Does Halloween have pagan origins?
Added 2025-10-12 00:30:44 +0000 UTCI might eventually turn this question into a YouTube video someday. This represents where I stand on the question after just beginning my research. It is not as simple to answer as I had at first imagined.
Comments
Yes, excellent point.
Premodernist
2025-10-18 22:03:29 +0000 UTC1:10 - 2:33 thank you for the beautiful illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect and, more importantly, for honest and laborous continuation on that journey to provide us the quality end result :)
Lukas Janecka
2025-10-18 12:14:42 +0000 UTCA small, and perhaps tangential point. In terms of counting when halfway between the equinox and solstices to determine the dates of the traditional Irish festivals on the Christian Calendar, wouldn't the inaccuracy of the Julian calendar, as well as the Milankovitch Cycles, specifically the Apsidal and Axial processions), mean that in the early middle ages they would have all been at different dates then they are in the present? This no doubt makes the whole business as to the accuracy of the halfway between calculation even more murky and suspect?
Andrew Burmester
2025-10-15 01:48:24 +0000 UTCI think your conclusions are the most reasonable one could make. We don't really know how much of the present day Halloween is of pagan origin, but the most likely explanation is that it has some pagan origin. Of course, this is far from certain knowledge, but everything seems to be pointing in that direction. I would add one more thing to the things potentially under consideration: where I come from, Halloween, if it is observed, is sort of a recent Americanism, but it coincides with our own "spooky" traditions, one of which is the Feast of St. Andrew, which is associated in folklore with witchy stuff, like telling the future from molten wax. And then you traditionally had "Dziady", or the more elegantly named "Feast of the Forefathers", which incorporated elements of the Christian All Souls' Day, but with some added non-Christian elements, like making food offerings on graves alongside the whole "souls returning to the world of the living" thing. There's a broad consensus here that the Feast of the Forefathers also has pagan origin, and it occurs to me that it's a similar case to Halloween in that we don't really know how much of it derives from the Christian Era and how much predates it. But I would say that it's fairly interesting that two rather geographically removed cultural areas, like Ireland and the Balto-Slavic World, would come up with two distinct traditions associated with the dead and the spooky, while also following the Christian calendar. If you compare it to Dia de los Muertos, they are all almost like textbook examples of the Church appropriating pre-Christian festivals for Christian purposes. In other words, syncretism. Unfortunately, we will never know for sure. The obvious problem here, aside from the rare Ogham inscription, the straightforward association between spread of Christianity and literary accounts means it's impossible to definitely separate what is Christian from what is pagan. It's sort of like with the Eddas, were they were both composed in the Christian era in spite of talking about an explicitly non Christian subject matter. Hopefully you can find some information on the 1000-1500 period. Also, in the context of "larpers", I think the neutral term in this case would perhaps be romanticists.
PizzaCat
2025-10-12 04:25:43 +0000 UTC
