Is Halloween Dangerous?

As Halloween is quickly approaching, my wife and I have continued to talk about this day and whether or not it’s a day worth celebrating in our home. We’ve all heard the allegations: Halloween is a pagan rite dating back to some pre-Christian festival among the Celtic Druids that escaped church suppression. Even today modern pagans and witches continue to celebrate this ancient festival. If you let your kids go trick-or-treating, they will be worshiping the Devil and pagan gods.

Yet like most kids, when my wife and I were little, we loved the idea of Halloween and dressing up as our favorite characters, going door-to-door with our parents to get candy! It wasn’t about the demonic for us, rather it was about getting candy in funny costumes! Yet over the years, my wife and I both had our share of boycotting the day as we learned about the evil practices that also 'haunt' this day. But is it really just an pagan holiday fueled by the Devil to get people to (unknowingly) worship the Devil and all things dead and demonic? What are the real origins of Halloween? And is it really a decisive holiday of the Devil?

First, lets look at the true origins of this holiday. Halloween is, in fact, very Christian and rather American holiday. The day itself falls on October 31 because of a pope, and its observances are the result of medieval Catholic piety.

It’s true that the ancient Celts of Ireland and Britain celebrated a minor festival on October 31–as they did on the last day of most other months of the year. However, Halloween falls on the last day of October because the Solemnity of All Saints, or “All Hallows,” falls on November 1. The feast in honor of all the saints in Heaven used to be celebrated on May 13, but Pope Gregory III (d. 741) moved it to November 1, the dedication day of All Saints Chapel in St. Peter’s at Rome. Later, in the 840s, Pope Gregory IV commanded that All Saints be observed everywhere. And so the holy day spread to Ireland.

The day before was the feast’s evening vigil, “All Hallows Eve,” or “Hallowe’en.” In 998, St. Odilo, the abbot of the powerful monastery of Cluny in southern France, added a celebration on November 2. This was a day of prayer for the souls of all the faithful departed. This feast, called All Souls Day, spread from France to the rest of Europe.

Since now the Church had feasts for all those in Heaven and all those in Purgatory. What about those in the other place? It seems Irish Catholic peasants wondered about the unfortunate souls in Hell, and figured if they didn’t get a holiday, then they might be unhappy enough to cause trouble. So it became customary to bang pots and pans on All Hallows Eve to let the damned know they were not forgotten. Thus, in Ireland at least, all the dead came to be remembered–even if the clergy were not terribly sympathetic to Halloween and never allowed “All Damned Day” into the church calendar.

But if you notice, banging pots and letting those in Hell that they aren’t forgotten is really not what Halloween is all about? Instead, we run around in goofy costumes and ask for candy! This custom of dressing up arose in France during the 14th and 15th centuries. When late medieval Europe was hit by repeated outbreaks of the bubonic plague, it lost about half its population. Of course with this kind of epidemic going around, Catholics became more concerned about the afterlife.

More Masses were said on All Souls Day, and artistic images were created to remind everyone of their own mortality. Some of these included the image of the “danse macabre”, or “dance of death,” which was commonly painted on the walls of cemeteries, showing the Devil leading a line of people–popes, kings, ladies, knights, monks, peasants, lepers, etc.–into the tomb. It soon became customary to host this dance on All Souls Day itself with a reenactment of people dressed up in the garb of various states of life.

But the French dressed up on All Souls, not Halloween; and the Irish, who had Halloween, did not dress up. How the two became mingled probably happened first in the British colonies of North America during the 1700s, when Irish and French Catholics began to intermarry. The Irish focus on Hell gave the French masquerades an even more ghoulish twist.

But where on earth did “trick or treat” come in? ”Treat or treat” is perhaps the oddest and most American addition to Halloween and is the unwilling contribution of English Catholics.
During the penal period of the 1500s to the 1700s in England, Catholics had no legal rights. They could not hold office and were subject to fines, jail and heavy taxes. It was a capital offense to say Mass, and hundreds of priests were martyred.

