Reformation Day 500: Is Halloween Christian or not?

The Origins of Halloween

Halloween/All Saints' Eve has been corrupted and co-opted with a great deal of commercialism, mysticism, and Modern Neopagan/Wiccan influence. But the origins and purpose of the holy day are uniquely Christian. It did not originate in Celtic practices.

And despite the many articles and documentaries which may make the claim: Halloween does not come from pagan origins, witchcraft, or the occult. It was in no way attached to these kinds of belief systems in its origin. Only in the last 2 centuries have these other religious movements started to claim the day and integrate their own rituals with Halloween/All Saints.

This link has more full discussion with documentation:
(All Saints' Eve, All Saints' Day: Origins and Samhain-ization)

Here is a brief summary:

The development of Halloween as a Church Holy Day began over 1,000 years prior to any known evidence of a Celtic day or festival with the name Samhain (pronounced "Sow-in"). The All Saints' day practices originated in non-Celtic areas and were widespread before the Celtic churches adopted the practice. Annual dates varied from region to region and became fixed on Nov 1 in the 8th century. The Celtic churches adopted this date from Rome and the Frankish kingdoms. This date was adopted by the Celtic Church nearly 2 centuries before there is any known mention of Samhain in Celtic literature.

The Reformation and Halloween

All Hallows' Eve/All Saints' Day is an historically significant day in the western Church not only because of the Church feast, but also because of the events that took place in Wittenberg in 1517. This year we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It is more than a little ironic that the popular modern corruption of All Saints' Eve centers on fear, the supernatural, death, and the state of those who have died. This topic is addressed at this link: All Hallows' Eve in the Mediaeval Church and the Reformation.

If You're Really Into Learning More

I've put together a timeline/slideshow that highlights the development of Halloween, Samhain, and Celtic influences. It is available here.

And I have a short article dealing with some specific claims about a prehistoric megalithic tomb in Tara, Ireland. It is often claimed that this tomb must be evidence that Samhain is ancient, even pre-Celtic. But the claims do not really hold up. The article is: Samhain and The Mound of Hostages, Tara, Ireland.

Samhain and The Mound of Hostages, Tara, Ireland

Dumha na nGiall, Mound of the Hostages

An interesting claim about the ancientness of Samhain is made on the Knowth website. On their page for Tlachtga - Hill of Ward, they have a photo of sunrise light hitting part of the back of a small passage grave known as the Mound of Hostages. The photo was reported to be taken on Nov. 1, or the modern day of Samhain.

This mound is dated archaeologically to about 5,000 years before present. That's still 3,000 years before known Celts, and 4,000 years before documentation on Samhain.

Here's what they say on the page:

The Stone Age Mound of the Hostages is also aligned with the Samhain sun rise. The following image was photographed by Martin Dier, it shows the sunbeam illuminating the back of the chamber. The illumination is impaired by the modern gate at the entrance of the passage. 

Among the rest of their arguments supporting Samhain on the page, this tomb would seem to lend support for the notion that Samhain is far more ancient than Christianity.

So let's look at a map of the site:

The original map is the black and white. I added the features in color. Here's the issue. I'm not able to go to Ireland for all these days to make sure that this is possible. But I want to find out whether or not the sunrise hits the back of the passage grave on any other days. This is mathematical, not an actual experiment.

• The Blue Line is the meridian at -6.6117,20 deg.
• The Red Line is the Southern most angle from which part of the back of the tomb is partially lit. Angle A to B is 54 degrees.
• The Green line is the Northern most angle from which part of the back of the tomb is partially lit. Angle A to C is 76 degrees.
• That gives us 23 degrees from North to South and then again from South to North where the sun can rise and illuminate the back of this tomb.

One of the difficulties in evaluating a claim like this the general difficulty of verification. Mathematical is as close as I can get. The horizon on a smooth area of the earth is 7 miles. But there is nothing really to block the sunrise, Tara is a hill, and this is a mound on top of the hill. Google Earth even has a panoramic hilltop view.



I used Sun Calc Net at the location of the grave and chose ranges of dates. This website calculates the angle of sunrise, sunset, etc, for any Gregorian date. But I'm using a physical protractor on the screen to get my angles. So you astronomy types can jump in here to suggest the correct angles.

Sun Calc set to The Mound of Hostages on Nov 1, 2016

http://suncalc.net/#/53.5795,-6.6117,20/2017.11.01/12:25 

This is about 65 degrees from South.

So, in the Autumn, by the math, this should be what happens:

• From just after October 15 the sun rises at about 76 deg from the south.

http://suncalc.net/#/53.5795,-6.6117,20/2017.10.15/12:25

• At this point the light of the sunrise should start to cover the back of the tomb.
• The back of the tomb should continue to be at least partially covered by light from the sunrise until December 10th when the sun starts to pass 54 degrees from the south. That's about 45 or more days.

http://suncalc.net/#/53.5795,-6.6117,20/2017.12.10/12:25

And after the winter solstice the sun starts to go back north on the horizon.

• It crosses 54 degrees from the south some time around January 9th.
• From that time until it crosses about 76 degrees from the south around February 20th the sunrise should beam its new dawn somewhere on the backstone of the tomb. That should be about 40 days.
• You've got the links now to the tool, check the data for yourself.

I know my crude angle maths are off a bit. They could be refined. But let's round down to say that the sunrise probably shows on this backstone for around 80 to 85 days during the whole year, split fairly equally during two different general seasons.

Once we realize this, is there anything really special about the Gregorian date of Nov 1 (Modern Samhain) in the construction of this tomb?

Not really. The Knowth website has a picture from Nov 1 with sunrise light hitting the backstone. A feat that can be done for almost 1/4th of the whole year.

