All Saints, All Souls and Halloween

All Saints, All Souls and Halloween

Hallowmas; All Hallows’ Eve (October 31); All Saints’ Day (November 1); the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (November 2)

October 31 (Halloween), November 1 (All Saints) and November 2 (All Souls); the Orthodox keep All Saints on the Sunday after Pentecost

The Catholic Encyclopedia finds the first trace of a common day for all the martyrs at Antioch, on the Sunday after Pentecost, set because too many had died for each to have a day. A common day is mentioned in a sermon of Ephrem the Syrian (373) and in Chrysostom’s 74th homily (407). At first only the martyrs and John the Baptist were honored.

Dedicates the Pantheon at Rome to the Virgin Mary and all the martyrs, with a yearly anniversary on May 13. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives 609 or 610.

Consecrates a chapel to all the saints in St. Peter’s and fixes the anniversary on November 1. Gregory IV (827–844) extends November 1 to the whole Western church. The vigil of the feast, All Hallows’ Eve, seems to have been kept from the start.

Testifies, in the Catholic Encyclopedia’s words, to “a time-honoured ceremony of praying to the dead on 1 October” in Germany, which the church accepted and made its own. Before that, churches read the names of the departed from the diptychs, and Benedictine monasteries kept a commemoration of their dead at Whitsuntide. Prayer for the dead was part of the church’s practice before the feast of All Souls.

after 1030 (traditionally 998)

Orders the commemoration of all the faithful departed to be held yearly on November 2 in Cluny and its monasteries, and it spreads to the Benedictines, the Carthusians and the dioceses. The usual date is 998, but the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Odilo says “probably not in 998 but after 1030”. Its article on All Souls has Liège adopting the day under a bishop who died in 1008, so the date is uncertain. All Souls rests on the doctrine of purgatory.

On the eve of All Saints, Luther sent his theses against indulgences to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz. Many of the theses speak of purgatory. Whether he also posted them on the Castle Church door at Wittenberg is disputed; the account most cited is Melanchthon’s, printed after Luther’s death. See the page on Reformation Day.

Rejects the Roman doctrine of purgatory, pardons and the invocation of saints.

is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.

Rules that no day is holy under the gospel but the Lord’s day, and that holy days such as All Saints are not to be continued. It is the strict Reformed answer to the church year.

Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.

Rhys, in Celtic Folklore (1901), suggested that Samhain was the Celtic New Year, and Frazer popularized the view that Halloween is a pagan festival of the dead that the church took over by putting All Saints on November 1. Ronald Hutton (1996) and Dimitra Fimi find the evidence flimsy, and note that the November 1 date was set not in Ireland but in Rome and the Germanic dioceses of northern Europe. Almost nothing is known of what Samhain involved.

The first known printing of “tricks or treats”, in a report of Halloween. Door-to-door begging at Hallowtide is older, in the English custom of souling, when the poor prayed for the dead in return for soul cakes.

After years of vandalism, some cities consider banning Halloween. Churches, civic groups and families instead organize parties and house-to-house treats, which sets the modern shape of trick-or-treat.

The bishops decree that whenever January 1 (Mary, Mother of God), August 15 (the Assumption) or November 1 (All Saints) falls on a Saturday or a Monday, the precept to attend Mass is abrogated. The Holy See confirmed the decree on July 4, 1992, and it took effect on January 1, 1993. The decree names only these three days; Christmas and December 8 are not covered.

Whenever January 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, or August 15, the solemnity of the Assumption, or November 1, the solemnity of All Saints, falls on a Saturday or on a Monday, the precept to attend Mass is abrogated.

Says the faithful are obliged to take part in the Eucharist on days of obligation, unless excused for a serious reason or dispensed by their own pastor, and that those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin. The Code of Canon Law (canon 1246) lists All Saints among the days of obligation.

Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin.

States the Catholic doctrine of purgatory and of prayer for the dead, grounded in Scripture and in the practice of the church. The Catechism cites 2 Maccabees, a book outside the Protestant canon and the ASV, for the practice.

after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

Forecasts a record $13.1 billion in United States Halloween spending, with 73 percent of consumers planning to celebrate. Costumes are expected to reach $4.3 billion and candy $3.9 billion.

