Was Halloween Originally Samhain? What the Earliest Historical Sources Actually Tell Us
Separating ancient Irish traditions, medieval Christian history, and modern myths about Halloween's supposedly pagan origins.
By Chris M. Forte | My Catholic Defense
Every October, the same familiar claim makes its rounds on social media, in documentaries, on religious websites, and even from the pulpits of certain Evangelical churches: Halloween is supposedly an ancient pagan holiday originally known as Samhain, celebrated by the Celts as a festival of the dead, before the Catholic Church took it over, renamed it, and Christianized it.
Some versions of the story go even further, claiming that ancient Druids performed human sacrifices, worshipped evil spirits, or engaged in occult ceremonies on October 31, and that our modern Halloween customs are direct survivals of those practices.
It all makes for a fascinating, sometimes frightening story.
But how much of it can actually be demonstrated from the historical evidence?
What if I told you that the earliest surviving references to Samhain tell us considerably less about pagan religious ceremonies than many modern accounts would have us believe? And what if the familiar story about the Catholic Church stealing a pagan festival rests largely on theories popularized by nineteenth-century scholars rather than contemporary historical documentation?
I have written before about Halloween's Christian origins, its relationship to All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, and the many misconceptions surrounding the celebration. But here I want to examine something more specific: the actual primary sources for Samhain.
Not modern neopagan interpretations. Not sensationalist anti-Catholic websites. Not popular documentaries recycling familiar claims.
I want to know what the oldest surviving texts really say.
And the results are revealing.
First, what exactly was Samhain?
Samhain, often spelled Samain in early Irish texts and generally pronounced approximately "SOW-in," was an important seasonal observance in medieval Ireland.
It marked the transition from the warmer months into winter, traditionally around the beginning of November. It was associated with the end of the agricultural season, the movement of livestock, communal gatherings, feasting, and the changing year.
It also appears in medieval Irish mythology as a time when extraordinary or supernatural events could occur.
These facts are not particularly controversial.
What is controversial is the much larger claim that Samhain was originally a universal Celtic religious festival dedicated to the dead, that October 31 was regarded throughout the ancient Celtic world as the night when spirits returned to earth, and that the Catholic Church deliberately established Halloween to suppress or replace those beliefs.
Those are separate historical claims, and each requires evidence.
We should also remember something fundamental about our sources: most surviving written descriptions of Samhain were recorded by Christian Irish writers centuries after the arrival of Christianity in Ireland.
That does not make them worthless. Medieval Christian writers preserved an enormous amount of Ireland's earlier literature, folklore, genealogy, and cultural traditions.
However, a story written down in the tenth or twelfth century cannot automatically be treated as an eyewitness description of what pagan Druids were doing a thousand years earlier.
That distinction matters.
The Coligny Calendar: Our earliest possible connection?
One of the oldest surviving artifacts sometimes associated with Samhain is the Coligny Calendar, discovered in France in 1897 and generally dated to the second century AD.
The calendar was written in the ancient Gaulish language and engraved on bronze. It contains a complicated system of months and days, demonstrating that the people who produced it possessed an organized calendar.
One month bears the name Samonios, and an inscription commonly reconstructed as TRINOX SAMONI SINDIV has been interpreted as referring to three nights associated with that month.
Because Samonios resembles Samain, some scholars have proposed that the calendar preserves evidence of a festival related to the Irish observance.
But there is a problem.
The precise seasonal placement of Samonios remains debated. Some scholars connect it with summer rather than November, and the relationship between this Gaulish term and Irish Samhain cannot simply be assumed.
More importantly, nothing in the surviving inscription describes a festival of ghosts, demons, human sacrifice, or worship of the dead.
There is no description of priests conducting religious ceremonies. No reference to Halloween. No evidence that this festival was the ancestor of All Saints' Day.
The calendar is a valuable ancient artifact. But it cannot be made to say more than it actually says.
The University of Copenhagen's materials on Old Celtic languages discuss these difficulties, while University College Cork's Department of Early and Medieval Irish has also explored the linguistic relationship between Samhain and summer.
