St. Nikolai Velimirovich on Halloween's pagan origins

The post explains that Halloween has its origin among the pagan Celtic peoples in Ireland, Britain, and northern France. The Celts believed that life is born from death, so they marked the beginning of their new year at the end of autumn when nature dies and, according to their belief, the time of darkness, decay, and death begins.

On that day they extinguished the fire on their domestic hearths and darkness reigned everywhere. According to pagan Celtic tradition, the souls of the dead would fall completely under the authority of the god Samhain, the prince of death, who had to be propitiated by sacrifice on the day of the new year, and Samhain would allow the souls of the dead to visit the homes of their families on that day.

From this comes the custom of "masking" in costumes of ghosts, spirits, witches, and demons. In this way the living would enter into a "mystical" communion with the dead through the act of imitating the dead and walking about in darkness. According to the belief, the souls of the dead who came "visiting" were exhausted by hunger and begged for food, so they had to be fed, hence the custom called "trick or treating".

If one of the living did not treat the souls of the dead, the vengeance of the god Samhain would reach them. The author asserts that Orthodox Christians cannot and must not take part in such idolatrous festivity at any level, even if it is "only" entertainment for children, because it directly represents a denial of our Lord and our holy Orthodox faith.

For if we agree to "mask" our children and let them go about in darkness and beg for sweets, we thereby voluntarily consent to communion with the dead, whose god is not the Celtic deity Samhain but Satan himself, the prince of evil, and the sweets they receive will not be innocent gifts for children but an offering to the devil.

The text recalls that our ancestors, Christians from the earliest centuries, chose bodily death in the worst torments rather than offer sacrifice to idols and thereby deny Christ our God, who commanded: "You shall have no other gods before Me." In today's spiritually impoverished world heavy darkness and sloth prevail, and it is easy to convince almost everyone that the origin of such feasts is insignificant and that Halloween is ordinary, harmless fun.

The post concludes with a saying attributed to St. Nikolai Zica: "Forgive people that God may forgive you; we are all temporary guests on earth. Prayer and long fasting are worthless without true mercy and forgiveness."