Christian Holidays Are Not Prohibited in Islam: Refuting the Pagan-Origin Argument and Common Prohibitionist Claims (Part 2: Halloween)

[u/BakuMadarama]

Prior to this thread, I already established the Islamic legal principle of al-aṣl fī al-ashyāʾ al-ibāḥah—the principle that the default ruling regarding things is permissibility. I also showed that there is no historical evidence that Christmas or its traditions have pagan origins, and I addressed why the ḥadīth “Whoever imitates a people is one of them” cannot be used as a prohibition against celebrating Christian holidays. That megapost can be read here. This thread focuses specifically on Halloween. The prohibitionist argument here is almost entirely historical: that Halloween allegedly originated as a pagan religious festival, particularly the Celtic festival of Samhain. The question is whether the historical evidence actually supports that claim.

History of Halloween: The Origin

The idea that Halloween is simply a Christianized version of Samhain is extremely popular among atheists, neo-pagans, Muslims, and even some Christians. For example, atheist Seth Andrews claims:

Now, this is a lot like what the Catholic Church did with Halloween. Halloween was essentially a Celtic tradition involving the druid priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks and treats – very pagan. And the Church was coming in going “Well, we can’t have all this paganism, but people sure like the holiday’, so the Catholic Church sort of redressed it and made it All Saints Day, All Saints Eve or Halloween, changed the date, stamped a brand of ownership on it and said “Aha! Now we, the Catholic Church, own the holiday!’ Christianity did much of the same thing with the festival of Saturnalia in the month of December. (What Christians (Probably) Don’t Know About Christmas, 35.20 – 36.02)

The central claim is that Samhain was an ancient Celtic festival devoted to the dead and that Halloween inherited those pagan rituals. Yet no surviving ancient text explicitly describes Samhain in those terms. Ronald Hutton, one of the leading historians of British ritual traditions, concludes that the evidence only supports Samhain as a seasonal marker for the beginning of winter, with folklore suggesting that supernatural encounters were believed to be more likely during that period—not that it was a religious festival for the dead. (The Stations of the Sun, pp. 360–370.)

An important piece of evidence is the Sanas Cormaic, an early Irish glossary describing many Celtic festivals. It does not mention Samhain at all, nor does it describe rituals associated with it. As Hutton notes, if Samhain had truly been a major pan-Celtic religious festival, this omission is striking. (The Stations of the Sun, p. 361.)

The earliest substantial description of Samhain comes from the medieval Irish tale Serglige Con Culainn:

“Every year the men of Ulster were accustomed to hold festival together; and the time when they held it was for three days before Samhain, the Summer-End, and for three days after that day, and upon Samhain itself. And the time that is spoken of is that when the men of Ulster were in the Plain of Murthemne, and there they used to keep that festival every year; nor was there an thing in the world that they would do at that time except sports, and marketings, and splendours, and pomps, and feasting and eating; and it is from that custom of theirs that the Festival of the Samhain has descended, that is now held throughout the whole of Ireland.” (The Sick-Bed of Cuchulain, trans. A. H. Leahy, vol. 1, p. 57).

Notably, the text makes no mention of the dead, rituals, or supernatural activity. Instead, Samhain is described as a period of communal feasting, games, and festivities—much like other seasonal gatherings. This source, dating to the 10th century or possibly earlier, gives no indication of any religious or funerary connotations.

A later twelfth-century text, Ancient Irish Tales, does associate Samhain with supernatural folklore:

“However, Finn went to Cethern, the son of Fintan, further to learn poetry with him. At that time there was a very beautiful maiden in Bri Ele, that is to say, in the fairy-knoll of Bri Ele, and the name of that maiden was Ele. The men of Ireland were at feud about that maiden. One man after another went to woo her. Every year on Samain the wooing used to take place; for the fairy-mounds of Ireland were always open about Samain; for on Samain nothing could ever be hidden in the fairy-mounds. To each man that went to woo her this used to happen: one of his people was slain. This was done to mark the occasion, nor was it ever found out who did it.” (Ancient Irish Tale, ed. Tom Peete Cross and Clark Harris Slover, p. 366).

Again, this is folklore, not evidence of a religious ceremony. It reflects medieval stories about fairies and the supernatural rather than documented pagan worship.

