Halloween and All Saints Day

Halloween and the History of All Saints Day

1 Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

I. Introduction

This morning, I want us to take a break from Ruth and do something that I think will be both informative and fun. I want us to look at the History of Halloween and All Saints Day. However, before you roll your eyes in anticipation of another trunk-or-treat sermon, I think you will find that, like everything else we do here at All Saints Church, it’s going to be completely different. So let’s begin.

II. Brief History of Halloween and All Saints Day

The celebration of All Saints Day has a long and ancient tradition. From the earliest days of the church, it was the custom to celebrate the oneness of the Body of Christ, the believer’s victory over death, and the resurrection of all the faithful. Not only that, by the mid 300s, what we now call All Saints Day was celebrated on May 13, during the Easter season, due to Easter’s assurance of the resurrection of all believers.

          However, by the early 700s the celebration of All Saints and All Martyrs was moved to November 1^st. Within a 100 years November 1 had become the official date for the Feast throughout the entire Western Church. Subsequently, it is believed by many that the transition of All Saints Day from May 13 to November 1 was actually begun by the Church in Ireland in or around the time of St. Patrick (~500 AD -thus the Celtic tie/influence you often hear about).

My question this morning is this: why did the greater Church prefer the November 1^st date for the celebration over the original Easter Season date? What was the appeal that prompted the Church-wide move?

III. Why October 31^st and November 1^st (Hollows Eve and All Saints)

Our answer begins with a 19^th century Canadian anthropologist named RG Haliburton ^FN#1.  To his surprise Haliburton found that across the continents, a vast majority of every major ancient culture had a celebration or day of the dead and that they all held this celebration on the exact same dates (Oct 31^st – Nov 1^st). To give you an idea of the extent of this common commemoration, here is just a partial list of the ancient cultures observing the Feast of the Dead on Oct 31^st and Nov 1^st:

       Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, Swedish, Assyrian, Persian, Babylonian, Peruvian, Polynesian, Mexican, Indian, Mayan, Greco-

       Roman, the Aborigines of Australia, and the Japanese (to name but a few)

As an anthropologist, in Haliburton’s mind, there had to be a forgotten common cultural sensibility that lay beneath this shared custom.

As he researched what he found is that in the vast majority of the cases this common commemoration of the dead (on Oct 31- Nov 1) coincided with the celebration of the New Year and the Harvest (they were all using a Lunar Calendar). However, New Year and Harvest are typically joyful occasion. So, what do they have to do with the dead? Would it not be more understandable to commemorate the dead on the winter solstice (the longest night of the year)?

Another commonality that he found is that the vast majority of these commemorations were tied to (marked by) the Pleiades star cluster (the seven sisters), which makes up the shoulder of the star constellation Taurus (the Bull). In fact, this association between the Pleiades and Taurus is found in the 25-thousand-year-old French cave art, which depicts a bull with the Pleiades at his shoulder ^FN#2. So, what is the connection? The answer is fairly simply. The Taurus constellation is in the apex of the night sky on midnight of October 31^st. Thus, it was the astronomical mark of the New Year and its celebration. But what about the dead? How does the commemoration of the dead tie into all of this?

The answer is this: over and again (be it in artistic depictions or written accounts of this date/commemoration) there was the central emphasis on death and falling stars. For example, in the pre-Christian Mayan zodiac reliefs there is a depiction of the god of death falling to earth on this day. In the Codex Borgia (Pre-Christian Mexico) the god of death is accompanied by a host of burning stars falling to the earth with him on this very day ^FN#3.

Notice then what we have so far: across time and cultures, New Years (Oct 31) was marked when the Pleiades, the shoulder of Taurus the Bull, was in the apex of the night sky. In turn, across cultures this date commemorated the day when the god of death fell to earth accompanied by a host of stars with burning tails. So how does this all fit together (Oct 31, New Years, falling stars, the god of death, and the Pleiades/Torus constellation)?

Here is how: on October 31, while the Pleiades/Taurus is in the apex of the night sky, the earth passes through the Taurid meteor field ^FN#4. Thus, on this night burning tailed stars (a meteor shower) fills the sky thereby visually commemorating the day when death fell from the heavens heralded by flaming stars. Not only that, due to the earth’s alignment with the meteor field and the optical principle of a converging vanishing point, these flaming stars appear to emanate from the Pleiades and the shoulder of Tarus the Bull ^FN#4b.

