The Real Story of Halloween That History Forgot. Halloween Series Part 1 of 2
Most of what we’ve been told about Halloween isn’t wrong — it’s incomplete.Today, I want to talk about Halloween as it was and the parts that were lost when others began to rewrite it.
🎃 Halloween’s Ancient Roots
Halloween comes from an older tradition called Samhain; spelled S-A-M-H-A-I-N, but pronounced “Sow-in.”
It was the ancient Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest and the start of winter. To specific, It is the ancient sector of Celtic peoples known as the Druids that created what we now know as Halloween
Now, we’ve all been told it happens on October 31st — but that’s already part of the falsehood of history, when rewritten by outsiders.
The Celtic and Druidic peoples didn’t use our Gregorian calendar with its 30- and 31-day months.
They lived by nature’s 28-day lunar cycles.
So the true date of Samhain wouldn’t have lined up with October 31 at all.
That’s your first clue that the version we inherited has been altered.
The Annual Cycle When Worlds Meet
The Druids believed this night blurred the boundary between the living and the dead.
It was said that spirits could roam freely, and people lit great bonfires and wore animal-skin disguises to confuse wandering spirits. This is not true. The Druids were voyagers between the physical and spiritual worlds and had no fear of spirits - they were healers of both the physical and the spiritual. This time of year made easier to find and heal lost spirits.
That’s where costumes began — not to scare people, but to navigate between worlds.
The spirit of Halloween — honoring both life and the unseen, has never been lost.
Someone just changed its clothes.
When Christianity Rebranded It
Around the 7th to 9th centuries, the Catholic Church decided to absorb and rename pagan festivals because they could not ban them.
They created All Saints’ Day (Nov 1) and later All Souls’ Day (Nov 2) to replace druid traditions with Christian practices.
The night before became All Hallows’ Eve, which slowly shortened into Halloween.
This is what happened to nearly every major festival we know:
Christmas, Easter, and Halloween were all older celebrations Christianized to make conversion and erasure easier.
If you can’t take people’s traditions away, you rebrand and rename them.
Souling, Guising, and the Birth of Trick-or-Treating
By the Middle Ages, the poor would go door to door offering prayers for the dead in exchange for food or “soul cakes.”
That practice was called souling, and it’s the real ancestor of trick-or-treating.
In Scotland and Ireland, people also dressed in disguise and performed songs or tricks, that was called guising.
Add those two together and you get our modern custom.
Even the jack-o’-lantern started differently:
people once carved turnips, not pumpkins, and placed candles inside them to represent or ward off spirits. Originally, the light represented the light of awareness in each person.
When Irish and Scottish immigrants came to North America, pumpkins replaced turnips because they were larger and easier to carve.
Halloween in America
Halloween didn’t exist in early America.
It arrived with Irish and Scottish immigrants in the 19th century, and trick-or-treating didn’t really take off until the 1930s.
Before that, there was no candy, no costumes. None of it.
The same happened with Christmas:
it wasn’t widely celebrated in the U.S. until the 1840s.
So when modern pundits claim Christmas or Halloween are “ancient American traditions,” history says otherwise.
How the “Evil” Label Was Created
When the Church wanted people to abandon old pagan ways, they demonized the old festivals.
It’s an old tactic still used today: make the old thing “evil” while offering a new, “holy” substitute.
It takes only a few generations for that rewrite to stick.
The first generation resists.
Their children grow up in the new system.
Their grandchildren call the old way evil.
Rome Never Left — It Just Changed Names
When the Roman Empire fell, its Senate became the Cardinals,
its nobility became Bishops,
and its Emperor became the Pope.
The Roman Catholic Church is the extension of Rome.
Even the word “Church” traces to the name Cersei (also spelled Circe) — a Roman goddess known for drawing energy from others.
That’s where the term “Mother Church” originates: Mother Cersei.
Whether you accept that etymology literally or spiritually, it captures something important:
the energetic exchange between people and religious institutions. The Church gives, but takes ten-fold
Why This History Matters
When we look past the edits and fear, Halloween is not evil.
It’s a season of transition, of honoring ancestors, of respecting nature’s rhythm.
It’s understanding the tru relationship between light and darkness. We experience this relationship every day. Day time is for action, accomplishing, and physical creation, and the night offers the opportunity through darkness, to rest, sleep, revitalize and rejuvenate.