Early Irish law: Samhain as a practical seasonal turning point
When we move into early medieval Ireland, we begin to encounter firmer evidence for Samhain as a recognized date in ordinary society.
Early Irish legal traditions use Samhain as a seasonal reference point in matters involving livestock, grazing, agricultural activity, and customary obligations.
This is important because it takes Samhain out of the realm of mythology and places it in the ordinary affairs of human life.
For an agricultural society dependent upon livestock, seasonal changes were enormously important. As winter approached, animals had to be managed, food supplies prepared, and obligations settled.
Samhain helped mark that transition.
It was not simply a spooky night filled with supernatural creatures. It was part of how people organized their year.
Yet these legal references do not tell us that Samhain was universally understood as a religious feast for departed souls.
They do not describe Druids summoning spirits or offering human sacrifices.
The evidence points first and foremost to a seasonal observance.
The Wooing of Emer: Samhain in early Irish literature
One of the most important literary sources is Tochmarc Emire, or The Wooing of Emer.
This Old and Middle Irish narrative concerns the legendary hero Cú Chulainn and his courtship of Emer.
The story survives in medieval manuscripts, although portions of its textual tradition are older.
In the narrative, Samhain is identified as one of the major seasonal divisions of the year, alongside Imbolc, Beltane, and the autumn harvest period.
Samhain marks the time when summer gives way to winter.
The passage is valuable because it demonstrates that medieval Irish tradition regarded Samhain as an important point in the annual cycle. It provides a recognizable structure for the changing seasons.
However, the passage does not describe the elaborate religious festival imagined in many modern Halloween origin stories.
There is no account here of Druids commanding the population to honor the dead or of a church later replacing the occasion with All Saints' Day.
We can affirm what the source tells us without inventing what it does not.
Readers can examine the original Irish text and English translation of The Wooing of Emer, available through University College Cork.
The Adventure of Nera: The strongest evidence for Samhain's supernatural reputation
Now we come to a particularly interesting source.
Echtra Nerai, or The Adventure of Nera, is an early Irish supernatural narrative preserved in medieval manuscripts.
The story takes place at the royal court of Ailill and Medb on Samhain night.
During the festivities, the warrior Nera accepts a dangerous challenge involving the body of a recently executed prisoner. What follows is a remarkable supernatural adventure involving a speaking corpse, mysterious beings, an entrance into the Otherworld, and a strange experience of time.
Unlike the agricultural and legal references, this narrative clearly associates Samhain with supernatural danger and extraordinary encounters.
Indeed, it gives us a genuine historical basis for saying that Samhain possessed supernatural associations in medieval Irish storytelling.
And I have no reason to deny that.
But we must ask an important question:
Does a medieval supernatural story set on Samhain prove that ancient pagans celebrated a religious festival dedicated to the worship of the dead?
No.
Stories about spirits, magical beings, and the Otherworld are not necessarily descriptions of actual religious ceremonies.
Medieval Christian Europe was filled with stories about ghosts, supernatural occurrences, apparitions, haunted places, and miraculous events. Their existence does not establish that every associated date was originally a pagan religious holiday.
The same caution applies to Irish literature.
The Adventure of Nera tells us something about how Samhain was imagined by medieval storytellers. It does not provide a contemporary eyewitness report of pre-Christian Celtic ritual practices.
Scholars of early Irish literature have examined the narrative's unusual relationship between the human world and the Otherworld, including its supernatural treatment of time.
What about Samhain being the Celtic New Year?
Another familiar assertion is that Samhain was the ancient Celtic New Year.
It is frequently repeated as an established historical fact.
But how firmly can we document it?
Samhain certainly marked an important seasonal boundary, and it may have functioned as a beginning of the year in some traditional contexts.
However, proving that every ancient Celtic society celebrated a single religious New Year on November 1 is another matter.
The Celts were not one politically united people with a single religious calendar. They occupied different regions over long periods and possessed diverse local traditions.
We should be careful about taking evidence from medieval Ireland and projecting it backward onto all Celtic-speaking peoples of ancient Europe.
Interestingly, some of the most influential arguments for Samhain as the universal Celtic New Year were developed much later, particularly in the nineteenth century.
