The spooky holiday has origins rich in diverse religions
By
Scott Taylor Deseret News
Published: Friday, Oct. 30, 2009
"Peanuts" comic strip character Linus Van Pelt one said: "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin."
Religious overtones long have intertwined with Halloween, with their implications shadowing the most anticipated and celebrated North American holiday this side of Christmas.
A $7 billion annual industry — costumes, candy, parties, decorations, haunted houses and other traditional trappings — attests to its popularity.
Some diverse attitudes toward Halloween come from certain faiths or individuals of extreme conviction.
Jehovah's Witnesses believe a holiday originating from a pagan festival should not be celebrated by true Christians, while observant Jews and Muslims both frown upon Halloween not only because of its pagan roots but its early ties to Christianity and the Catholic Church.
Some Anglicans underscore the accompanying All Saints' Day, some Lutheran and Reformed sects celebrate Oct. 31 more as Reformation Day in remembrance of the Protestant Reformation, and some conservative Christians deem Halloween as incompatible with their faith because it celebrates the occult and draws attention to evil and grotesque elements.
And some ethicists worry trick-or-treating may promote greedy or gluttonous tendencies, to say nothing of the "tricks" leading to acts of vandalism or violence.
Meanwhile, many religious individuals see no negative significance with Halloween, treating it instead as a purely secular holiday with no real threat to one's spirituality.
In other words, it's a holiday having evolved over the centuries.
Historians trace Halloween's origins back more than 2,000 years ago to the areas of modern Ireland, United Kingdom and northern France. Ancient Celtic calendars were dived into a "lighter" season of growing and a "darker" half being the oncoming winter of dreary days, uncertainty, low food and death.
With the Nov. 1 equivalent being regarded as starting a "new year," the Celts conducted the preceding evening a festival of "Samhain," believing it to coincide when the spirits of the dead were most likely to visit.
The Celts used the festival to welcome and honor ancestors while warding off or confusing harmful spirits by wearing costumes and masks. Besides using the festival as a time to predict the future, Druids — Celtic priests — built bonfires used in cleansing rituals and for sacrificing crops and animals to Celtic deities.
With the Romans conquering most Celtic lands by the 100 A.D., the next four centuries saw Samhein meshed with two Roman festivals: Feralia, a late October day for commemorating the passing of the dead; and a second honoring Pomona, the goddess of fruit and trees, whose symbol was the apple.
Over the next several hundred years, Catholic popes tried to replace the Celtic festivals with similar church-sponsored holidays, moving All Saints' Day — honoring saints and martyrs — from May to Nov. 1 and later adding All Souls' Day — to honor the dead — on Nov. 2.
The three-day period was called All-Hallows or All-Hallowmas, with Oct. 31 called All Hallows Even, then All Hallows E'en, leading to today's Halloween.
Still celebrated today in some parts of Spain, Mexico and other Latin America nations, All Souls' Day centuries ago in England spawn the precursor of trick-or-treating, as poor citizens went house-to-house begging for food. Residents handed out pastries called "soul cakes," with the beggars promising in return to pray for the family's deceased relatives.
Encouraged by church leaders, soul cakes replaced older practices of leaving out food and wine for roaming spirits. Children soon took the place of the poor in "going a-souling."
The Irish are credited with a number of Halloween traditions, from jack-o'-lanterns to bobbing for floating apples and biting for stringed apples. The latter games stem from different forms of old Irish divination activities.
Jack-o'-lanterns were tied to the old Irish story of a farmer named Stingy Jack, who tricked the devil into climbing a tree and then trapped him by carving a cross into the trunk. The devil cursed Jack to forever wander the earth, his only light being his lantern — a candle in a hollowed-out turnip.
Faces and heads carved into crops such as turnips and rutabagas had long been used in Europe to frighten off harmful spirits. Once these Halloween customs were brought to North America by the 1800s' extensive European migration, the larger, more plentiful pumpkins became the carving material of choice.
In the late 1800s, Americans molded Halloween more into a community event, downplaying the ghost stories, mischief and pranks common since colonial times.
By the mid-1900s, Halloween saw less associated vandalism, an movement from large community celebrations to parties in homes and classrooms and a revival of neighborhood trick-or-treating.
Thanks to horror literature, filmmakers and graphic artists, Halloween in the 20th century got an image makeover, with a heavy dose of Frankenstein and Dracula, magic and the occult, mythical monsters and gruesome scenes.
e-mail:
taylor@desnews.com 
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