Latest / Everyday Saints: A Catholic Podcast / Is Halloween Pagan or Catholic? (The Real Church History of Halloween)

Transcript

Is Halloween Pagan or Catholic? (The Real Church History of Halloween) · Everyday Saints: A Catholic Podcast

• 0:00
  Picture it, it's October 31st, there's a bowl of candy by the door and a small child dressed
• 0:06
  as something you can't quite identify is holding out a bag and staring at you. Now, you have
• 0:12
  two options, hand over the candy or pretend you are not home. Let's be honest, all of us
• 0:20
  at some point have considered the second one. But why do we do this? Why do we dress up,
• 0:27
  knock on strangers' doors, and hand out candy. Some people will tell you it's ancient pagan
• 0:33
  holiday the Church stole. Other people will tell you it's secretly the most Catholic night
• 0:39
  of the year. This week, we are going to sit on the porch and sort it out. Fair warning,
• 0:45
  the real story is more interesting than either one.
• 0:59
  Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday Saints. This is a special episode. If this
• 1:05
  is your first time stopping by, consider yourself invited. Grab a seat, something to drink, and
• 1:11
  get comfortable. A new saint's story lands here every Thursday and every so often a special
• 1:17
  like this shows up on a Tuesday. Okay, let's start with the question I'd be asking if I
• 1:23
  were you. Is Halloween even Catholic? Here's a clue. and it's hiding in plain sight. Halloween
• 1:31
  isn't really a spooky made-up word. It's short for All Hallows' Eve. Hallow is an old word
• 1:38
  for holy. You probably said it in the Lord's Prayer, hallowed be thy name. Same word. And
• 1:45
  hallows was an old way of also saying saints. So Halloween means Holy Evening. More exactly,
• 1:53
  it's the evening before All Saints' Day. People have been writing All Hallows' for about 500
• 1:59
  years, so this isn't some candy company's idea. The name of the biggest candy holiday of the
• 2:05
  year is Christian, all the way down. Round one goes to the church. Now, does that make Halloween
• 2:14
  a Catholic holiday? Not exactly. It means the name is. We are still working on the rest.
• 2:21
  Now, why the evening? In the church's way of counting, a big feast starts the night before,
• 2:29
  which is why Christmas Eve is a thing. That night before is called a vigil, which is a
• 2:35
  fancy word for staying up, praying, and getting ready. So Halloween is the vigil. It's the
• 2:42
  warm-up act with costumes. Which brings us to the headliner, All Saints' Day on November 1st.
• 2:52
  and you might wonder why the church needs a whole day for all of them. Believe it or not,
• 2:57
  it started as a calendar problem. In the early days, Christians remembered martyrs, people
• 3:03
  killed for their faith, one at a time, on the anniversary of each death. Then came some truly
• 3:10
  brutal persecutions by Emperor Diocletian in the 300s, and there were so many martyrs that
• 3:17
  the calendar ran out of days. So the church did the practical thing and gave them one shared
• 3:23
  day. And then that day got a renovation. About 1400 years ago, a pope took the Pantheon in
• 3:31
  Rome, a giant temple built for all the Roman gods, and turned it into a church for all the
• 3:37
  martyrs. The word Pantheon is Greek for all the gods. So the church kept the building and
• 3:44
  just changed the guest list. All the gods became all the martyrs. And here's my favorite part.
• 3:51
  The Pantheon is still a church today. There's Mass there every Sunday. And every Pentecost,
• 3:57
  firefighters drop rose petals through the round hole in the roof. I mean, come on, just look
• 4:03
  this up on YouTube. Hundreds of videos of this amazing site. But here's what I love most about
• 4:11
  All Saints' Day. It isn't just for the famous ones. It's for the saints nobody wrote down.
• 4:17
  For every Francis of Assisi, there are countless people who quietly did the right thing and
• 4:23
  never got a statue. The grandmother who prayed, the neighbor who showed up, which is honestly
• 4:30
  why this show is called Everyday Saints. And it's not only a Catholic thing. The Eastern
• 4:36
  Orthodox have their own All Saints' Day. And plenty of Protestant churches keep that day
• 4:41
  too, including the Anglicans, the Lutherans, and the Methodists. They don't all observe
• 4:46
  it the same way, but if you grew up in one of those churches, you may have celebrated it
• 4:52
  without knowing the backstory. Then comes November 2nd, All Souls Day, which is a different day
• 5:00
  with a different job. All Saints' is for the saints in heaven. All Souls' is for all the
• 5:07
  faithful departed, which means everyone who has died, including the people you love. Here's
• 5:13
  a part people often miss. The church doesn't claim to know where any particular person is.
