The Plain Truth About Samhain

Oh my lanta! Not another holiday history post. Yes. This is in fact another holiday history post. 

I've reached the limit of my patience. There are only so many times a person can be gobsmacked by the historical record playing out radically different than expected before venting must happen. I am not going to cite sources and get really technical today since this is just me letting off some steam about how I keep finding that I had been lied to by my former church, over and over and over. This time it's much more than that - it's the majority of the world.

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 the Annals of Ulster. I've read old Irish folklore like Tochmarc Emire and Aislinge Óenguso. I've read Ronald Hutton and others. I've even gotten ChatGPT involved. What did I learn?

     THERE IS NOTHING THERE!

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

EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES

We have no records 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.

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

You can find mentions of Samhain that go back to the 700s AD (or so it's estimated), but not before, and nothing at all about its traditions has come to us from that period. Bear in mind, that is a few hundred years after the Druids are believed to have disappeared.
The oldest mentions of Samhain are in two Irish documents from the Middle Ages, one called Sanas Cormaic and the other Annals of Ulster. Samhain is mentioned clearly, but only as a timestamp indicating what time of year it was when certain events occurred. It makes sense to find that. Samhain literally means "summer's end" and, by extension, the beginning of winter. The very name regards a timestamp when an event occurred.
This is how these two documents treat Samhain.

What can we conclude from this? It is reasonable (but by no means 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. "After this day we calf, and after this day it's Spring so we plant, and after this day we gather..." and etc. So, naturally, the oldest records are going to treat it in just this way. The oldest records say nothing at all about any festivities or traditions associated with Samhain. Could there have been? Absolutely. These types of days 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.

The first mention of the word samhain in association with November 1 is from the Félire Óengusso - a list of Christian martyrs dated in the late 700s AD. The phrase used is "blessed Samhain" (or perhaps "stormy Samhain"). But no hint of anything pagan. This tells us the name Samhain was being used in Ireland interchangeably with All Saints.
Coincidentally, this is roughly the same time period when the terms Yule and Christmas began to become interchangeable. (For more, read "Christmas Eras Tour - Part II".) This doesn’t suggest that Christians of this period were deliberately absorbing pagan days and traditions; rather, familiar colloquial vocabulary was being recycled for use within a Christian framework.

We must then move on to later Irish folklore from the 800s AD to 1500 AD.

Irish folklore mentions Samhain in a way that does treat is as an annual holiday. As time progresses, the folk tales become increasingly complex in how they treat Samhain. Samhain begins to be depicted as a night of government activity, feasting and games, and danger, since the world of the living and the spirits come close together.

We have several important details to discuss here.

First - folklore is fictional, not factual.
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, but likely none of the actions in folklore happened at all. Folklore does not necessarily depict what the people of the time "believed", either. It's a mythical historical tale, not a religious textbook. Do these things have a way of affecting society? Yes. Undeniably. But we must look for evidence of that outside of the folklore. Alas, we find nothing, which is why we are looking in folklore in the first place.

Second - these dates are estimates.
The manuscripts containing these folk tales date from after 1000 AD or later. The stories are estimated to the 800s or later because of the language used. Could they be that old? Certainly, that is reasonable. But must they be? No. It’s simplest to accept the earlier dating, but we should remember it's a scholarly estimate not an absolute definite.

Third - Irish folklore was written down by Catholic monks.
The manuscripts were not merely copied by Catholic monks but the tales they tell have Christian motifs. Fantastic pagan imagery is employed to tell stories with Christian nuances, in much the same way as Tolkien did in Lord of the Rings. These stories were created long after the Druids were gone, after society filtered through many centuries and cultural waves. It is not clear what parts, if any, were taken from a distant past. I remind you, ancient records from the Romans and Greeks tell us the Celts believed in reincarnation. The whole notion of a spirit world where the disembodied dead live is a Christian view. Tales of the worlds of the dead and the living coming together bears the fingerprints of Christian thinking.

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. They explain how Ireland came to be as it was, and they elevate Ireland in comparison to other regions. How can the stories be ancient if they are intended to explain the conditions of the late first millennium?

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, there is no Samhain or any known day like it. The "three nights of Samonii" which started on the 17th day of Samonois 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 it we can be sure that there was no one 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."

Sixth - Samhain was not originally on November 1.
Ancient Celts did not use the Roman calendar. 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 (which was created in 45-46 BC). 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. Since the first mention of the word samhain in association with November 1 is from the Félire Óengusso, a list of Christian martyrs dated in the late 700s AD, it is reasonable to conclude the date was Christianized.

To recap -
From the oldest and most authoritative sources, which are not ancient, we learn: there was no single Celtic culture; Samhain is distinctly Irish; it likely began as a yearly time-marker closely associated with farming; it was not originally on November 1; it was first associated with November 1 well into the Christian era; there is no mention of a festival in the oldest works; if there was a celebration at all it was likely a harvest celebration; and nothing ties Samhain or its customs definitively back to the Druids.
Most importantly of all, at least to me, is - the claim "Samhain was so popular the Pope felt he had to move All Saints to coopt it" is completely fabricated. It's a fiction. There is no historical evidence whatsoever to support it.

Dear reader, the Emperor is naked!

MODERN MARVELS

That leaves us with Early Modern writings, from the 1500s AD forward.

The oldest surviving mentions of Samhain traditions in the real world appear from this period. That said, we must be careful.
Many of these practices were already common in other holidays throughout the year. Bonfires, decorations, dressing in costume, going door-to-door, and the like were all medieval Christian customs used at Christian holidays. When we say, "Samhain traditions in the real world appear from this period" it is not that they are invented here, but that older 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 that. Most of these traditions are first recorded after 1,000 AD. (We have articles on that.)

We cannot, in any serious way, look at documents this recent and conclude they preserve traditions intact from the Druids. We are expected to believe authentic survivals from the Druids went completely unmentioned for 1,500 years? It would be far more likely these traditions would have come from the Vikings. But that's not what happened.

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. Known forger ...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. Strangely, 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 it's 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 source. Iolo inspired others such as John Rhys and William Stuckeley, to name but two.

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. Of course people believed 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 people cite Frazer to this day (looking at you, Living COG).

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 form time immemorial. Something of a J. J. Abrams version of Samhain.
This would be the exact opposite of Halloween originates in Samhain.

I ask - if Halloween is said to be pagan because it supposedly borrowed from paganism,  would Samhain be Christian now that we know it borrowed from Christianity?

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.

CONCLUSION

Thank you for humoring me, dear reader, as I rant about my frustrations with this process. 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.
I am throwing away these claims that Halloween traditions come from the Druids. I suggest you do as well.

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.

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 witty 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.
If anything here challenges a familiar story, that’s not my fault - it’s history’s. History hasn’t changed; only my view has. 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.

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

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

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