Halloween Is A Christian Holiday - It’s Time To Reclaim It.

I grew up in a home where Halloween was something to be avoided. While other kids dressed up as superheroes and monsters, I sat inside with the lights off, pretending we weren’t home. My parents weren’t cruel or paranoid, they genuinely believed Halloween was a celebration of darkness, witchcraft, and evil. At church, we were told it was “Satan’s holiday,” a time when demons were worshiped and Christians were called to separate themselves from the world. As a kid, that made sense to me. Why would any Christian want to take part in something that glorifies fear, horror, and death? But as I grew older and later entered the Catholic Church, I began to dig deeper into the history of the day we call Halloween. What I discovered shocked me. Far from being a pagan celebration or a glorification of evil, Halloween began as a deeply Christian feast – All Hallows’ Eve, the vigil of All Saints’ Day.

The word Halloween itself comes from All Hallows’ Eve – “hallow” meaning “holy” or “saint.” Just like Christmas Eve precedes Christmas Day, All Hallows’ Eve is the evening before All Hallows’ Day, or All Saints’ Day. This solemn feast, celebrated on November 1st, was established to honor all the saints – known and unknown – who now live in Heaven. The roots of All Saints’ Day go back as early as the 4th century, when Christians began honoring martyrs collectively. By the 8th century, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica to all the saints, fixing the celebration on November 1. Later, Pope Gregory IV extended the feast to the entire Church. The night before naturally became a vigil, a time of preparation and prayer.

So how did a holy vigil become a night of costumes, candy, and haunted houses? Like most things in history, the story is complicated and often misunderstood.

You’ll often hear people say, “Halloween comes from the pagan festival of Samhain.” It’s true that the Celts celebrated Samhain around the same time of year, marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter. But the claim that Halloween is Samhain, or that Christians “copied” or “stole” it, is overly simplistic and historically shaky.

When Christianity spread throughout Europe, missionaries didn’t seek to destroy everything about local culture. Instead, they baptized what was good and redirected what was harmful. They took natural human customs, like remembering the dead, and gave them new meaning in light of the Gospel. For example, the Celts believed that during Samhain, the veil between the living and the dead grew thin. Rather than dismiss this entirely, the Church offered a truer understanding: yes, we are connected to those who have died, not through superstition or fear, but through the Communion of Saints. The Church invited the faithful to pray for the dead, honor the saints, and reflect on our own mortality.

So the timing of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days (November 1st and 2nd) might have overlapped with older traditions, but the meaning was transformed. Christians replaced the pagan fear of spirits with the hope of resurrection.

In the early Church, vigils were times of fasting, prayer, and reflection before great feasts. All Hallows’ Eve was no different. Christians gathered to remember the saints in Heaven and to prepare their hearts for the feast the next day. Some of the customs that grew up around the vigil were rich with symbolism. For instance, people would light candles or lanterns to represent the light of Christ shining in the darkness, a practice that may have evolved into the “jack-o’-lantern.” Children and the poor would go door to door singing songs or praying for the souls of the dead, receiving small “soul cakes” in return. Sound familiar? It’s the ancestor of modern trick-or-treating.

The original message was clear: death is not the end. The saints who went before us are alive in Christ, and our prayers can help the souls still being purified in Purgatory. Memento mori – “remember that you will die” – wasn’t a threat, but a call to holiness.

So how did we get from candles and prayers to skeleton costumes and haunted houses?

The first major shift came with the Protestant Reformation. Many Reformers rejected the Catholic understanding of saints, Purgatory, and prayers for the dead. They viewed All Saints’ and All Souls’ as superstitious or unbiblical. As devotion to these feasts declined in Protestant regions, All Hallows’ Eve lost its sacred context. What remained was a cultural shell, a night associated with death and spirits but stripped of its Christian meaning.

In some places, people began to mock the old Catholic customs. What had once been a night of prayer for the dead became a night of pranks and mischief. Masks and costumes, originally meant to symbolize our spiritual connection to the unseen, became tools for parody or rebellion. The holy vigil was transformed into a caricature.

Ironically, the very people who accused Catholics of superstition created the conditions for a real superstition to grow—a night focused on fear, darkness, and the grotesque, rather than the triumph of Christ over death.

When Irish and Scottish immigrants came to America in the 19th century, they brought remnants of All Hallows’ Eve traditions with them. Over time, these customs merged with other folk practices and evolved in a new cultural setting. The emphasis shifted from religion to community fun. By the early 20th century, Halloween in the U.S. was more about parties and costumes than prayer. By mid-century, it was completely commercialized: candy companies, Hollywood, and pop culture rebranded it as a night of thrills, scares, and sugar highs. The spiritual meaning had all but disappeared.

The modern Halloween, with its horror films, haunted houses, and occult imagery, is a distortion of what was once a profoundly Christian observance. We’ve kept the skeleton but stripped away the soul.

Having grown up in a Protestant home, I now understand where my parents were coming from. When they looked at Halloween, they didn’t see saints and prayer, they saw witches, demons, and fake blood. And they were right to be concerned about the glorification of evil. But what they didn’t realize (and what I never knew as a child) was that Halloween wasn’t meant to glorify death and evil, it was meant to mock it.

In the medieval world, Christians had a tradition of holy mockery, laughing at the devil because Christ had already defeated him. Dressing up as ghosts, skeletons, or even demons wasn’t an act of worship, it was a parody, a reminder that Satan’s power was broken. In a sense, it was a victory dance. When Protestants stripped away the theology, all that remained was the imagery. Without the Christian framework, what was once mockery began to look like celebration. And that misunderstanding still shapes how many Christians view Halloween today.

So, what’s a faithful Christian supposed to do with Halloween? Should we reject it entirely? Or can we reclaim it for what it truly is? As a Catholic now, I see Halloween differently than I did growing up. It’s not the “devil’s holiday.” It’s our holiday. It belongs to the Church. It’s the eve of one of our greatest feasts—a celebration of the saints, the triumph of good over evil, and the hope of eternal life. That doesn’t mean we should embrace everything the modern world has attached to it. Not every costume or decoration is innocent. But we can celebrate the night in a way that honors its true origins. Here are a few ideas:

• Teach your kids the real story. Let them know Halloween comes from All Hallows’ Eve, and explain the connection to All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days.

• Light candles and pray for the dead. Visit a cemetery and pray for loved ones who have passed away. Protestant friends – it’s okay to pray to God for your dead loved ones. Yes, if they’re in heaven or hell your prayers are unneeded, but if the doctrine of Purgatory is true, it certainly wouldn’t hurt. Yes, praying to the dead is strictly prohibited, but not praying for them.

• Celebrate the saints. Attend an All Saints’ Day Mass. Encourage children to dress up as their favorite saints rather than fictional monsters.

• Practice holy fun. Carve pumpkins with crosses or Scripture verses. Host a family “All Saints’ party.” Reclaim joy from fear.

By grounding the night in faith, we can transform it from a celebration of darkness into a witness to the light of Christ.

When I watch my kids dress up now – sometimes as saints, sometimes as harmless characters – I smile, because I know what the night truly represents. The world may celebrate ghosts and ghouls, but I see a deeper truth: death has lost its sting. The grave has no victory.

Every skeleton decoration, every image of a ghost, is (whether people realize it or not) a silent witness to a Christian truth: we all die, but through Christ, we live again.

So rather than hide in fear on October 31st, I choose to celebrate with gratitude and reverence. I pray for the dead, thank God for the saints, and teach my children that holiness—not horror—is what the day is truly about.