Today we view Halloween as a day for the children to dress up and get candy Many Christians see it as the Devil's holiday, but the real history of halloween started with the church and didn't involve children or candy. Halloween's history starts in the church, like most holidays and merged with the pagan culture. Like most holidays.
The real history of halloween goes back to 609 A.D. The Roman Pope, Boniface IV, dedicated the Pantheon (a Roman monument) to honor Christian martyrs with a feast and called it All Martyrs Day.
Later Pope Gregory III expanded the festival to include saints as well, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.
Yep! The origin of Halloween was to honor the Saints and Martyrs!
By the 9th century, the influence of Catholicism had spread into Celtic lands, and merged with certain Celtic rituals. The Catholic All Saints’ Day (also called All-hallows from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day)was celebrated on Nov 1. The Celtic holiday, Samhain (called All Souls Day) was celebrated on November 2. Eventually Oct 31 began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Now a church sanctioned holiday.
Merging the two festivals was easy to do because they were celebrated in similar ways. Both had bonfires, parades and dressing up as animals, saints, angels and devils. The Catholic church always found a way to merge the relevant culture's pagan practices into a "holy" day. Were they trying to be politically correct and let the pagan sinners in? Or were they trying to have fun and santicied the sinful activities? It's not my place to judge. Merging cultures and religious practices happen over time eventually.
Another reason merging the two was easy was because both the Celts and the Catholics recognized this particular time-the midpoint between the fall equinox and the winter solstice-as a time when the veil between the Spirit world and the physical world would be lifted. This allowed for more interaction with ancestors, fairies and spirits. People would dress as animals and monsters to avoid getting kidnapped by fairies and leave offerings in the fields for a shape-shifting monster.
Over centuries this practiced morphed into going door to door in costumes to
sing songs to the dead (payment for this service was CAKE!) and playing tricks on people and blaming it on fairies.
In America, halloween morphed into people in costumes going door to door to ask for food or money and eventually turning it over to children who asked for treats.
Now that you understand the real history of halloween you get to decide whether it's something you want to participate in or not and HOW you are going to participate. Don't just go by a religious person telling you, "It's not of God." Or, 'It's the devil's holiday!'
ANY holiday that's celebrated you can transmute that energy for your benefit. For a number of years we didn't celebrate Christmas because I was disgusted by the commercialization of it. As my children got older I realized Christmas is about the magic of LOVE and GIVING. And that has been our focus.
With the understanding of the history of Halloween in mind make it work for you.