No there isn't anything special about Samhain in this tomb.
Why should there be? If the archaeological dating is correct this tomb is 3,000 years pre-Celtic and 4,000 year pre-Samhain.

Remember, what we actually know of the origins of the Celtic calendar show that it was lunar. The Celts in Ireland and the British Isles appear to have adopted the solar calendar at the same time they adopted Christianity. This was certainly the main cultural process with the Germans and the Franks adopting the Julian calendar. Certainly it was also with the Gregorian reforms for Ireland and the rest of Europe.


----Additional notes:

I found this description on the BoyneValleyTours.com website:

The Mound of the Hostages

The importance of the Hill of Tara predates Celtic times, the oldest monument on the hill is a Neolithic passage tomb known as the Mound of the Hostages, built about 5000 year ago. It is circular in form, roughly fifteen metres in diameter and three metres high. It is built in the same style as the Newgrange tomb, although on a much smaller scale. The structure is dome-shaped with an inset for the entrance and a small doorway, set almost one metre into the side of the monument. The doorway is framed with undecorated standing stones. As with other passage tombs the entrance is aligned with the rising sun at certain times of the year, in this case the chamber is illuminated on the mornings around Samhain (early November) and Imbolc (early February). Inside, the passage into the Mound of the Hostages stretches for four metres in length, one metre in width, and is 1.8 metres (6 feet) high. It contains decorated stones with images of swirls and circles. 

There are two things to note:
1. The page acknowledges that the tomb gets light from the rising sun for several days before and after Samhain, not just on Samhain: also getting sun in for many days around the start of February. I have summarized the ancient sources on Imbolc/Candlemas/Presentation/St. Brigit's Day here.

2. The page states: "As with other passage tombs the entrance is aligned with the rising sun at certain times of the year." All I think can really be said is that from the Summer Solstice to the Winter Solstice there is a range of about 90 degrees through which the sunrise travels on successive days, the sunset also. Roughly put, any tomb with an opening facing toward the Northeast through the Southeast will have some range of days in which the sunrise shines through the entrance down the passage, if the passage is somewhat straight. For sunsets the same is true but from the Northwest to the Southeast. If the tomb's entrance alignment falls between the Southeast and Southwest there will be some range of successive days where the noon sun will do the same. Whether sunrise, sunset, or noon, any tomb opening not facing between the Northwest and Northeast will have some day or range of days that sunlight will come into the entrance for a ways.

I would suggest that perception bias based in ritual/calendar dates that have become more important culturally in recent decades influences the interpretation of the Mound of Hostages.

For those who are interested: a useful study on the orientation of the openings of passage tombs was published recently by Frank Prendergast, "Interpreting Megalithic Tomb Orientations and Siting Within Broader Cultural Contexts" Modern Archaeoastronomy: From Material Culture to Cosmology IOP Publishing, Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2016.

Alexander Tille's Yule and Christmas; Chapter 6

VI. Martinmas and Michaelmas

Tille begins this chapter by challenging the “opinion [that] Michaelmas is an older term and festival than Martinmas” which was advanced by Professor Karl Weinhold. Along with this theory of precedence Weinhold asserted that the traditions around Michaelmas were transferred to Martinmas. Tille argues from Weinholds evidence that Weinhold interpreted his data backward, and points out the Weinhold gives no evidence for the claim about the transference of traditions.

Hermann Grotefend also in his Zeitrechnung des deutschen Mittelalters (1891) shared the same view as Weinhold that the Germans shifted the “beginning of winter from September 29 [Michaelmas] to November 11 [Martinmas], and add[ed] to it an imaginary shifting of the beginning of summer from April or Easter to the middle of May.” Add to this that those authors also knew about the Scandinavian shifting of the year to beginning in October 14 and mid-year to April 14. This Scandinavian shift of the year undercuts the argument Weinhold and Grotefend make because it is directly inconsistent with their theory of causes. (pp. 57f)

Tille demonstrates that Martinmas was actually the first of the two Holy Days established in the Germanic areas.

“Whilst Martinmas can be proved to have been a popular festival in 578 when the banqueting at Martinmas eve was forbidden by the Synod of Auxerre, it was not before the ninth century that the Church made an attempt to give to the end of the third quarter of the Roman year a special importance by a festival— that of St. Michael and of the angels and guardian angels in general— called in Germany Engelweihe or Fest der Engel. It was the Council of Mayence of 813 which added that angel-festival to two others (on March 15 and on May 2).” (p. 59)

And while Tille’s reference to just these documents would be adequate to resolve the issue, Tille produces dozens of quotations from period documents, enlisting liturgical practices, cannon law, economic law, tax law, lease law, and agriculture— citing the shift from pasturing to the development of the cultivation of meadows in the Carolingian age and its effects upon the timing of annual economic law and practice.  Indeed, while modern Neopagans project harvest festivals into the eras prior to Christian influence among the ancient Germanic and Celtic peoples, it is precisely this agricultural/economic shift which generates the ability of these peoples to have a significant, regular and planned harvest: and hence, some sort of regular festival surrounding harvests.

“Except Professor Weinhold, nobody doubts any longer the late origin of the harvest festivals.” (p. 64)

Tille’s evidence and line of reasoning would also apply to the modern anachronistic projection of Samhain as a harvest festival upon the early Celts. The change in agrarian/pastoral practice allowed for the wintering of more herd animals, giving rise to later and later “slaughter day” celebrations.

“The economic evolution, more especially the prevalence of agriculture over cattle-keeping, thus tended to destroy the ancient Germanic mid-November celebration, whilst favouring both a harvest festival held earlier in the year and the development of a festival about the middle of the German winter. (p. 70)