That brings us to an especially important chapter of this story.
The Victorian scholars who helped popularize the pagan Halloween narrative
Many people assume the familiar story of Samhain and Halloween comes directly from ancient historical testimony.
In reality, much of the modern explanation was popularized by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars.
Two particularly influential figures were Sir John Rhys and Sir James George Frazer.
Rhys, a pioneering scholar of Celtic languages and traditions, advanced the interpretation that Samhain marked the beginning of the ancient Celtic year.
Frazer, the author of The Golden Bough, went further in developing the theory that Samhain was a great pagan feast of the dead and that the Christian Church adapted the observance into its own religious calendar.
These interpretations became enormously influential.
They were repeated in books, encyclopedias, lectures, folklore studies, and eventually popular media.
Over time, interpretations hardened into presumed historical facts.
And here is where modern historical scholarship becomes particularly useful.
In a major study published in Folklore in 2024, historian Ronald Hutton revisited the historical foundation of the supposed ancient Celtic New Year and festival of the dead.
His article, titled The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead, examines the development of these claims and the evidence behind them.
Hutton concludes that the evidence for a universal ancient Celtic New Year is indirect and inconclusive, while the evidence for a festival specifically devoted to the dead is exceptionally weak.
That is an important conclusion.
It does not mean that Samhain was imaginary, that supernatural stories were absent from Irish tradition, or that later Halloween customs never absorbed elements of Gaelic folklore.
It means that the familiar picture of a universal ancient Celtic festival of the dead has often been presented with far more certainty than its historical foundations justify.
And significantly, this criticism does not depend upon Catholic apologetics.
It comes from historical scholarship itself.
Did the Catholic Church deliberately replace Samhain with All Saints' Day?
This is the central question for our discussion.
The popular story usually goes something like this:
The ancient Celts celebrated Samhain on October 31. The Catholic Church discovered that the pagans would not abandon their festival. Church authorities therefore moved All Saints' Day to November 1, transforming Samhain into a Christian celebration.
It sounds plausible at first.
But where is the contemporary historical evidence demonstrating that this actually happened?
The Christian commemoration of martyrs and saints had been developing for centuries, independently of any demonstrated attempt to replace Samhain.
In the early seventh century, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Roman Pantheon as a Christian church honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary and the martyrs. That dedication was associated with May 13, not November 1.
During the eighth century, Pope Gregory III established a chapel in St. Peter's dedicated to honoring the saints.
Later tradition associates Gregory III with November 1, although the precise documentary evidence for the date and its adoption is more complicated than popular summaries suggest.
By the late eighth and early ninth centuries, November 1 was becoming established as a Christian commemoration of All Saints in parts of the Latin Church. Its observance subsequently spread more widely.
There is no need to invent a pagan origin for the Christian commemoration of the saints. The practice of honoring Christian martyrs was already deeply rooted in the life of the Church.
And there is a critical historical point here.
No surviving contemporary church decree establishes that November 1 was selected specifically to suppress Samhain.
Nor do we possess an early medieval account in which Church authorities explain that they are transforming the Irish festival into All Saints' Day.
Hutton's detailed examination of the evidence likewise finds no medieval documentation establishing such a deliberate campaign to replace a northern European pagan feast of the dead.
Could Christian celebrations and older local traditions have influenced one another over time?
Certainly.
Christian societies often incorporated existing regional customs, and some Halloween folklore may preserve elements of older seasonal traditions.
But cultural overlap and deliberate institutional replacement are not the same thing.
The first is historically plausible.
The second requires specific evidence that has not been demonstrated.
And what about All Souls' Day?
The next day, November 2, is the Catholic Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, commonly called All Souls' Day.
Some modern accounts claim that All Souls' Day was likewise adapted from the ancient pagan worship of the dead.
Again, we must examine the actual history.
Christians had prayed for the departed since antiquity, centuries before the establishment of a universal November observance.
Prayer for the dead has roots in Jewish religious tradition and appears within early Christianity.
The development of November 2 as a widespread annual commemoration is especially associated with St. Odilo of Cluny and the Cluniac monastic movement around the turn of the eleventh century, though the precise chronology of its establishment has been debated.
