Halloween or All Saints Day?

Halloween is inherently a foreign concept. Everything we know about the holiday – scary costumes, trick-or-treating, creepy pumpkins – comes from Hollywood, which matters because entertainment shapes culture.

We associate October with horror because most entertainment platforms program their content around Halloween. All your favourite long-running shows have either already aired their Halloween episodes, or they have scheduled one for the coming weeks.

The biggest horror films in most years tend to release in October because the season simplifies marketing, the same way that many romantic comedies and dramas debut in February (Valentine’s Day).

This also explains the anxiety the holiday incites in so many Ugandans, because they associate Halloween with witchcraft and the devil. Why? Because they associate the month with the demons, ghosts, and spirits they see in Halloween-themed content.

That bias is further cemented by the common belief that Halloween, as we know it today, came from Mexico’s Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a festival where people welcome the dead back into the world of the living with food, flowers, and gifts.

For many Ugandans, you can’t separate Halloween from its pagan roots, and any child who wears a scary mask at a Halloween celebration is indirectly channeling the same ideas and energies you find at a Día de los Muertos parade.

This is where things get somewhat complicated. If you hold that belief, what do you think of All Saints’ Day? The Christian ceremony celebrates (known and unknown) saints and martyrs.

Participants wear costumes (saints, angels, and devils), march in parades, and congregate around bonfires. Remember trick-or-treating? That Halloween tradition in the movies where children wear scary costumes and visit other people’s homes to ask for candy?

Well, it was most likely inspired by All Souls’ Day. To clarify, All Saints’ Day is part of a three-day Christian event: All Hallows’ Eve (October 31), All Saints’ Day (November 1), and All Souls’ Day (November 2).

On All Souls’ Day, the poor would come to your door and offer a song or prayer for your dead relatives in exchange for food (specifically pastries called soul cakes). This was essentially the original trick-or-treating.

With Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), food is left specifically for the spirits, and the point of wearing ghoulish costumes is to celebrate the dead (and also to mock the idea of death, reminding participants that death is a normal part of life and it should not be feared).

If you think All Saints’ Day and Día de los Muertos seem awfully similar, it’s because they are essentially the same thing. Consider the fact that most of you thought ‘All Hallows Eve’ was a Halloween term, when that could not be further from the truth.

You can’t celebrate All Saints’ Day while simultaneously opposing Halloween. If you want to know which influenced the other, Pope Boniface IV established the idea of celebrating all Christian martyrs on May 13, 609 AD.

Then, in the 9th century, the church shifted the date from May to October and November. Why? Because Halloween’s true origins can be traced back to the Celtic festival of Samhain (3000 years ago), which occurred on November 1, the New Year for the Celts, a time when warm weather (and the harvesting season) ended, paving the way for cold, dark winters (when so much human death occurred).

You can see why the Celts seemed so certain that on November 1, the veil between the living and the dead was at its weakest, and on that day, the dead could walk the earth. The Celts responded by building bonfires, burning sacrifices to their deities, and wearing costumes woven from animal heads and skins.

When the Romans conquered the Celts, they added their own festivals to the mix: Feralia (celebrated in late October to mark the passing of the dead) and a feast honoring the Roman goddess of fruit and trees (Pomona).

Ideas and cultures mingled. The result was All Saints’ Day. America’s celebration of Halloween lacks religious elements because All Saints’ Day is a Catholic festival, and at some point in history, England rejected Catholicism.

The English Protestants who colonized America were forbidden from celebrating Halloween. By the time Irish immigrants reintroduced the idea to the United States in the 19th Century, Halloween’s customs and practices had been stripped of their religious elements.

What you have left is the innocent, playful concept you see today. Now, what does this mean for you? Probably nothing. This is just information you might not have known.

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