All Saints grew from local commemorations of the martyrs. When too many had died for each to have a day, the churches set a common one (H1). Rome and the West fixed it in stages (H2, H3). All Souls grew from monks’ prayer for the dead and spread from Cluny (H5). It rests on purgatory.

Halloween is the vigil of All Saints, All Hallows’ Eve. The popular story is that the church put All Saints on November 1 to cover a Celtic festival of the dead. The historians who have looked hardest doubt it, and so does this page: the November 1 date was set in Rome and the Germanic dioceses of northern Europe, not in Ireland. Many Halloween customs are young: trick-or-treat was first printed in 1917 (H10) and took its modern shape in the 1930s (H11). The older custom, souling, was itself a prayer for the dead, which is why Protestants set it aside.

A pagan festival christened (Rhys, Frazer)

A church feast that grew its own customs (Hutton, Fimi)

Roman Catholics

The Eastern Orthodox

Anglicans and Episcopalians

Lutherans

Methodists

Mexican and Latin American Catholics

Strict Reformed and Presbyterian churches

Jehovah’s Witnesses

Many evangelical churches

The Churches of Christ

All Saints services

A Mass or Eucharist with litanies of the saints in Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches. Lutherans and others stress all believers, not only the canonized.

Requiem Masses and prayers for the dead

All Souls is a day of Requiem Masses for the souls in purgatory, with candles and photos of the dead. Catholics may gain indulgences applied to the dead by visiting a church on All Souls and a cemetery in early November. Anglicans and Lutherans read the names of the year’s dead with a bell or a prayer.

The Saturdays of Souls

The Orthodox hold memorial services for the dead, with alms and boiled wheat at some, on set Saturdays through the year.

Cemetery visits and Día de los Muertos

Decorating graves with candles, strong in Poland and Latin Europe, and the altars of Mexico. These began as church observance and have become family custom.

Souling and guising

In England the poor went door to door at Hallowtide praying for the household’s dead in return for soul cakes, an English Heritage page notes, and the practice lasted into the 20th century. Scottish guisers, in disguise, performed for nuts and sweets. Both are named as forerunners of trick-or-treat, though the link is not proved.

Jack-o’-lanterns

Carved turnips lit with a candle, later pumpkins in America. The idea that they stood for souls in purgatory is conjecture.

Costumes and trick-or-treat

Costumed children ask for sweets at doors. The phrase is in print from 1917 (H10), the practice was promoted from the 1930s (H11), and it boomed after the Second World War.

Church alternatives

Harvest festivals, “Hallelujah Night” events and trunk-or-treat, in which members hand out candy from decorated cars in the church parking lot. Trunk-or-treat dates from the 1980s or 1990s. Some churches also hold Reformation parties on October 31.

The Halloween market

Costumes, decorations, candy, haunted attractions and horror films, with American spending forecast at $13.1 billion in 2025 (H15).

The New Testament calls every Christian a saint

“Saints” in the New Testament are living believers, not a class set apart by the church (S1, S2).

Paul writes to “all the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi” (S1) and to the Romans “called to be saints” (S2). The word is used of believers who are alive, with their bishops and deacons, in the churches, and not of an elite honored after death. So the church’s saints are every Christian, and the church does not canonize, however it names its feast.

Judgment follows death, and the dead in Christ are with Him

The text says judgment follows death, that a gulf is fixed, and that the believer who departs is with Christ (S3, S4, S5, S6, S7).

“It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment” (S3). In the account of the rich man and Lazarus, a great gulf is fixed so that none can cross from either side (S4). For the believer, to depart is to be “at home with the Lord” (S5) and “with Christ; for it is very far better” (S6), and “the dead who die in the Lord” rest, and their works follow them (S7). Nothing in these texts leaves the believer waiting to be made fit, and nothing tells the living to pray for the dead or to the dead.

The Catholic Church teaches that those who die in God’s grace but imperfectly purified are assured of salvation yet undergo purification after death (H14). It grounds prayer for the dead in the practice of the church and in 2 Maccabees. That book is outside the Protestant canon. This page weighs the teaching by the New Testament, which does not give it.

Christ’s one offering cleanses us from all sin

The blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and by one offering He has perfected those who are sanctified (S8, S9).