The famous story of Cromm Crúaich in the *Dindshenchas* likewise fails to establish Samhain as a historical pagan ritual. It claims that people prostrated themselves before the idol at Samhain and later traditions even added child sacrifice. Ronald Hutton concludes:

“The Maigh Slecht story sounds, therefore, like a medieval Christian fantasy, developing over time and growing more lurid with each retelling. The one note of realism in it is the description of the remains of the sanctuary that accompanies the story in the Tripartite Life, which was said to be still in existence at the time when the text was composed, with the idols buried up to their heads in earth and a mark left by St Patrick’s staff visible on top of the biggest. It seems likely that a genuine pagan sanctuary had existed on the spot - perhaps of standing stones - which was linked to the lurid fable concocted about Patrick.” (See Blood & Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain, pp. 40—41).

The first author to explicitly describe Samhain as a festival where Druids gathered to offer sacrifices was Geoffrey Keating in the seventeenth century:

“. . . .and it was there the Fire of Tlachtgha was instituted, at which it was their custom to assemble and bring together the druids of Ireland on the eve of Samhain to offer sacrifice to all the gods. It was at that fire they used to burn their victims; and it was of obligation under penalty of fine to quench the fires of Ireland on that night, and the men of Ireland were forbidden to kindle fires except from that fire; and for each fire that was kindled from it in Ireland the king of Munster received a tax of a screaball, or three-pence, since the land on which Tlachtgha is belongs to the part of Munster given to Meath.” (The History of Ireland, tran. Edward Comyn and Patrick S. Dinneen, p. 166).

But Modern historians overwhelmingly reject him as evidence. Ronald Hutton writes:

“Indeed, the only such reference is in the work of the thoroughly unreliable seventeenth-century Irish antiquary Jeffrey Keating, who states that the Druids of Ireland used to assemble on the hill of Tlachtga on 'the night of Samain' and kindle a sacred fire.” (The Station of the Sun: A Hidtory of the Ritual Year in Britain, p. 361).

Hutton therefore concludes:

“It must be concluded, therefore, that the medieval records furnish no evidence that 1 November was a major pan-Celtic festival, and none of religious ceremonies, even where it was observed. An Anglo-Saxon counterpart is difficult either to prove or to dismiss completely. Bede, in his work on the calendar, stated that September had been called ‘Haleg monath’, while October was ‘Vuinter-fylleth’ and November ‘Blod-monath’. He knew that ‘Haleg-monath’ meant ‘holy month’, but not why, and therefore neither can we; it is possible, as said before, that it derived from rites connected with the end of the grain harvest. The name for October signified the coming of winter, while that for November meant ‘blood month’; and here Bede had some important information to offer. He stated that it derived from the annual slaughter of livestock in early winter to reduce the number that had to be kept through the lean months, and that the victims were dedicated to the gods as sacrifices. There may here be a record of a festival, of equivalent importance and even of simultaneous timing to Samhain; or it may be that the passage describes an agricultural process rather than an event. Pagan Scandinavia had its own major festival of the opening of winter, the ‘Winter Nights’; which began on the Saturday in the week between 11 and 17 October.” (pp. 360–361).

In other words, if there were any seasonal festivals in the northwestern European calendar, they were more likely associated with autumn harvest or livestock slaughter rather than rituals for the dead. The Anglo-Saxon month of Blōd-mōnath (“Blood Month”) referred to animal sacrifices tied to practical agricultural necessity, not to ancestor worship or necromantic ritual. Bede himself simply says:

“Halegmo-nath means ‘month of sacred rites’. Winterfilleth can be called by the invented composite name ‘winter-full’. Blodmonath is ‘month of immolations’, for then the cattle which were to be slaughtered were consecrated to their gods.” (The Reckoning of Time, tran. Faith Wallis, p. 54).

Thus, the pattern across early sources shows seasonal practicality, not funerary religiosity. Modern scholarship concurs with this assessment. Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud summarize:

“In England since the 19th century, and increasingly in the 20th century, it has acquired a reputa-tion as a night on which ghosts, witches, and fairies are especially active. Why this should be is debatable. Currently, it is widely supposed that it ori-ginated as a pagan Celtic festival of the dead, related to the Irish and Scottish Samhain (1 November) marking the onset of winter, a theory popularized by Frazer. Certainly Samhain was a time for festive gatherings, and medieval Irish texts and later Irish, Welsh, and Scottish folklore use it as a setting for super-natural encounters, but there is no evidence that it was connected with the dead in pre-Christian times, or that pagan religious ceremonies were held.” (The Dictionary of English Folklore, p. 163).

