The Bible Answers Short Questions From Our Readers - Plain Truth Staff - February 1957

Plain Truth Staff

Question: Where did Halloween come from? Answer: Hundreds of letters, in response to Mr. Armstrong's broadcast, have posed this question. Here is the answer: Real Origin of Halloween; Do you know that Halloween was introduced into the professing Christian world centuries after the death of the apostles, yet it was celebrated by the pagans centuries before the New Testament Church was founded! How did Halloween come to America? Here is the intriguing answer from history: "The American celebration rests upon Scottish and Irish folk customs WHICH CAN BE TRACED IN DIRECT LINE FROM PRE-CHRISTIAN TIMES" - from paganism! "Although Halloween has become a night of rollicking fun, superstitious spells, and eerie games which people take only half seriously, its beginnings were quite otherwise. The earliest Halloween celebrations were held" - not by the inspired early church, but - "by the Druids in honor of Samhain, Lord of the Dead, whose festival fell on November 1." (From HALLOWEEN THROUGH TWENTY CENTURIES, by Ralph Linton, Page 4.) - Information Supplied By: Herbert W Armstrong Library