However, there is more to it than that: over again in ancient art from across time and continents, as the god of death is depicted falling from the sky, accompanied by a host of flaming stars, there is also a depiction of an auxiliary god opening a great cistern and pouring out a deluge of water upon the earth ^FN#5. In other words, death came in the form of a great flood. Again, in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (written around 2000 BC), the Anunnaki, who are the 7 gods of death (AKA the 7 Pleiades) whose headdresses have 7 bull horns (Taurus), send fire and then a great flood to earth at the time of the lunar New Year and harvest (Oct 31) ^FN#6. In Roman art, Zeus is depicted as a Bull (Taurus), with a young woman riding on his back. She stabs him in the shoulder (the Pleiades). Blood then falls to earth as the great flood ^FN#7. In fact, this basic account is repeated over and again across times and cultures.

Notice then the result: together with the harvest and the New Year we now have death and the great flood as key factors on October 31^st. In the end, the ancients saw this day with its commemoration of the dead (especially the dead who had died in the divine judgment of the ancient flood) as a warning that God had destroyed mankind because of wickedness once before and would do it again. Thus, the great flood remembered on Oct 31^st, together with the visual that the night sky presented (the meteor shower) served as a perpetual warning to man to start the New Year off right ^FN#8.

IV. But What About the Bible’s Witness- Does Scripture bear any of this out

A] In Scripture Oct 31^st and Nov 1^st occur in the month called Marcheshvan (which was originally the 2^nd month). Not only that, prior to the Passover, the Hebrew calendar (like that of the surrounding world) took its point of reference from Noah and the deluge (just as our calendar today takes its point of reference from the birth of Christ: thus BC and AD -see Gen 9:28; 10:1,32; 11:10). However, with the Passover, God reset His people’s calendar and their entire temporal reference point according to deliverance not deluge and judgment.

           Exodus 12:1 Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ² “This month (Nisan- the month of the

           Passover) shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you.

Simply put, God set His people on a completely different timeline and trajectory than the rest of humanity (one marked by deliverance not deluge). Notice the result: God’s people never had a central day of the dead. Instead, theirs was always a celebration of salvation and life. As such, understandably we lost sight of the commemoration of the flood and the dead. It was not our future or our focus.

B] However, there is more: the name Marcheshvan (Oct- Nov) was not the original name of the month. Instead, Cheshvan is a Babylonian name, which like the rest of the current Jewish calendar names was brought back with Israel from their time in captivity. However, upon return, the Jewish people altered the Babylonian name of this one month. They added to it the prefix Mar which means bitter (c.f. Ruth 1:20). In other words, Marcheshvan was intentionally renamed the bitter month.

Why? Jewish scholars today say that one reason this month (Oct- Nov) was renamed bitter is because it was the month of the flood ^FN#9! Now did they just make that up? Is this simply an unsubstantiated custom? Or does Scripture actually say this?  Yes it does!

           Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that

           day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.

• Second month– i.e. Marcheshvan (the bitter month, the month of the harvest)
• 17^th day– Problem: Scripture says the flood occurred on the 17^th day of the month, while every other culture says the flood started on our 31^st. However, remember the months of a lunar calendar ran from mid-month to mid-month on our modern solar calendars. Thus, Marcheshvan began in our mid-October (around the 15^th) and ran to our mid-November. So, count 17 days from our Oct 15 and that brings you to October 31^st and Halloween.

Notice the Result: we know exactly when the flood occurred. We have always known (along with the world). The Bible tells us that the flood began on October 31^st (Halloween). Not only that, to the world, Halloween (the real origin of Halloween) was always the commemoration of the flood and its dire warning to mankind. However, because God changed our focus from deluge to deliverance, the flood and the dead swept away by it never held the central focus that it did for the world ^FN#10.

V. Resolve: The True Pagan Roots of Halloween

Notice what this means for the feast of All Saints: Christians didn’t hijack a pagan observance. Instead, they affirmed it. God did indeed judge the world and He is absolutely going to do it again. However, as God’s witnesses, they brought the rest of the story to the pagan world. That is, they used the backdrop of the flood and death to proclaim the Gospel (the good news) of deliverance from judgment through Christ ^FN#11. Not only that, this witness was so effective in Ireland that the transfer of the feast (All Saints Day) to November 1^st was quickly adopted by the rest of the western church, in light of the pagan cultures around them who also held the same day of the dead and flood observance (2 Pet 3:18-22).

