Teach Your Kids about All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day

Children look forward to Halloween for a number of reasons. They can’t wait to gather all that candy, and they know that soon after Halloween is Thanksgiving and then Christmas. It’s no wonder children like the last three months of the year – there’s food, food and more food as well as getting out of school. You may want to teach your kids about All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day so they know the basis for the holiday.

Depending upon your frame of reference, All Hallows' Eve is either a Christian or a pagan holiday. Wiccans, or modern day witches, claim the day is associated with pagan celebrations. Catholics and Episcopalians, however, say October 31 is a time to celebrate the saints of old so it is also the eve of the Feast of All Saints. This holy time has been commemorated for centuries.

According to some people, All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day is an acknowledgment of the pain and suffering associated with death. It is also thought that modern Halloween is a way to try to deny the reality of death and anything evil in the world by making fun of it. Rather than concentrating on Christian ideals in a solemn way, they would rather make the evening all about something less serious.

Harvest Party vs. Halloween Trick or Treating

Many parents, for varied reasons, are getting out of the traditional Halloween spirit of trick or treating. To replace the door to door trick or treating or Halloween parties, parents are instead choosing Harvest or Fall parties. These are basically a watered down version of the traditional Halloween.

Many of today’s parents who are Christians themselves placed Christmas as their favorite holiday as a child. Many of those same parents chose Halloween as one of their favorite holidays as a child too. Back then, they had no idea that Halloween could be a huge offense to Christians. Just as the Christian holiday of Christmas can be an offense to the non-believer. 

In the 1970’s and 1980’s there were reports of razor blades and needles being put into apples being handed out to trick or treating children. Around the same time there were reports that candy and taffy were being laced with poison.

Halloween History

It’s almost that time again. Things are about to go bump in the night.

Spook masters would have you believe that the dead actually walk the earth on that day, but Halloween is as much a matter of shadows and mirrors as the horror movies we watch. For anyone interested, here is a history of the modern day holiday known as Halloween.

First of all, it was called All Hallows Eve. We are not speaking of Sleepy Hollow. Hallow means holy, like in The Lord’s Prayer for all the Sunday schoolers out there.

Early pagan religions, specifically the Celts, would celebrate different phases of the earth. One such festival was Samhain. It is pronounced “saw-in” and it was a festival that commemorated the lives of the dead. There was nothing wrong with this, except that they didn’t discriminate between the “good” dead and the “bad” dead. People remembered all of the dead. The date that this festival fell on was October 31^st.

Isn’t sounding too scary so far is it? Well, you must remember that early pagan religions were prone to superstition as in the Middle Ages. They were afraid of spirits and the thought of them returning to the human world frightened them.

As history goes, during this time, priests of the religion would contact these spirits to divine the future of the harvest as this was also harvest season. People’s livelihood depended on those crops and they were afraid that the spirits would curse them and destroy the crops.

The church decided to combat such superstition by adding a bit of Christianity to the occasion. They moved the celebration of All Saints Day from March 13^th to November 1^st. People would hopefully be less scared and more into the Christian celebration than the pagan one.

Everyone didn’t change their long held beliefs however. People would cover their faces with masks when they went out at night in hopes that any roaming spirits would recognize them as fellow travelers and suspend their mischief. They also used large carved turnips with candles inside as lanterns.

All Hallows Eve became Halloween in modern times.

Instead of walking through the veil between this world and the next, kids dress in a variety of costumes to scare each other silly and get a bit of candy in the process. The only spirits around on Halloween are the ones we create on the movie set. Watch out!

A Brief History of Halloween

Halloween began as an ancient Celtic festival in Great Britain and Ireland, and has survived most strongly among Irish, Scottish and Welsh communities. Immigrants from these communities carried the tradition to North America where it has gained in popularity.

In turn, as part of American pop culture, Halloween has spread in popularity to most corners of the English speaking western world, and increasingly into Western Europe in recent times.

Originally Halloween was a pagan festival, around the idea of linking the living with the dead, when contact became possible between the spirits and the physical world, and magical things were more likely to happen. Like most pagan festivals, long ago it was absorbed into the festivals of the expanding Christian church, and became associated with All Hallows Day, or All Saints Day, which eventually fell on November 1 under the Gregorian calendar. A vigil for the festival was held on All Hallows Evening on October 31. In the vernacular of the times, All Hallows Evening became Hallowe'en and later the Halloween we know today.

The celebration of Halloween survived most strongly in Ireland. It was an end of summer festival, and was often celebrated in each community with a bonfire to ward off the evil spirits. Children would go from door to door in disguise as creatures from the underworld to collect treats, mainly fruit, nuts and the like for the festivities. These were used for playing traditional games like eating an apple on a string or bobbing for apples and other gifts in a basin of water, without using your hands. Salt might be sprinkled on the visiting children to ward off evil spirits. Carving turnips as ghoulish faces to hold candles became a popular part of the festival, which has been adapted to carving pumpkins in America.

The trick aspect to trick or treating as it emerged in North America seems to have more obscure origins. It may be a merging of the collection of treats with another separate old tradition, especially in Ireland, where children would sometimes engage in secretive mischief at Halloween. The original intention was for the activities of mischievous Halloween spirits to be blamed. Usually the mischief consisted of playing some minor or witty tricks on some adults - often the less popular ones - things like moving or hiding everyday items during Halloween night.

In Scotland and England the tradition of singing or other entertainment in return for the gifts collected was more common than the threat of a trick if nothing was given.

In times past a refusal to give something when requested during trick or treating may have resulted in some prank, which was not always carried out in a spirit of good fun. Tossing eggs or flour at the house, or soaping windows, were common pranks. In most places today the trick aspect of trick or treating now survives more as a ritual than any real threat.

Today, however, Halloween is an excuse for Halloween theme costume parties, and entertainment with horror films, haunted houses and other activities around the popular themes of ghosts, witches, Dracula, werewolves and the supernatural. Children love to dress up in halloween costumes and go from door-to-door in their neighborhood following the old tradition of trick-or-treating, collecting sweets and gifts, sometimes money.