Is Halloween PAGAN?!

Is Halloween PAGAN?!

Halloween started as All Hallow’s Eve, a vigil preceding All Saint’s Day. All Saint’s day is a celebration of all the Saints in heaven. We have many canonized Saints (people the Church declares are in heaven who can offer intercessory prayers) who’s feast days we celebrate. However, everyone in heaven is a saint, even if they are not canonized by the Church. All Saint’s Day is a celebration for all the saints in heaven, canonized or not (Mercy 2021). All Hallow’s Eve linguistically became Halloween because the term originates from Hollow e’en, Hallow means Holy, e’en means evening. All Hallows eve means Hallowed evening, a holy evening. Octobter 31^st, the eve of November 1^st, All Saint’s day, is celebrated as a vigil of All Saint’s Day.

All Saint’s Day was originally celebrated on May 13^th in the early 7^th century after the Pantheon, which was previously dedicated to the Roman gods, was dedicated to all the Saints (Show 2020). In the 840s, Pope Gregory the Fourth moved the celebration to October 31^st, the dedication day of All Saint’s Chapel at Saint Peter’s in Rome.

Originally, All Hallow’s Eve, the vigil of All Saints’ day, was of no real significance until 998 when Saint Odilo from Southern France added a celebration to November 2^nd, All Soul’s Day, in honor of the Holy Souls in Purgatory, which spread from France through Europe (OPWest 2019). This resulted in Hallowtide, the three-day celebration of All Hallow’s Eve, All Saint’s Day, and All Soul’s Day.

Trick-or-Treating

The custom of trick-or-treating was originally called souling. Children would go around to homes and offer prayers for their dead loved ones in exchange for a treat, typically soulcakes. The kids would be given soulcakes along with the names of the deceased, whos’ souls they would then pray for, often at the local Church (Mercy 2021). This formed the basis for trick-or-treating as we know today.

Costumes

There are varying stories on the origins of Halloween costumes.

In many places, costumes were utilized to celebrate the Saints. Churches would have a procession of the Saints with statues in their Churches. In peasant towns, the Churches were poor and often did not have statues, so people would dress up as Saints for the procession. These costumes would be worn on All Saints’ Day processions as well as during the vigil held on All Hallow’s Eve (Show 2020). Naturally, they became an addition to the custom of souling, what is now called trick-or-treating.

Another contributor to the origin of Halloween costumes comes from France. In the 14^th and 15^th centuries, more masses were said for the souls who died of the bubonic plague. People ended up with more artistic representations of the dead, including dances with costumes.  These costumes then became more prominent throughout All Hallow’s Eve after the Irish and French Catholics began to intermarry during the 1700s in the British colonies in North America (OPWest 2019).

The Irish had more of a focus on hell and death, likely due to the poverty of Ireland impacting their outlook on the celebrations (Show 2020). The Irish focus on darker aspects of death combined with the French masquerade on All Hallow’s Eve led to some of the ghoulish aspects the secular world has grasped onto in today’s world.

Another source for costumes and trick-or-treating comes from English Catholics. We have to dive into some history to make the connections. During the 1600s, Catholics were persecuted in Protestantized England with heavy taxes, banning from public offices, and capital punishment for saying Mass. Many were killed. The Catholics had enough and came up with wise, but also foolish means of rebelling. A particularly foolish means involved a plot to blow up King James the First and his parliament using gun powder. This plot was stopped on November 5, 1605 when Guy Fawkes, a Catholic convert, was found guarding the gun powder. He was arrested and hanged. November 5^th became a celebration among English Catholics as Guy Fawkes Day. One of the customs included Catholics going around with masks visiting other Catholics demanding beer and cake for the celebration.

This celebration arrived in the States with English settlers. After the American Revolution, the history of Guy Fawkes Day was pretty much forgotten, but the custom of trick or treating had not been forgotten. The custom naturally moved to October 31^st, the day of the Irish-French masquerade. Trick or treating was not limited to Catholics due to the mixture of various immigrant traditions making Halloween as we know it a fixture in the US in the 1800s (OPWest 2019).

Jack-o-Lanterns

Jack-o-lanterns are believed to have derived from the Irish when they began to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve in the States. Historically, the Irish made lanterns out of turnips during their pagan celebration of Samhain which marked the end of the harvest season. The Celts also believed October 31^st and November 1^st (assuming calendars translated accurately) were the two days that the veil between life and death was thin, allowing spirits to roam freely between the realms (Nalewicki 2021). There was also a myth about an entity named Jack, a man who was supposed to go to hell until he tricked the devil, but God would not take him into heaven due to his sins, so he was forced to roam the earth for eternity while clouded by darkness unable to see (Show 2020). For protection from “Stingy Jack” and other spirits, celebrants would place lanterns outside their house to offer light for them to see. Due to the expense of metal lanterns, people often used turnips (Nalewicki 2021). Once the Irish made it to the states, they used pumpkins due to availability and the bigger size giving more light (Show 2020).

How did Halloween become known as pagan and evil devil worshipping?