“The blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (S8), and “by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (S9). Catholics teach that purgatory is not a second atonement. It purifies the remnants of sin in those already saved (H14). That is a view the Catholic Church holds in earnest, and this page does not say it denies Christ’s sacrifice. It says the New Testament states what Christ’s offering does, and does not describe a further cleansing after death.

Prayer goes to the Father, through the one mediator

The text teaches prayer to the Father through Christ, our one mediator and great high priest (S10, S11).

“There is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus” (S10), and we are to draw near to the throne of grace with boldness, because we have a great high priest (S11). The living are told to pray for each other. The text never shows anyone praying to a departed saint, or tells us the departed hear. The step from asking a friend to pray to addressing the dead is the step that needs a text, and none is given. Worship is to be done “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17), by His authority, and what He did not give is not the church’s to add (Matthew 15:9). Isaiah’s warning against seeking the dead bears on it too (S17), though Catholics deny that praying to saints is consulting the dead.

The church’s appointed day and memorial

The New Testament gives the church the first day and the Lord’s Supper; no feast of the saints or of the dead is among them (S12, S13).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S12), and the Lord gave the memorial: “this do in remembrance of me”, which proclaims His death “till he come” (S13). That is the appointed remembrance. Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly feast of the saints or of the dead to its worship. The weekly Supper already remembers the one death that matters to every saint.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer

Romans 14 leaves a believer free to regard a day, and forbids judging one who does not (S14, S15).

“One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S14). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so Paul is not approving a Christian feast; but he gives the rule for a believer’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord. And “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day” (S15) forbids judging a believer by the calendar. A Christian may remember the dead at home, on any day, and may handle Halloween as a neighbor, within the limits the next section sets. What they may not do is bind a day on others or bring it into the church’s worship (A5).

A duty said to bind gravely, lifted when the day falls on a Saturday or a Monday

Jesus faults worship that teaches the precepts of men as doctrine (S16); a duty the bishops lift by the calendar is the church’s rule.

Canon 1246 makes All Saints a holy day of obligation, and the Catechism says those who deliberately fail to attend Mass on such days commit a grave sin (H13). Yet in 1991 the American bishops decreed that whenever November 1 falls on a Saturday or a Monday, “the precept to attend Mass is abrogated”, and the Holy See confirmed it (H12). The Catholic answer is that holy days are church law, which the church may adjust as it may not adjust doctrine, under the power to bind and to loose (Matthew 16:19). That answer grants the point. A duty said to bind under grave sin, which lapses when the date falls beside a weekend, is the church’s rule and not God’s; and no word of God calls for this feast at all (A5). To bind it on the conscience is to teach a precept of men as doctrine (S16).

No survey of Mass attendance on All Saints was found, and the page makes no claim about it. This weighs the claim to bind, not the Catholics who keep the day or miss it.

“On behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead?” Asking the dead for help is what God forbids His people. Praying to the saints is the same thing.

Isaiah is condemning mediums and spirit-consulting, and Catholics deny that a prayer to a saint is that. They ask a saint who lives in Christ to pray, as they ask a friend. The text does not settle it by itself. What it does give is the principle in its first half: “should not a people seek unto their God?” and its standard: “To the law and to the testimony!” The case does not rest on this verse alone. It rests on the premise in A4: prayer is worship, worship needs the authority of the text, and the New Testament shows the living seeking God through Christ and never shows the dead being asked. Isaiah’s principle agrees with that.

Halloween’s spirits, fortune-telling and talk with the dead imitate what God calls an abomination. A Christian should take no part, and the costume is part of it.

The text forbids actual practices: divination, sorcery, spells, consulting familiar spirits, wizards and the dead. A Christian is to have no part in any of these, whatever name the night gives it, and anything at Halloween that is real divination or a séance is forbidden. A child in a witch costume at a door is not practicing sorcery, any more than an actor in a play is a murderer. Whether costumes and horror imitate these things closely enough to wrong the conscience is the question Christians dispute, and the text does not decide it. It is left to each Christian (A6), within Ephesians 5:11 (S19).

Christians must have no fellowship with the works of darkness, so they should not join a night that celebrates death, horror or the occult.

