The history of Halloween is a long and complicated one, and I will attempt to put it together for us here so that we may come upon this Halloween or All Souls Day with a renewed perspective and respect for this once solemn Pagan and Christian holiday that originally went back to the Druids and the ancient Romans. Note that the Druidic tradition was an oral tradition and the Druids did not write down their history and so it was left to the Romans to do so; what the Romans gave us is not entirely to be trusted for this reason, for surely they had some agenda of their own and wanted to promote their own gods and belief systems.

Some believe that Samhain, the name for Halloween in some Celtic parts of the world, was the name of Druid god of the dead, who was called “Saman.” During Samhain, souls that were both good and wicked would be conjured and come forth. The wicked souls who had died within the past year would be reborn as animals, or so it was believed. During the celebration, all cautions must be taken to ward off any Druid evil spirits, and this is why bonfires were lit, costumes adorned, and other ceremonies held that had both human and animal sacrifice to appease the god of the dead, or so it is told (this god was known as Saman, though there is no evidence that he really existed.).

More likely, Samhain is a literal translation from the Gaelic as noted. The word Samhain comes from the Gaelic and is translated by the Gaelic dictionary as Sam which means, “end” and Fuin that means “of summer.”

Samhain, as or “All Saints Day” as it became known in Scotland, marks the end of the harvest year and the beginning of the dark part of the year. In the 7th century, Pope Boniface IV named the holiday All Saints Day to replace the Pagan “Day of the Dead” and so Christianized the holiday. By 834, Gregory III moved All Saints Day from May 13 to November 1st and made it All Saints Day so that it may become even more of a Christian holiday and a day to remember God and all the “saints” who had come and gone before.

For the Celts, the year was divided into the light part of the year and the dark part of the year. The day was also known as All Saints Day or All Souls Day. At this time of the year, which began usually on November 1st or October 31st and lasted three days, from sunset to sunset (following the Biblical tradition of marking days), and marked a time in the year when the space between the world of the living and the world of the dead was thinner and therefore more permeable.