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 posted. 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. So much for the "and Truth" part of the name.

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.'"

-Foster, Eddie. (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!
  The Celts did not use the Roman calendar. No one knows how they calculated Samhain, but it was according to their own calendar 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.

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 (hallow is an old word meaning holy). Halloween is the Eve of All Saints. That is what Halloween means - All Hallows Eve. Halloween does not come from Samhain, it comes from All Saints Day.

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.
And that is also why the day after All Saints is All Souls. All Saints honors all Christian martyrs, while All Souls honors all 

Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon in Rome (yes that Pantheon) to Mary and all martyrs on May 13 in 609 AD. From that point, the west honored all saints on May 13. That did not apply to the entire church. Various areas still held their own memorials. The first time November 1st enters the equation is when Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica to all saints on November 1, 735 AD. This also did not apply to the entire church. Finally, Pope Gregory IV made November 1 the official date for the Feast of All Saints for the entire Western church.

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

A popular claim on the internet is that one or the other Pope Gregory moved the date to November 1 specifically to counter the popularity of Samhain. There are several problems with that. The first is, the Druids were extinct by that time.

The Celtic religion was heavily persecuted by the Roman Empire (itself extinct in the west by that time). The Romans were against the Celtic practice of human sacrifice. The Celtic native religion was in a state of heavy decline in areas of Roman control. When Christian evangelists arrived, it was to a people generally in a state of religious confusion. By the time the Pope moved All Saints to November, the Druids were all but gone and the Celts were being conquered by the Anglo-Saxons.

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 on November 1. Samhain was not on October 31 either. Hard to coopt a wrong date for an extinct festival.

We can say Samhain was not on these dates for two reasons:

First, the luni-solar calendar the Celts used did not line up to the Roman solar calendar. I've said this so very many times in other articles, but here we go again. The Celts had a luni-solar calendar that did not align to the Roman calendar. Nothing they 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 Jewish calendar than the Roman. No one knows exactly how the Druids determined when Samhain was to occur, but we have to know that. All we need is their calendar. We can be completely confident they didn't use the Roman calendar to do it. We will expand on this idea later on.

Second, Samhain was a three-day festival. It is possible Samhain might, from time to time, by pure luck fall on October 31 or November 1, but it was not always on any single date.
Pay careful attention to the wording in point #2. Mr. Foster said Samhain was, "On the night of...". Pray tell, how can a three-day festival be held in one night?

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. Let's think about why not.

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. 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 be sure it never was, but we can be sure "Samhain was always on October 31" is not an option here.

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 Druids are extinct. The western Roman Empire has come and gone. Charlemagne won't be born for 12 more years. The Celts in the British isles have been pushed north and west by the Anglo-Saxons. Vikings will be coming to raid eastern 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, days were added, months were rearranged, whole months were added. Did that move Samhain? No. The Romans changing their calendar wouldn't affect the Celts. 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. In less than 500 years, October 31 would move by three days - the length of Samhain. But they aren't moving around on the Celtic calendar. While the timing of Samhain was being figured in the way it always was, the timing of October 31 and November 1 were not. They've moved. The farther forward in time you go, the worse it gets.
Given these conditions, how can anyone say Samhain was always on such and such a date? They cannot.

Set calendars aside for a second and consider the claim that Pope Gregory III moved All Saints Day to coopt Samhain. The Druids were extinct, so far as we know. The Celts were pushed by war into Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. There is no possibility Samhain was so popular that the Pope needed to coopt it. If anyone stood a chance of having their day coopted, it would be the Anglo-Saxons, not the Celts. That didn't happen. So, the claim makes no sense. And there is no proof at all. Just empty claims. We know why All Saints is on November 1 - the Pope dedicated a chapel.

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 46AD. Most pagan groups in Europe are long gone. No one observes Samhain anymore. The date is Friday, October 15.
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? 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. This means that October 31 moved three times the entire length of the three-day Samhain festival.

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 wasn't on October 31 when All Saints Day was moved to November 1 in 735 AD. And if Samhain was on October 31 in 735 AD, then it isn't anymore today. Pick your fail.

I have one more small bone to pick.
Wiccans do not "still celebrate Halloween today" as if to say it's an unbroken continuation. 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.
A bunch of bored pagans in the United States and Europe have read through histories and decided to celebrate Samhain. Because they didn't think about the prior calendar changes, and because they didn't know much about the calendar the Druids used, they decide to put Samhain on October 31. They start spreading the idea that Halloween is Samhain. 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.

19-YEAR TIME CYCLES

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 that attempts to marry the lunar year with the solar. It is a peg calendar, much like the kind used in Rome around that time. It has roman numerals, so it is influenced by Rome. It has several measurements of time, including days and nights. It has 5-day weeks, six weeks in a month (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. 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, and 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).
Here is another big problem. This is the only Celtic calendar we have. We have no way to know if a Roman-influenced calendar in the second century AD represents the Druidic calendar in centuries before that. We also don't know if all Druids everywhere used the same calendar.

There is one last very interesting point I want you to know.
You can tell from some of these details that it 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.

SAMHAIN AND ETC.