The verse is about deeds: it names “unfruitful works of darkness” and commands to “reprove them”. A Christian may not join anything that is darkness in fact, in the spirit world or in cruelty or vice. It does not say that a mask, a pumpkin or a bag of candy is a work of darkness, and Paul tells the Corinthians that a meal at an idol feast is forbidden while market meat is allowed. A Christian who thinks a costume or a horror display goes too far is right not to take part (Romans 14:23), and may not bind that on others.

“Abstain from every form of evil.” “Form” includes the look of evil, so costumes of witches and ghosts are out.

The verse comes straight after “prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). The Greek word can mean a kind or an outward appearance, and the ASV’s “form” leaves both. Taken as appearance, it asks a Christian to avoid conduct that is evil or looks to others like approving evil. It does not say a costume is that, and it cannot decide the matter alone. It does bear on a Christian who sees another stumble over a thing, and Romans 14:21 says to avoid what makes a brother stumble. That is conscience, again.

We are “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses”: the saints who have died watch the church and are near. This supports remembering them, and asking them to pray.

The witnesses are the men and women of Hebrews 11, whose faith bears witness to us. They testify to what faith does. The verse calls us to lay aside every weight and run, looking to Jesus (12:2), and says nothing that the departed hear us or pray for us. Remembering them, as Hebrews 11 does, is right on any day. A command or example to address them is not here.

The martyrs under the altar are conscious and concerned with earth. So the saints in heaven know and pray for earth, and may be honored and asked.

The text shows the slain conscious and caring about justice. That grants what the Protestant case never denied: the dead in Christ live. But they cry to God (“O Master”), not to anyone on earth, and nobody on earth is shown crying to them. They ask when He will judge; they do not intercede for named people. The verse supports honoring the martyrs and does not support praying to them.

Paul prays that Onesiphorus may “find mercy of the Lord in that day”, and he greets only his household in 4:19, so Onesiphorus was dead. This is a prayer for the dead.

It is the strongest New Testament text offered for the practice, and the case rests on a premise that is not stated: that Onesiphorus was dead. Paul prays for “the house of Onesiphorus” (verse 16) and mentions that he “oft refreshed me”, which can be said of a man who is away. He may be dead, or traveling, or separated. If he was dead, the verse is a wish that he find mercy “in that day”, the day of judgment, not a prayer to shorten a purification after death; it teaches no purgatory and sets no day. One verse whose key fact is a guess cannot carry a doctrine. 2 Maccabees 12 is outside the ASV, and is not cited as Scripture in the New Testament.

Lutheran and Reformed Christians say All Saints rightly honors all believers, who are “called to be saints”, not an elite.

That is true to the word, and it agrees with this page: the saints are the church (A1). It makes a day of thanks for the church’s faith a good thing, and no sin. But a day the New Testament does not give is still an addition if it is made a holy day of the church’s worship (A5). The text calls the church saints. It does not appoint a day to say so.

“Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Opening the door to neighbors, giving candy and showing kindness at Halloween can glorify God.

It can, and critics cite the same verse against Halloween. The verse sets the aim and leaves the choice to the Christian: it follows Paul’s teaching on eating what is sold in the market with a clear conscience and not eating where it would lead another to idolatry (10:25-29). A family may welcome the neighbors on October 31 to the glory of God, and another may stay home to the glory of God (A6).

Study

• Philippians 1:1 and Romans 1:7 call living Christians saints. What changes if “saint” means a canonized person, and what does the New Testament lose?
• Hebrews 9:27 says judgment follows death, and Luke 16:26 speaks of a gulf. How does a Christian who believes in purgatory read these two verses?
• 2 Timothy 1:18 is the clearest New Testament text for prayer for the dead. What would have to be true of Onesiphorus for it to bear that weight?
• Isaiah 8:19 asks whether a people should seek the dead on behalf of the living. Is a prayer to a saint the same act? What is the difference, and does the text mark it?
• Deuteronomy 18:10-12 forbids real practices. Where does a costume or a horror display begin to cross from play to the thing forbidden, and who decides that for a Christian?
• Halloween’s oldest customs, souling and guising, were church customs about the dead. Does a custom with a church origin need a different test than one with a pagan one?

The Lord’s Day

The Marian Feasts

Reformation Day

Christmas

More illuminations · Harbinger's Lamp