• 5:20
  Your grandpa may already be in heaven, and the same with your old neighbor or the friend who
• 5:25
  left too soon. They might even be among the saints we just talked about. We don't know,
• 5:31
  and the church doesn't pretend to. What Catholics believe is that heaven is for those who are
• 5:37
  completely at peace with God, and that some people who die in God's friendship still need
• 5:43
  a final cleansing first. Catholics have a name for that, purgatory. Think of purgatory as
• 5:50
  the last stretch of the road home. It isn't a second chance and it isn't forever. Everyone
• 5:58
  there is already on their way to heaven and the church teaches that our prayers can help
• 6:04
  along the way. Most Protestant churches don't accept that teaching. So that's a real difference
• 6:10
  between Protestants and the Catholics. But you don't have to share the same theology to understand
• 6:16
  the instinct. When someone you love dies, you want to do something for them. And if they
• 6:22
  are now in heaven, then your prayer was still an act of love. And that's never wasted. All
• 6:30
  right, the question many of you have been waiting for. Did the church steal Halloween from the
• 6:35
  pagans? Here's the popular version. Long before any of this, the Celts had a festival called
• 6:42
  Samhain. That marked the end of summer. The story goes that the church saw a good party
• 6:48
  and said, hey, we'll take that and moved all Saints Day to November 1st to compete. Is that
• 6:56
  possible? Sure. One major encyclopedia says that might be why the date moved. Notice the
• 7:03
  word might. And the church absolutely did take over pagan places. The Pantheon is proof. But
• 7:11
  taking over a temple in Rome is something we can document. Taking over Samhain is a guess.
• 7:17
  Historians who have dug into it point out that we know surprisingly little about what people
• 7:23
  actually did at Samhain. So where does the picture of ghosts and a festival of the dead come from?
• 7:31
  A lot of it traces back to one book, The Golden Bough, published in 1890 by a Scottish scholar
• 7:38
  named James Frazer. It was a huge, famous study of myths and rituals from all over the world,
• 7:45
  and Frazer argued that Samhain must have been an ancient Celtic festival of the dead. But
• 7:52
  he didn't have an actual record of one. He reasoned his way there. Lots of cultures honor their
• 7:59
  dead, he said, and the church took over other pagan holidays, so this must have been one
• 8:04
  of them. That's a theory, not a document, and it was written long after the fact. Nobody
• 8:11
  has a time machine. So here's my honest answer. We don't know. Maybe the church was competing
• 8:19
  with Samhain. Maybe the dates just landed near each other the way some things sometimes do.
• 8:25
  Think about it. Like if two big parties landed on the same weekend, did one steal from the
• 8:30
  other or was it just a busy weekend in the neighborhood? Anyone who tells you the church definitely
• 8:36
  stole it is guessing. And so is anyone who tells you it definitely did not. I'd rather tell
• 8:43
  you, I don't know, than pretend to be sure. Okay, okay, but where did the candy come from?
• 8:50
  That, turns out, has a better paper trail. Back in the Middle Ages around All Souls Day, poor
• 8:57
  people went door to door asking for something called soul cakes, which were small round cakes.
• 9:04
  In exchange, they promised to pray for the families dead. It was called souling. Picture it. I'll
• 9:11
  pray for your late grandmother if you give me a cake. Honestly, not too bad of a deal. A
• 9:18
  few centuries later, kids in Scotland and Ireland were doing something called guising. They dressed
• 9:24
  up in costumes, went door to door, and performed a song or a joke for a treat. Put those two
• 9:30
  together and you can see the family resemblance to trick-or-treating. Historians say these
• 9:36
  are the likely ancestors, but likely is the right word because nobody has drawn a perfectly
• 9:43
  straight line. It's just a very good hunch. And the jack-o-lantern. Long before pumpkins,
• 9:50
  people in Ireland and Scotland carved turnips into lanterns. Imagine how scary that looked
• 9:56
  and how hard it was to carve. But when immigrants came to America, they switched to pumpkins
• 10:02
  because pumpkins are bigger and easier to carve. Thank goodness, I have two pumpkins on my porch
• 10:09
  right now begging to be carved up and I'm so glad that they aren't turnips. There's also
• 10:16
  a folk tale about a man called Stingy Jack who tricked the devil and ended up turned away
• 10:21
  from both heaven and hell. With nowhere to go, he had to wander in the dark and the devil
• 10:28
  tossed him a glowing coal to light the way. Jack tucked it inside a hollowed out turnip
• 10:34
  and carried it like a lantern. Some people say the glowing lantern stood for a soul in purgatory.