From there, the observance spread more widely throughout the Western Church.
Its meaning was specifically Christian: prayer for the faithful departed, rooted in the communion of saints, the resurrection of the dead, and the hope of eternal life.
That is very different from claiming that Catholics were secretly preserving a pagan rite of ancestor worship.
The claim of a direct pagan replacement lacks the necessary historical documentation.
Halloween is Christian in name and liturgical identity
There is one aspect of Halloween's history that is not particularly mysterious.
The word Halloween developed from All Hallows' Eve, the evening preceding All Saints' Day.
Hallow is an older English word associated with holiness or a saint.
Consequently, All Hallows' Eve means the eve of All Saints.
This is the Christian origin of the holiday's name and position in the liturgical calendar.
October 31 precedes November 1, the Solemnity of All Saints. November 2 is All Souls' Day.
Together, these observances form what is often called Allhallowtide.
Of course, the modern secular celebration of Halloween includes many customs that are not themselves religious.
Costumes, scary stories, carved pumpkins, neighborhood decorations, candy, and trick-or-treating have different and sometimes complicated histories.
Some customs may incorporate older seasonal folklore. Others developed in Christian Europe or became popular much later, particularly in North America.
Halloween as celebrated today is the result of centuries of cultural development.
It is not historically responsible to reduce that entire development to one ancient pagan festival.
Nor should we assume that a modern custom is necessarily an act of pagan worship merely because it resembles an older practice.
The meaning, intention, and religious content of an activity matter.
Did the ancient Druids sacrifice people on Halloween?
This deserves special attention because it appears so frequently in sensational Halloween warnings.
There are ancient Greco-Roman accounts alleging that certain Celtic peoples practiced human sacrifice.
Julius Caesar, for example, describes supposed Gallic sacrificial practices in Commentaries on the Gallic War, Book VI.
Those accounts deserve historical examination, with appropriate attention to Roman perspectives and possible exaggerations.
But even if a particular allegation about ancient Celtic sacrifice is accepted, it does not follow that such sacrifices were conducted at Samhain, much less that modern Halloween customs descended from them.
That would require a separate chain of evidence.
We cannot take a Roman account of a practice attributed to Gauls, combine it with a medieval Irish seasonal festival, and then announce that children wearing Halloween costumes are participating in an ancient sacrificial tradition.
That is not historical analysis.
It is speculation built upon unrelated pieces of evidence.
Anyone making such an assertion should be expected to identify a primary source that establishes the connection.
So, is there any connection between Samhain and Halloween?
Yes, there may be, particularly in the development of regional folk customs.
And there is no reason for Catholics to fear acknowledging this.
Samhain was associated with the seasonal transition into winter. Medieval Irish literature frequently associated the date with supernatural encounters.
Later Irish, Scottish, and Welsh Halloween traditions developed elaborate folklore surrounding spirits, disguises, divination, and the supernatural.
Such traditions could have preserved, transformed, or reinterpreted elements of older local customs.
At the same time, those traditions existed within societies that had been Christian for many centuries.
They were influenced by the Church's calendar, local folklore, medieval beliefs about death and spirits, seasonal festivities, and changing social customs.
In other words, the relationship was not necessarily a simple transaction in which pagans invented Halloween and Christians stole it.
It was a long cultural development involving multiple influences.
And historians must distinguish demonstrable continuity from plausible speculation.
One need not insist that every Halloween custom originated within the Church to recognize the genuine Christian history of All Hallows' Eve.
What the earliest sources actually establish
After examining the evidence, we can draw several reasonable conclusions.
First, Samhain was a real seasonal observance in early Ireland. Its historical existence is not in question.
Second, its association with the end of summer and beginning of winter is well established in medieval Irish tradition.
Third, some medieval Irish narratives clearly associate Samhain with supernatural events, the Otherworld, and encounters with the dead.
Fourth, the evidence does not establish that Samhain was universally celebrated throughout the ancient Celtic world as a religious New Year dedicated to worshipping departed spirits.
