A Christian’s Guide to Halloween

At the end of October, children across the country will don costumes and meander from door to door collecting candy.

Some Christians will eagerly participate in the week’s festivities, and others will purposefully abstain. Instagram influencers will write diatribes about how the holiday is satanic in origin and we ought to stay far away.

But contrary to popular opinion, Halloween is Christian in origin!

All Saint’s Day or All Hallow’s day, which falls on November 1, was established in the 8th century as a day to honor the many saints who did not yet have official feast days within the church year. Many church holidays officially begin at sunset the evening before the feast day—Hallow’s Eve (like Christmas Eve) or Hallow’s evening was shortened to Halloween, which is how our contemporary day got its name.

In my book Bake & Pray, I provide recipes for every season of the liturgical calendar drawn from Christian traditions throughout history and around the world. I also provide some food history and folklore behind each recipe. As I share in the book, many of the holidays in the Christian calendar were established by pre-industrial societies who were dependent on following the rhythms of the sun and moon in order to situate themselves in time. 

Halloween is one such day. It falls right as the weather turns to winter, as the days shorten, trees begin to die, and the harvest draws to an end. It’s a poignant time to remember the never ending cycle of life and death that keeps our world in motion. As such, Pope Gregory IV found it to be an appropriate day to remember the many unnamed saints who faithfully passed on the faith from generation to generation.

There are myriad traditions throughout Christian history that paved the way for the traditions popular in American Halloween celebrations today. For instance in medieval Britain, the poor would go “souling”, walking from door to door offering to pray for one’s deceased in exchange for a soul cake—a spiced cookie made on Halloween. This practice is an early version of our contemporary trick-or-treat.

Martin Luther was quite purposeful in his choice of Halloween as the day to nail his 95 theses to the Wittenburg Door. The story is fascinating, but rather than tell it to you here, I recommend you listen to my Kitchen Meditations podcast episode on the topic!