VI. Bottom Line: Epilogue

While half of the modern Church blindly follows the world’s current Halloween traditions, telling itself that they are harmless innocent fun (which the warnings of Halloween have never been); and while the other half of the Church, ignorant of its own history, denounces Halloween as demonic; we as God’s people ought to follow the example of our past brothers and sisters and seize the opportunity to proclaim the rest of the story, which is exactly what we have been sent to declare to the world around us (one of deliverance from the coming judgment). In turn, as we see our culture becoming more and more pagan, we are simultaneously watching Halloween become a more and more adult holiday. As we observe this, we should keep in mind, that throughout history, whenever we see a fixation on death, it is always a sign and a symptom of a seismic cultural change; be it the witches, demons, and superstitions that predominated the psyche of the west after the fall of Rome; or the stories of Dracula, Frankenstein, and the scientist Dr. Jekyll, which marked the upheaval of the industrializing world. So too today, the need to sanitize (or play therapy our way through) our confrontation with death, points to man being unsettled and made aware of his own vulnerability. Such then should be a signal to the believer of his need to articulate/clarify the truth of the situation, which is being so keenly felt, and to tell the rest of the story (the Gospel) that he has been sent to proclaim. ^FN#12&13

Footnotes:

1] Even today, you may still purchase a copy of Haliburton’s book: New Materials for the History of Man on Amazon. LINK

2] French Cave Art (Note the 6 dots representing the Pleiades star cluster above the Bull’s shoulder).

Please see the very end of the document for all pictures listed in order

3] The Codex Borgia is a pre-Columbian Middle American pictorial manuscript from Central Mexico featuring calendrical and ritual content. It is considered to be among the most important sources for the study of Central Mexican gods, ritual, divination, calendar, religion and iconography (Wikipedia- sited from: Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume fourteen, volume fifteen).

4] Note: the Taurid shower takes its name from its point of radiation, the Taurus constellation. The Taurid Meteor Showers continue today. In fact, below is a link to and excerpt from an article published by Forbes just last year (2024). Below that I have also included a picture of the shower that captures the meteors radiating out from an apparent single point of origination (i.e. the Pleiades/Taurus). Here is the Forbes Article:

                            When To See ‘Halloween Fireballs’ This Weekend as Taurid Meteors Peak

Bright “Halloween fireballs” — or Taurids — are a common sight in the night sky from mid-October until mid-November. Extremely bright meteors, such as fireballs from the Taurids, will appear to radiate from the constellation Taurus but can occur anywhere in the night sky. (LINK to the full article)

4b] Here is a picture of the Taurid Meteor Shower. Note the appearance of a central point of radiation (Pleiades/Taurus).

Please see the very end of the document for all pictures listed in order

5] Picture A

Here the god of death falls to earth while to the left a great basin pours out the flood

Please see the very end of the document for all pictures listed in order

Picture B

Here in the calendar section of the Pre-Columbian Codex, Borgia is shown that on this day (Oct 31) the god of death fell to earth heralded by flaming stars

Please see the very end of the document for all pictures listed in order

6] The Epic of Gilgamesh, Table XI (the Flood)

A) Flood was at the time of Harvest (Lines 46-48)

He will bring to you a harvest of wealth,

in the morning he will let loaves of bread shower down,

and in the evening a rain of wheat!”‘

B) Also, the Flood was at time of the New Year (Lines 73-74)

I gave the boat-builders ale, beer, oil, and wine, as if it were river water,

That they might make a New Year’s Feast.

(alt translation: they could make a party like the New Year’s Festival).

C) Anunnaki (7 gods of death) and flaming stars that herald the Flood

(Lines 103-109)

The Anunnaki lifted up the torches,

setting the land ablaze with their flare.

and turned to blackness all that had been light.

All day long the South Wind blew …,

blowing fast, submerging the mountain in water,

overwhelming the people like an attack.

they could not recognize each other in the torrent.

D) The Flood wiping out the Old (wickedness) Lines 113, 117-118

The gods were frightened by the Flood,

The sweet‐voiced Mistress of the Gods wailed:

‘The olden days have alas turned to clay,

E) Ancient depiction of one of the Anunnaki goddesses seen wearing her headdress of bull horns. The picture is from a cylinder seal, dated 2350–2150 BC

Please see the very end of the document for all pictures listed in order

Note: the Anunnaki in Babylonian mythology are technically the 7 judges of the underworld (and not all female)- thus they are the ones who pour out judgment, death, and deluge on the wickedness of mankind. For more information and better depictions see the book: Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Nemet-Nejat Karen Rhea

Metamorphoses: as a bonus, another example of the flood in ancient myths comes from the Roman poet Ovid (43BC) who records the story of the flood in his epic poem Metamorphoses, Book I, lines 163-449 (notice the similarities with Gilgamesh and the other ancient cultures we have discussed)