Occasionally, English Catholics resisted. One of the most popular acts of resistance was a plot to blow up the Protestant King James I and his Parliament with gunpowder. This was supposed to trigger a Catholic uprising against the oppressors. Yet the ill-conceived Gunpowder Plot was foiled on November 5, 1605, when the man guarding the gunpowder named Guy Fawkes, was captured and arrested. He was hanged and the plot was terminated.

However, on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, became a great celebration in England, and so it remains. During the penal periods, bands of revelers would put on masks and visit local Catholics in the dead of night, demanding beer and cakes for their celebration: trick or treat!

So when Guy Fawkes Day arrived in the American colonies with the first English settlers, Guy Fawkes had pretty much been forgotten. Yet trick or treat, though, was too much fun to give up, so eventually it moved to October 31, the day of the Irish-French masquerade. And in America, trick or treat wasn’t limited to just Catholics.

All-in-all, Halloween in and of itself is really a mixture of various immigrant traditions that pretty much all came together in the United States to form what we commonly practice each year. As for the other elements of Halloween like witches and jack-o’ lanterns; they were added in later help the greeting card industry and promote the more ghoulish commercial side of Halloween.

So its very clear that the holiday has more Christian origins to its beginning than pagan, but does that mean that it is okay for every Catholic to go out and dress-up like a scary vampire, ghost or zombie every year? Let alone, is it even okay for a Catholic to celebrate such a day?



There have obviously been some growing trends and themes over the years that have begun to turn this day into more of a demonic celebration than a day to prepare for the Holy Day to come the next morning. This growing trend has even caught the attention of the Vatican, which put out a statement to Catholics in 2011 that Halloween is becoming “anti-Christian and dangerous.”



The condemnation followed criticism from Catholic bishops who also urged parents not to let their children dress up as ghosts and goblins. It was also stated in an article entitled “The Dangerous Messages of Halloween”, the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano saying: “Halloween has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian.” The article went on to urge parents “to be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death”. 



Another Catholic group, the influential Association of Pope John XXIII, joined the condemnation, calling it a “great Satanic ritual”. It said: “We appeal to the whole Catholic community not to promote this recourse to the macabre and the horrific. All parents and all those that hold the values of life dear should know that Halloween is an adoration of Satan, which is carried out underhand through parties and games for children and adults.”



The Catholic Church in Italy has taken a dim view of Halloween celebrations for years. The head of the Catholic Church's anti-occult and sect unit, Aldo Bonaiuto, also warned parents of the dangers to children and said the event “promotes the culture of death”. He added: “Halloween pushes new generations towards a mentality of esoteric magic and it attacks sacred and spiritual values through a devious initiation to the art and images of the occult. At best, it gives a big helping hand to consumerism and materialism.”

It is clear as the Church points out, that Halloween has become a holiday that promotes practices of the occult, and glorifies the culture of death, which is so true when we see the popularity of vampires and zombies growing. It is also true how this holiday now has also boosted consumerism and materialism in the world! It is said that next to Christmas, Halloween sells the most collectible in the world. I would venture to say, as Satan is often called the “great ape of God” taking what God has done and often perversely mirroring it in his own evil and demonic way; he could be also adopting this holiday to make it his own anti-Christmas.



My suggestion to counter this day and its demonic practices is, as the Vatican urges, to celebrate it in the same way any vigil before a feast is celebrated, with prayer! And if you choose to dress up or hold a party, dress up as your favorite saint, angel or biblical character and go to an “All Saints Party”! There will be plenty of goodies there to satisfy any sweet tooth!



Bottom line, celebrate the Holy Ones! Not the damned ones! Make Heavenly noise to remind the damned not that they aren’t forgotten, but rather that they aren’t welcome on this vigil of All Saints!

God love you all! Pray the Rosary daily!