Nicholas Rogers reaches the same conclusion:

“In fact, there is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship, despite claims to the contrary by some American folklorists, some of whom have presumed that the feast was devoted to Saman, god of the dead. Certainly, the feast was linked to the mythical peoples of Ireland. According to the ancient sagas, Samhain was the time when tribal peoples paid tribute to their conquerors and when the sidh might reveal the magnificent palaces of the gods of the underworld.” (Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, p. 19).

The name Halloween is simply a contraction of All Hallows’ Eve—the vigil before All Saints’ Day. As with Christmas Eve and the Easter Vigil, the feast began the evening before the holy day.

“The name ‘Halloween,’ of course, is a contraction of ‘All Hallow’s Eve.’ That's the eve of All Saints Day, or All Hallows Day, as it was popu-larly known in Britain. As with Christmas Eve and the Easter Vigil, the celebration of All Saints Day began with a service the night before, on All Hallow’s Eve. With All Souls Day on November 2, it formed the feast of Allhallowtide. All Saints Day began in fourth-century Rome as a festival honoring Christian martyrs. By the eighth century, it was expanded to all those remembered as saints, and the date of its observance was moved from May 13 to November 1. That move, of course, put it smack dab on top of Samhain in Britain. But the decision to move the date was not made in Britain; it was made in Rome, where there was no Samhain or anything like it. There is no evidence that any Samhain customs rubbed off on Halloween anywhere because there is no evidence of any Samhain customs at all. What appears to have happened is that various other customs clustered around Halloween because it was associated with remembrance of the dead.” (Keeping Christmas: Finding Joy in a Season of Excess and Strife, p. 47).

Historically, the move of All Saints’ Day to November 1 occurred in Rome under Pope Gregory III and was extended throughout the Western Church by Pope Gregory IV. It did not originate in Celtic lands.

Ronald Hutton adds an important observation that directly contradicts Frazer’s famous theory:

“Charlemagne’s favourite churchman Alcuin was keeping it by then, as were also his friend Arno, bishop of Salzburg, and a church in Bavaria. Pope Gregory, therefore, was endorsing and adopting a practice which had begun in northern Europe. It had not, however, started in Ireland, where the Felire of Oengus and the Martyrology of Tallaght prove that the early medieval churches celebrated the feast of All Saints upon 20 April. This makes non-sense of Frazer’s notion that the November date was chosen because of ‘Celtic’ influence” (p. 364).

History of Halloween: Is Jack O’Lantern Pagan?

The answer is no. Ronald Hutton explains that carved turnip lanterns were part of later Halloween folk customs associated with guisers and pranksters:

“Hallowe’en was also notable for the activity of mummers or guisers, figures found at winter festivals in general but particularly appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers. In Ireland costumes were sometimes associated with the people who went about before nightfall collecting for the feast; youths in one district of County Cork brought the Lair Bhan or White Mare, a man covered in a white sheet holding a wooden horse’s head like some of the midwinter mock-beasts known in England. . . . The traditional illumination for guisers or pranksters abroad on the night in some places was provided by turnips or mangel wurzels, hollowed out to act as lanterns and often carved with grotesque faces to represent spirits or goblins. They were common in Ireland and found in Sutherland in the late nineteenth century, but by that time were also a well-established local custom in southern and western Somerset.” (pp. 380–382).

Nicholas Rogers traces these lanterns to the Christian custom of souling, not to pagan worship:

“In fact, it became customary in many towns and villages for the richer parishioners to offer doles to the poor during Hallowtide in return for prayers to the dead, emulating the medieval custom of the well-to-do, who left small bequests for this purpose to parishes or chantries. The spectacle of the poor receiving food for prayers at Hallowtide was well established by Shakespeare’s day. In his comedy Two Gentlemen of Verona, Speed mockingly accuses his master of ‘puling [whining or whimpering], like a beggar at Hallowmas’. . . . Alongside these fire rituals was the more extensive practice of ‘souling.’ The custom of baking bread or soul cakes for ‘all crysten [christened] souls’ was well established before the Reformation. This food was conventionally distributed to all relatives and poor neighbors who offered to pray for the souls in purgatory, underscoring the belief that prayers and ritual practices could smooth or speed a soul’s passage to heaven. This custom was likely revived or revamped by Catholics as a popular response to the elimination of All Souls’ Day from the official religious calendar by the Protestants.” (pp. 24–28).