A)The Flood was in Response to the wickedness of men

This was a single ruin, but not one
Deserves so just a punishment alone.
Mankind’s a monster, and th’ ungodly times
Confed’rate into guilt, are sworn to crimes.
All are alike involv’d in ill, and all
Must by the same relentless fury fall. Book I, 238-242

B) It came during the harvest at year’s end

impetuous rain descends;
The bearded corn beneath the burden bends:
Cheated farmers deplore their perish’d grain;
And all the labors of a long year are vain. Book I, 272-275

C) A righteous couple survives by boat

Deucalion wafting, moor’d his little boat.
He with his wife were only left behind
Of perish’d Man; they two were human kind.
The mountain nymphs, and Themis they adore,
And from her oracles relief implore.
The most upright of mortal men was he;
The most sincere, and holy woman, she. Book I, 318-325

7] Here Taurus the bull is stabbed in the shoulder (the Pleiades) while to the right an auxiliary god pours out the delude from a great basin

Please see the very end of the document for all pictures listed in order

8] Importance: throughout history, the notion of comets (burning/tailed stars) as harbingers of doom has been so ingrained in the conscious of man by the event remembered here that it persists to this day. In fact, comets (burning/tailed stars) have been called “broom stars” across continents due to their broom-like ball and fanned tail. In other words, the idea is that they signal destruction/disaster (a sweeping out of the old) in order to make way for something new/different Notice then the tie: according to ancient myths the gods sent the great flood to destroy the old order (the wickedness of men) and to bring in a new order. In the same way, the harvest and the New Year usher out the old and bring in the new. In fact, it is interesting to note that on the night of tailed stars (Oct 31) witches (bringers of doom and conversant with the dead) are said to ride in the night sky on brooms (tailed stars). Finally, as ancient man looked up at the visual provided by the Taurid meteor shower, not only was it a poignant reminder, it was also a foreboding of dread. As he watched burning stars once again falling from the sky, there was the very real fear that this year, this night, might be when the god of death returns.

9] A lot of Jewish scholars begin by saying that one reason for the name change to this month is that there are no feasts in this month. Therefore, it is a bitter month. But such is not the case. God commanded that each month begin with a celebration of God’s mercy and salvation

       Numbers 10:10 “Also in the day of your gladness and in your appointed feasts, and on the first days of your months, you

       shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be as a

       reminder of you before your God. I am the LORD your God.”

       Psalm 81:3 Blow the trumpet at the new moon (i.e. the start of each month), and when the moon is full, on the day of our

       festival; ⁴ For it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob.

As such, Mar– cheshvan does not denote a joyless month. Such would be sacrilegious, especially for people just returning from captivity in Babylon to the Promise Land. Think about it: God commands His people to begin each month with a celebration of joy and praise as the sacrifices are being made. They were to rejoice in their salvation, and that they were God’s people living in God’s land. Thus, the idea that those returning to that land after years in exile would count one moment of that blessing as bitter is really unthinkable. However, a people returning from a pagan land, where the remembrance of the deluge served as a yearly terrifying warning, served as the central aspect of their new year celebration, and which marked the temporal reference point of their calendar -those people would very much remember that this month of the flood was to the world around them the bitter month full of fear and foreboding.  Thus, these same scholars also go on to say that the month was so named because it was the month of the great flood.

10] Note: there is much more to the story of the Jewish calendar. First, prior to the return from Babylon the Hebrew months all had Hebrew names. Thus, the 2^nd month (later called Marcheshvan) was originally named Bul. The name Bul is taken from the Hebrew word for produce (thus harvest- c.f. I Kings 6:38). That said, it is also believed that with the Babylonian month names the Hebrews also brought back with them the Babylonian calendar as their civic calendar (which sadly is a return to the deluvian calendar of the world). However, even today, Rosh Hashanah (literally ‘the head of the year’), which is the New Year in Judaism, is celebrated on the first day of Tishri (the original, pre-Passover Hebrew first month). Tishri marks the end of one agricultural year and the beginning of another. As such, it parallels much of what we have seen thus far (a celebration of harvest and the New Year). In turn, Rosh Hashanah is held to be a celebration of God’s creation of the world and Adam, which according to Jewish custom occurred in Tishri (the original first month).  