Protestants first banned Halloween, not for pagan roots, but because it was a Catholic holiday. They banned All Saints’ Day resulting in the ban of All Hallow’s Eve, Halloween, the vigil for All Saints’ Day. It is important to remember that Protestants first colonized America. When Irish Catholics made it to the states, they revived All Hallow’s Eve to celebrate the vigil again, something the local Protestants were not a fan of. They claimed the Catholic doctrine of purgatory was Babylonian worship of the dead. The reformers believed purgatory was a false doctrine, causing Halloween to be redefined without purgatory, because the fun had to go on (Mercy 2021). This redefining of Halloween celebrations left it open for neo-pagans and others to shape it for their own purposes, something that fundamentalist Christians of the 1980s did not help with when they falsely claimed razor blades and poison were being put in candy and treats (Mercy 2021). Please note, this is simply history and not meant to be a bash on Protestants.  

So then how did All Hallow’s Eve become the Halloween we know today?

All Hallow’s Eve is and always has been a Catholic Holiday celebrated at the beginning of Hallowtide as the Vigil for All Saints’ Day. As other people converted and time went on, they brought in some of their own practices that they retained from their cultures, something that is not unique to All Hallow’s Eve. Germans introduced Christmas trees from old pagan customs. We have different cultural Rites within the Church such as the Latin, Byzantine, Alexandrian, Ge’ez, Syriac, and many more (The Rites of the Catholic Church). These Rites are all part of the Catholic Church in equal dignity, but they have their own cultural background with practices unique to the Rite outside of the Catholic worship that takes place.

Through time, different practices developed within the various cultures in Europe and then came together in the cultural salad of the United States. This spread outside of the Catholic community into other communities. For example, the English did not celebrate Guy Fawkes day for a solely religious purpose and it is logical to believe that seculars started to engage in the practice because it was fun. When the practice shifted to October 31^st, others joined in for the fun. All these cultures came together and ultimately made Halloween into what it is. We also can’t gloss over the impact capitalism had in this movement, however capitalism operates off supply and demand, so businesses were simply giving people what they wanted.  

So, through a long process of events and mixing of cultures, as well as celebrating the Saints in heaven, and then praying for the souls in Purgatory, Halloween started as holy celebrations during the vigil of Hallowtide, to the form of secularized Halloween we have today. This secularization is nothing new to Catholicism, we see it in Christmas with Santa Claus and Easter with the Easter bunny, both with even more secular practices forced into those holidays to take up the room we can give to Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.

Can Catholics celebrate Halloween?

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with innocent celebrations with kids dressing up innocently to go around for candy. However, if one starts to engage in wiccan practices with Ouija boards or other literally pagan practices, then those practices are condemned, but not Halloween itself.

There is also the concern of what else goes on with Halloween. Although it was not originally a demonic holiday, witches and other wiccan have made strides in claiming it as their own by performing dark rituals on Halloween. Some of those rituals include animal sacrifices, hexes, and even human sacrifice of homeless people and others (Ryan 2024). One could have a valid concern that being tied to those celebrations by engaging in general festivities may empower this sort of behavior. I am not saying that kids who trick-or-treat will become human sacrificing witches and warlocks, but there spiritual forces at work. We are always in the midst of a spiritual war and heightened days such as Halloween are a time to truly fight in this battle.

As an alternative to the secular version of Halloween, we Catholics can reclaim Halloween for what it once was. Many Churches offer festivities on All Hallow’s Eve and families often celebrate with a Saints party in their homes for other kids to join. There are many ways we can celebrate and reclaim Halloween for what it truly is.

For example, my family and I like to go to a Vigil Mass on All Hallow’s Eve with our kids dressed as their favorite Saint and then join the party after Mass with all the kids in their Saint costumes. This year, that isn’t available for us with our schedules so we will have a small celebration at home with the kids so they can celebrate All Hallow’s Eve remembering the true meaning. Plus, we are also going to a trunk-or-treat on a day before Halloween so they can enjoy the secular practice while maintaining our spiritual position in the battle. The particular day of All Hallow’s Eve on October 31st has heightened spiritual forces at work while serving as an opportunity to focus the celebrations on Our Lord Jesus Christ. I am not saying we have it all figured out perfectly, but it is how we celebrate All Hallow’s Eve.

In conclusion, through a long process of events and mixing of cultures, Halloween went from the holy celebrations during the Vigil of Hallowtide for honoring the Saints and praying for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, to the form of secularized Halloween we have today. This secularization is nothing new to Catholicism, we see it in Christmas and Easter. These secular practices can be enjoyed by all, but they must not cause us to leave our position in the spiritual battle by allowing them to take up room in our hearts that can and should be given to Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.

I pray that you have a Happy All Hallow’s Eve.

References

Mercy, Divine. 2021. “Halloween, All Saints & All Souls Day – Explaining the Faith.” YouTube. October. Accessed October 22, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4Tbi7T18EA.

Nalewicki, Jennifer. 2021. “When People Carved Turnips Instead of Pumpkins for Halloween.” Smithsonian Magazine. October 22. Accessed October 22, 2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-people-carved-turnips-instead-of-pumpkins-for-halloween-180978922/.

OPWest. 2019. “The Catholic History of Halloween.” YouTube. October. Accessed October 22, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vRblleKYm4.

Show, The Catholic Talk. 2020. “The Catholic Origins of Halloween | The Catholic Talk Show.” YouTube. October. Accessed October 22, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqnDR-msahc.

n.d. “The Rites of the Catholic Church.” EWTN. Accessed October 23, 2025. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resource/56009/the-rites-of-the-catholic-church.