm pretty sure the fairy battles were not.
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 of the manuscripts, but we should remember it's a scholarly estimate not an absolute definite. But that's the document. What about the stories they contain, how old are those? We don't know. 500s AD? 200s? 10s? No one knows.

Third - Irish folklore was written down by Catholic monks.
The Druids left no writings of their own. So, if there is any ancient content, then it 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. Things that were there are now gone, replaced by more acceptable ideas. 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 to translate what 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. How did that castle get ruined? Why, let me tell you the story of the great fairy battle long ago! 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 correlates to 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. Samhain must be read into it. Reasonably so! But never the less indirectly.

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, apparently by a person named William Hutchinson, and web searches propagate it as if it were legitimate. Pomona was so minor that she had no known festival to abosorb. 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.

We've seen the first problem. I feel the second of the two main problems with Samhain history is: not discerning the source material. Authors from the Early Modern period will give us a good lesson in this. 

EARLY-MODERN MARVELS

We've seen medieval documents and folklore. That leaves us with Early Modern writings, from the 1500s AD forward. Most of the problem with Samhain 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 that we are commonly told originate in Samhain 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 customs 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 or Scotland, 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. In my opinion, the main issue with old Christian holiday traditions is they are strange to us today. And since they are strange, it is easy to assign them a pagan origin. That is rarely the case, though.

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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