Dear Editor,
With reference to your recent article ‘Unholy Halloween: what’s the history?’ by Gary Clayton. In it he makes a number of good factual statements about the origins and customs of Halloween. However, I notice that he has fallen into the same error as many other Christians do when writing articles about Halloween.
He asserts that Halloween has its origins firstly in Feralia. It was based in February. To assert it as linked to Halloween’s origins is to merely select a random festival that honours the dead and claim it as the origin. We simply cannot make that connection.
Secondly, he links it to Lemuria. This was an act of cleansing and redeeming. We believe in a God who is Redeemer, so redeeming that which was to all gods (which included human ‘heroes’) and refocusing it upon the Christian saints would have a Biblical precedence – the way that the writer of Hebrews 11 gives an honorary roll call of the saints who had passed before through the Old Testament.
Thirdly, Samhain. Unfortunately this is a common misconception by Christians who have picked their information up online and not done any deep research into the alleged festival. We have no actual written evidence that there was ever a festival of Samhain. This is a fairly modern myth.
Yours sincerely,
Matthew Arnold By email