If we are going to be on the subject of Samhain, we might as well hit a few of the highlights for good measure.

Samhain was a harvest festival at summer's end. Exactly when that was to those people, no one knows for certain. Could be based on a calendar, or maybe moon phases, or maybe the mid-point between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, or even all of the above. Who knows! We know roughly, but not specifically.
I have read countless articles how Imbolc was February 1, Beltane was May 1, Lughnasa was August 1, and Samhain was ... October 31. Why is that one always on the 31, but the rest were on the 1st? Bias. Fact is, none of them were always on any of those dates. What is the mid-point between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice? The equinox is on September 22 and the solstice is on December 21. That's 90 days. Well, what is 45 days after September 22? November 6. Why, that's not October 31 or November 1. Do you see how this game is played?

I have read some articles that claim if Samhain was coopted by Catholics at all, it wasn't All Saints Day that replaced it, but Saint Martin's Day (aka Martinmass). Saint Martin's Day, now abandoned, was once the largest festival in that corner of the year. It was the Protestant Reformation that killed it. An interesting proposition! But equally difficult to prove out.

Samhain might have had religious overtones, but its primary focus was harvest. It is possible to have a harvest festival with religious overtones and still say it was not a religious day.

You've no doubt heard about the bonfires. Do you know why bonfires are called bonfires? The word means "bone fires". They were large fires where animal bones were burned. Bone ash was used to make all sorts of useful things, including soap. Amos 2: 1 mentions the bones of a king being burned into lime. The word bonfire did not come to mean a large celebratory fire until the 16th century. That is well  after Druidic paganism was eliminated. These weren't party fires or religious rituals. They were farming necessities. I am not saying there were no large celebratory fires before the 16th century. I am just saying people need to drop the notion that the word bonfire is always synonymous with a pagan ritual.
This all reminds me of the Yule Log, which turns out to be a Christian tradition. (For more, see our post "Christmas FAQ" in the section "Does the Yule Log come from pagan Yule traditions?".)

There was no demon/deity named Samhain at all. That is completely false.

Some people say Halloween is Samhain because of costumes, trick-or-treating, and jack-o-lanterns. Well, about that....
I will leave some links at the end of this post to some websites that discuss Souling. That will help you understand that dressing up and going door-to-door is quite Christian. Could that have been a Christian thing and a pagan thing? Sure! But it's not prima fascia evidence that Halloween is pagan.
And you should know something about jack o' lanterns. They do seem to be pagan in origin. The thing I do not know is - were they started by Celtic pagans, or Irish Christians? No idea. Until I do know, I will chalk them up to pagans. But it was not exclusively a Samhain custom. In the United States in the 1800s, people carved pumpkins for all Fall holidays - Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. Only later did the custom migrate to Halloween only. You can see this in old cookbooks that tell us how to decorate for the holidays. So, jack-o-lanterns were ubiquitous in the Fall, therefore they are not evidence Halloween came from Samhain any more than Thanksgiving did. Pagan, likely yes. Exclusive to Samhain, no.

Regarding the idea that during Samhain the dead walked among the living, it is likely something the Celtic pagans really did believe, but it might be a later development.

The Druids, you may have heard, did not write anything down. They passed on most of their traditions orally. The only written traditions we have about the ancient Druids come from the Greeks and Romans. When we read what the Greeks and Romans wrote, we see they were under the impression the Druids believed in a type of reincarnation. This leads people to speculate the Druidic religion and the Hindu religion are cousins, from a time when all people lived in deep-ancient Mesopotamia. After death, and after a certain time had passed, a soul could take on a new body, either of a human or an animal. I would say it is unlikely anyone would believe the dead walk among the living during a few days each year when they believe in reincarnation. (For more, read "Passing Through the Middle: Death and Reincarnation Amongst the Celts" on Owlcation. I don't usually link to sites like this, but I don't feel like digging up all the quotes for Julius Caesar, and this site seems to have a decent collection already in place.)

The tradition about the closeness of the worlds of the living and the dead come to us in pieces from Celtic traditions, from the Celts of the British isles. Does that mean it is fake history? No. It just seems to indicate it could be a later development. No one knows for sure. It might not even be entirely Druidic. Remember, the Druids were Celts, but not all Celts were Druids. The Druids ended, but the Celts continue on to this day. Apparently, I am part Celt myself (if the ever-shifting claims from Ancestry.com can be believed). It is sometimes difficult to piece together what is later Celtic folklore and what is original Druidic belief.

Samhain was not the only festival where the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is thinned. Beltane, on the opposite side of the year around early May, also had this tradition. If anyone gives you the impression that Samhain was unique in its otherworldly closeness, that person is mistaken.

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, for less than four centuries, only somewhere between 46 BC and 1582 AD.
D) Samhain is accidentally on October 31 today, but not every year, only since 1582.

With your choice, you automagically get these two bonus choices:
E) No one really knows how Samhain worked, so we all should stop making unfounded claims.
F) 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 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.

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 have a happy Halloween but avoid that dark garbage. Keep it easy and light and fun. No, Halloween is not Samhain. No, you are not a pagan for insisting on a clean 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?" 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.

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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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