Fifth, the familiar claim that the Catholic Church deliberately replaced Samhain with All Saints' Day has not been demonstrated from contemporary historical documentation.
And finally, Halloween developed within a Christian calendar while also absorbing and developing a variety of regional secular and folk customs over the centuries.
These conclusions may disappoint those who prefer a simple explanation.
But history is rarely simple.
My conclusion: Catholics do not need to rewrite history to defend Halloween
As a Catholic, I have no interest in pretending that pagan religions never existed or that Christianity developed in complete isolation from the cultures it encountered.
Of course Christians lived among peoples with older beliefs. Of course cultural traditions sometimes overlapped. And of course certain folk customs continued to evolve after Christianization.
There is nothing particularly shocking about that.
What I object to is the casual presentation of speculative theories as undeniable historical facts, especially when those theories are used to attack the Catholic Church.
Every October, we hear variations of the same accusation: that Halloween is actually a pagan religious festival, that Catholics stole it, and that anyone celebrating it is somehow participating in ancient occult worship.
But when we examine the oldest surviving texts, that sweeping narrative becomes much harder to sustain.
The earliest sources demonstrate that Samhain existed. They establish its seasonal importance. Some associate it with supernatural stories.
They do not establish the entire modern mythology that has grown around it.
And they certainly do not provide direct evidence that the Catholic Church invented All Saints' Day to deceive pagans into abandoning their traditions.
For me, that is the important distinction.
We can acknowledge the possible influence of Samhain on later Halloween folklore without pretending that Samhain and the Christian feast of All Saints are historically identical.
We can recognize the complexity of cultural history without manufacturing a pagan conspiracy behind every Christian observance.
And we can celebrate All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day according to their genuine Christian meaning.
Samhain has a history. Halloween has a history. Those histories may intersect, but they are not interchangeable.
The burden of proof belongs to those who insist otherwise.
Before someone confidently declares that Halloween was stolen from the pagans, I would encourage them to do something surprisingly uncommon in these debates:
Read the earliest sources.
Not just what a modern author claims they say.
Read what they actually say.
Because the historical record is far more interesting—and considerably less sensational—than the mythology we are so often sold.
Primary Sources and Further Reading
For readers who wish to investigate the subject independently, the following historical materials and scholarly studies are particularly valuable.
Ancient and medieval primary sources
1. The Coligny Calendar, approximately second century AD. A Gaulish lunisolar calendar containing the month name Samonios. See David Stifter, Old Celtic Languages, section 6.2.7.
2. Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer), medieval Irish narrative. References Samhain as a major seasonal division. Original Irish text and English translation, University College Cork.
3. Echtra Nerai (The Adventure of Nera), medieval Irish narrative. Associates Samhain night with supernatural experiences and the Otherworld. See Kuno Meyer, The Adventures of Nera, Revue Celtique 10 (1889), pp. 212–228.
4. Félire Óengusso (Martyrology of Óengus), approximately AD 800. An early Irish Christian calendar useful for examining the relationship between traditional seasonal names and Christian commemorations. See Whitley Stokes, The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee (1905).
5. Julius Caesar, Commentaries on the Gallic War, Book VI, first century BC. An ancient Roman description of Gallic religion, including allegations of sacrifice. It does not identify Samhain as the occasion for those practices.
Modern scholarly studies
6. Ronald Hutton, “The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead,” Folklore 135, no. 1 (2024): 69–86. A detailed critical study of the historical evidence and the influence of earlier scholars.
7. Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996). See especially the discussions of Samhain and Halloween.
8. Sir John Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom (1888). An influential nineteenth-century interpretation of Celtic religious traditions.
9. Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, various editions. A historically important but methodologically dated comparative study that helped popularize the theory of pagan survivals within Christian festivals.
10. Dimitra Fimi, “Samhain or Halloween? The ‘Ancient Celtic Year’ in Contemporary Children's Fantasy”. A useful scholarly discussion of how medieval Irish evidence has been interpreted in modern culture.
For more on the Christian history of Halloween, read my annual article:
Halloween Is Not Pagan: A Catholic Historical Defense
My Catholic Defense — By Chris M. Forte