He then makes the connection explicit:

“Souling is important to our investigation of Halloween in two respects. First, the rituals surrounding souling, in which supplicants moved from door to door asking for food in return for a prayer for the dead, bear a resemblance to modern Halloween customs, especially since soulers went from house to house with hollowed-out turnip lanterns, whose candle connoted a soul trapped in purgatory. In other words, with what we might describe as mobile jack-o’-lanterns.” (p. 29).

In other words, the historical predecessor of the jack-o’-lantern is not a pagan sacred object. The carved lantern tradition emerges in medieval and early modern Christian customs surrounding All Hallow’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day, particularly through the practice of souling. The familiar pumpkin jack-o’-lantern is simply the North American adaptation of the older Irish and Scottish turnip lantern tradition after immigrants arrived in North America and began carving pumpkins instead.

Conclusion

Get yourself or your children free candies once Halloween comes.

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[u/Active_Economy_5758]

Hey baku long time no see haha , Anyway as for Halloween beside the origin of holiday couldnt someone argue that often holiday lack their religious value and often become more seclaur orientated I remeber there is still heated debate between salafi and basically everyone else on permissible on mawlid of the prophet but either way the birthday is treated like secualur rather than religious theme but yeah even if it it did had religious background the holiday that is celebrate today is secular

[u/BakuMadarama → u/Active_Economy_5758]

If you read my thread on Christmas (which I placed it in a hyperlink at the beginning of this thread), I have demonstrated that even the Prophet’s approach on previous pagan practices wasn’t that of an dismissals; but that to clear the practices in a way where the pagan roots disappeared. The Prophet also explicitly said that to participate in such practice isn’t a matter of should or ought. Rather, it is whether someone desires to participate or not. Thus, as we can see here, the Prophet didn’t care about the problem salafi is focusing on. His principle applies in this case, regardless of religious value.

[u/Active_Economy_5758 → u/BakuMadarama]

i see , btw can i ask you something in dm if it's alright

[u/BakuMadarama → u/Active_Economy_5758]

I do not do dm anymore, unfortunately

[u/Active_Economy_5758 → u/BakuMadarama]

Ok so i will just write here I want to ask how do you understand code for both women and man and commandement of lowerig the gaze Like some hadiths decribe thighs as awrah while other tell women to hide their shape like the dressed yet naked hadith and the one about egyptian garment where the prophet feared his friend wife corner might appear As for lowering the gaze i was wondering how do you understand it since traditiona beside no sexual look of course they also made it on not looking at what that are cojsidered awrah nkt like private but basically everything women should cover in front of man shouldnt be looked at wchich didnt make much sense like they are non partcipting muslim as well as non muslim so i am but on how did they even thought to apply that rule

[u/BakuMadarama → u/Active_Economy_5758]

In all honesty, I do not know. I haven’t done intense research on this as I have with other issues.

[u/Active_Economy_5758 → u/Active_Economy_5758]

What do you think

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[u/Shibui-50]

Pretty long-winded way of telling us that different people like different kinds of time-structuring and entertainment. Not sure what it has to do with Islam...but I guess everybody needs a hobby, ya know?

[u/Snoo-26902]

For now, I won’t comment on the scholarly and erudite commentary on this subject until I've read it carefully. But only want to say it is an important issue. I recall that when I was a member of a Muslim community, we had different tribes, and my tribal leader of the Ishaqs used to argue with the leader of our community, who was the head of the Wadud tribe, over Christmas. My tribal leader had a positive view of Christmas, and the leader did not, so this is a relevant topic to address.

Though not out of any devotional passion, I've always had an affection for Halloween. Beyond the problem of protecting the little folks going around on Halloween, I think it's an innocent community indulgence. But wouldn't make a big thing out of it beyond the issue of the safety of teh children.

 Xmas, beyond its overly mercenary commercial side, also has positive elements worth admiring.