            In the end, I do want to make it clear, that while I have tried to provide enough understanding of the Jewish calendars to help you (a) identify the date of the Great Flood that Genesis provides, as well as (b) help you be aware of the many changes to the names of these months that occur throughout your Bible, I have, for simplicity sake and the desire not to be stoned by my congregation, left a lot of information out of the sermon. Overall, we are dealing with 4 different calendars (Pre-Passover Jewish, Post-Passover Jewish, Post-Exile Babylonian, Post-Exile Babylonian Civic). Thus, synchronizing these (so that we can correctly locate and track Oct-Nov across the various calendars and month names; and know exactly which calendar and name is in view at a particular point in Scripture) can get tedious. Take for example, Tishri which was mentioned above. It was originally called by its Hebrew name, Ethanim. Not only that, originally it was the first month. However, in the post Passover calendar it becomes the 7^th month and in the post Exile calendar its name was changed from Ethanim to the Babylonian name, Tishri. All of this is simply to say, I have tried to make the conclusions easy to follow, while sparing you the details of much of the process required to reach them. 

11] As the Irish witnesses shared the Gospel, they invited the pagan world to join their celebration of All Saints Day. Thus, in place of the pagan observance of death, dread, and foreboding, the Church offered a celebration of life, resurrection, and deliverance from all such judgment- through Jesus Christ the Son of God. This witness (this telling the rest of the story) was so effective in Ireland that the rest of the western church follow suite and transferred All Saints Day to November 1^st. Why? They did so that they too might use the back drop of flood and doom as the opportunity to tell the rest of the story to pagan cultures around them, who like the Celts, held the same day of the dead and flood observance.

12] Notice, this has been the witness of the Church to the pagan world since the Apostles: don’t be like the dead who did not heed God’s warning during the days of Noah. Instead, turn to Christ because deliverance from the coming and final judgment will not be by entering a boat, but rather by inclusion in Christ.

       I Peter 3:19 the spirits who are now in prison who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the

       days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the

       water. ²¹ And corresponding to that, baptism now saves you— not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God

       for a good conscience– through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²² who is at the right hand of God, having gone into

       heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him.

       Matthew 24:38 “For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and

       giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, ³⁹ and they did not understand until the flood came and took

       them all away; so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.

In turn, as a gruesome side note: after the flood, the devastation and bodies that were scattered across the earth must have been a truly horrific scene, which indelibly imprinted the warning left by the dead, who lived before the flood.

13] Closing remarks: we know exactly when the flood was, October 31^st Halloween. We also know that Halloween was everywhere a commemoration and warning of that flood and the wicked dead who were swept away by it.

Historians have thought that the festival of the dead is a ritualistic remembrance of the deluge in which Halloween (the first night) recalls man’s wickedness and the gods, who in anger, swept them away in judgment with a great flood.

By contrast, on a night when the world is fixated on death and demise, God’s people held a vigil (All Hallows Eve), where they watched for and with great joy eagerly awaited Christ’s return, the resurrection of believers, and the fullness of life that is ours. The contrast could not be more striking. God indeed has changed the timeline and trajectory of His people.

Regardless, the date of the flood is not our discovery. Instead, that is a fairly standard understanding (though one which is often overlooked). Instead, our discover is that the Bible tells us precisely that very thing (the flood came on October 31). At the same time our discovery is also the way the early Church (especially in Ireland) used the pagan commemoration of judgment as the backdrop to tell the rest of the story (an example we should follow today).

            Next, the absolute terror of this night for the pagan world cannot be understated. Halloween was not just a reminder of the date ages ago when the gods judged the world because of the wickedness of men (it was, but it was much more). On top of that, the god’s had set a perpetual herald of judgment in the night sky to be seen on that very date (the Taurid meteor shower). These flaming stars served as a stark warning that what the gods did once they would do again if man did not act right. Add to this, that people were convinced that they were distressed by demons on this night (the souls of the wicked dead who had died in the flood). These dead would roam the earth tormenting folks and trying to drag unwitting people down to hell with them. It was truly a night of dread and gloom.

           Next, understanding the significance of the Irish witness helps explain why so many people wrongly place Halloween’s origins in pagan Ireland. Halloween did not originate in Ireland. Instead, it was the change in the day that the Church observes All Hallows Eve that originated in Ireland because of the missionaries’ successful witness there.

            Finally, to give a little context to the Pleiades. The emblem that Subaru uses on its cars is a representation of the Pleiades. So, whenever you see a Subaru let its emblem remind you of what you have learned here: Halloween was the night of the great flood, which the world marked by the meteor shower which seemed to emanate from the Pleiades and the Taurus constellation.

*Note: I am indebted to the YouTube channel “After School” for the partial list of cultures included, some of the visual references referred to in this paper, and a connection between the Taurid meteor showers and October 31^st – November 2^nd. This connection then led to my own research. In turn, this should not be taken as an endorsement of that YouTube channel. However, I do want to give credit where credit is due.