• 10:40
  Maybe. Nobody can prove that one either. So we have to take a quick detour in our discussions
• 10:47
  on Halloween because people always ask, the Day of the Dead in Mexico falls on the same
• 10:52
  two days, November 1st and 2nd, but isn't it Mexico's version of Halloween and All Saints
• 10:58
  Day? Well, no. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, describes
• 11:06
  it as a blend of ancient Indigenous traditions and Catholic feasts. Families set up altars
• 11:12
  with photos, favorite foods, and bright orange marigolds. Traditionally, November 1st for
• 11:19
  children who have died, and November 2nd is for adults. It's less run from the ghosts and
• 11:25
  more come on over we saved you a seat, which if you think about it, It's kind of the same
• 11:31
  idea as All Souls. Detour is over. So what do Catholics actually do on these days? Honestly,
• 11:40
  nothing as dramatic as you'd think. November 1st is what you'd call a holy day of obligation,
• 11:46
  which just means Mass is expected. This year it falls on a Sunday, so most Catholics will
• 11:52
  be there anyway. On November 2nd, a lot of people visit cemeteries, light candles, and say the
• 11:57
  names of the people they have lost. And here's a fun fact for my Protestant friends that I
• 12:03
  found in my studies for this episode. Martin Luther, a German monk, wrote a list of 95 points
• 12:09
  challenging certain practices in the church, and that moment helped start the Reformation,
• 12:15
  the movement that led to the creation of Protestant churches. Those 95 points are traditionally
• 12:21
  dated to October 31st, more than 500 years ago, the same evening as All Hallows' Eve. whether
• 12:29
  he literally nailed them to a church door or something historians still argue about. But
• 12:33
  the date has stuck and many Protestant churches mark it as Reformation Day. So there's a lot
• 12:39
  of history packed into one night. Now, whether your family dresses up on Halloween, skips
• 12:45
  it, or goes to church instead is all up to you. Catholics land in different places on that
• 12:51
  and I'm not trying to tell you where to land. I just wanted you to know where the name comes
• 12:56
  from. and that the night is the eve of a feast for all the saints. All right, back to the
• 13:03
  porch. Here's what I keep thinking about. Everybody in this story, from the Pope with the Pantheon
• 13:13
  to the folks with the soul cakes, ended up practically doing the same thing. They lit
• 13:21
  a little light for the people who came before. A candle in a turnip. A candle on a grave
• 13:28
  in Mexico. A candle in a church. And a candle in a pumpkin. I don't think that's an accident.
• 13:37
  I mean, we dress the night up with monsters and candy, but underneath the costumes, it's
• 13:43
  still about remembering the people who came before us. These three days give us permission
• 13:50
  to talk about death without making it weird. We spend most of the year acting like it isn't
• 13:56
  there. And then for a weekend, we light candles and say the names of the people we miss. Remember
• 14:04
  what the word saint meant in the first place? It just meant Holy One, an ordinary believer,
• 14:10
  not a statue, a regular person. The church has an official list of saints, but countless,
• 14:18
  and I mean countless people never made it. The friend who sat with you in the hospital, the
• 14:23
  coworker who covered for you when things got bad, the teacher who believed in you before
• 14:29
  you did, none of them got a statue. They just got up the next day and did the next good thing.
• 14:38
  So here's my challenge for the week or until Thursday's episode. And it's easier than picking
• 14:44
  out a costume. Think of one person who made you better and never got credit. Say their
• 14:50
  name out loud. Light a candle. Text someone who knew them. And if they are still around,
• 14:57
  tell them. And when the kids show up on your front steps this Saturday, remember what's
• 15:03
  happening. They are asking for candy. You are handing it out. And for about 30 seconds, the
• 15:09
  whole street is part of one small, very old, slightly sugary tradition. Not bad. And that
• 15:17
  kid from the beginning, the one dressed up as something nobody can identify? Turns out they
• 15:23
  are part of a very old tradition they have no idea about. Think about what that porch light
• 15:29
  means on Halloween. It says, Come on by, we're home, we've got something for you. That's a
• 15:38
  pretty good picture of these three days. We leave a light on for the people we have lost
• 15:44
  and a welcome for the people still here. One more thing, if someone you love died this year,
• 15:52
  this week might feel heavy and that's okay. Praying for the dead is one of the oldest ways
• 15:59
  people have found to stay close to the ones they miss. It is now time for the closing prayer.
• 16:07
  Lord, thank you for the saints we know by name, and for the countless many we will never know.
• 16:13
  Thank you for the people who first taught us how to pray. Remember the ones we've lost and
• 16:18
  give them rest. And give the rest of us enough light to be a little brighter for somebody
• 16:23
  else this week. Amen. Well, that is special episode number two. If there's a question about
• 16:31
  saints or Catholic history, You'd like answered in an episode like this one? Email me at EverydaySaintsShow
• 16:37
  at gmail.com. A new saint's story is back this Thursday, and if you haven't tapped follow
• 16:42
  on your podcast platform, now is a good time. So the next one shows up in your library on
• 16:48
  its own. I'm John O'Connor. Have a fantastic and safe Halloween. And as always, thanks for
• 16:54
  sitting on the porch with me. I will see you Thursday.