Halloween 2026

Fr. Solomon Longo · November 4, 2026 · homily

Halloween is coming again.

Along with days like Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick's Day, and St. Valentine's Day, Halloween (also known as All Hallows Eve) is one of the echoes of Christian Holy Days that still mark the American calendar in a major way.

Like is the case, to one degree or another, with all of those other holidays, Halloween's original meaning has been drowned out and altered in America.

The day of the Birth of Christ now has a shared emphasis on elves, Frosty, and Santa (less and less understood as St. Nicholas anymore).

Western Easter has the emphasis on the Easter bunny (and, ironically enough, we make movies about the virtue of struggling to keep faith in these holiday characters).

St. Valentine's day is a celebration of romance, and sometimes vanity. St. Patrick's day is safely out of the hands of the too-religious titular character and into the hands of leprechauns with pots of gold.

Halloween, though, seems to be a special reversal. It plays with fear, mischief, and the concept of evil beings. How do we respond to it?

Is it evil or not? Can we take part fully, in some partial way, or not at all?

Allow me to give you the boring part first. Where does Halloween come from?

Like I said, the name comes from the Feast of All Saints, when all the holy ones or “hallowed” ones (like in “hallowed be Thy name”) are celebrated in Western Churches. That’s on November 1st and Halloween is the “evening” that begins that feast. So that’s what the name means. All Holy Ones evening. Then why do some people’s houses look like a collection of all that is unholy? It’s the only holiday when the opposite thing is celebrated.

Christmas is at least about gifts, goodwill, and kindness. A completely secular Easter still has egg decorating and egg hunts. Nothing crazy.

Why does Halloween seem to stage the opposite of the people that it’s about?

Is it a kind of anti-All Saints Day?

Well for some people, that really is the goal. There absolutely are people who are naively trying to contact spirits and are interacting with demons, and there are also some number of people on this night who are consciously trying to make contracts with demons for many purposes. There are people who think of this as their holiday, their biggest moment of the year for gaining power by contacting spirits to deal with.

Why? Because in the 1800’s, in Victorian times, when interest in the occult was growing, there was a fanciful and fashionable interest in finding pagan traditions to continue. And frankly they made things up or did terrible history work.

Because of those trends in the 1800’s, people now on your instagram feeds believe that Halloween is an accurate continuation to a Pre-Christian Celtic festival called Samhain [Sow-en] which they say was a unique moment of the year for otherworldly hauntings. This gives the modern spooky themes of Halloween a sense of being ancient and mysterious and makes neopagans excited to throw off Christianity for what came before.

But none of modern Halloween has a relationship to Samhain in the Pre-Christian British Isles. And the neopagan internet hype myth about Halloween persists because of wishful thinking.

The first mention of this Samhain folk holiday is from the 900’s, when Christianity had been among the Celts for 500 years. We actually know very little about how Samhain was celebrated—one of the only facts being that, sometime in Fall, a full moon marked when it was time to bring the cattle in to stay warm indoors. That, in itself, is not too exciting and has nothing to do with costumes, or ghouls or anything like that.

Then how did we get specifically October 31st, spooky supernatural things, trick or treat, and costumes?

Halloween is on October 31st because the Church put it there. That’s when the feast of All Hallows —All Saints—is in the Western tradition.

An urban legend says that the Church put the All Saints feast on this day to counteract the extremely popular pagan festival of Samhain. Very exciting that bringing the cows indoors thing…There were probably songs and parties, too. But that’s the legend, the Church trying to cover up the people’s pagan traditions.

Exciting hypothesis, but no. Not true.

The Western dating of All Saints Day and All Souls Day to November 1st and 2nd began in Rome, not in the Celtic lands where this festival happened. A Christian festival about the departed happened internationally, and modern Halloween is a late 19th century creation, morphing out of All Saints, and All Souls Days.

What about ghosts and the like? There’s no reason to believe Samhain ever had anything to do with the departed. Ghosts became part of modern Halloween because late 19th century people were obsessed with seances and ouija boards and because of All Saints Day, and All Souls Day have always been about departed spirits. A day about departed relatives could easily involve ghost stories and then that could become the central thing when the foundation of the faith is left behind.

Trick or treating? Knocking on doors and asking for food? If it’s from anywhere ancient, history suggests it’s from some towns where beggars would offer prayers for your departed relatives to become one of those all saints in exchange for a bit of food at your door.

So when did the dressing up start? Well the main times for dressing up in costumes were Christmas and New Years. And the only times those were creepy costumes were when a person in a saint costume was going to come heroically drive the evil characters away.

Dressing up on Halloween is only about a century old. And the dressing up as creepy things on Halloween seems to have no historical support beyond that—about 1900.

Modern Halloween is brand new historically speaking. You’re not picking up an ancient pagan feast by participating.

Ok, but do we approve of it or not? Do we take part or not?

There are good things about it.

I remember reading one parent writing about the experience of Halloween saying that when they saw their daughter bravely go past the creepy statues in someones’ yard and come back smiling about a successful candy acquisition, they felt she had learned to bravely face evil and fear and to mock them. So he said Christians should be the best, most die-hard Trick-or-Treaters in town. I think there’s something to that. It reminds me of G. K. Chesterton saying that children know that dragons exist, and they need fairy tales to know that dragons can be killed.

And it’s true that it is one of the most binding events of the year for a neighborhood.

You meet so many people and compliment the kids’ costumes. Walls are broken down and it’s a community event. It is one of the only festival style events that happens across America.

But another parent wrote an article in which he noted that his young daughters were very sensitive about the forces of Hell displayed in ranks of 18 ft statues in the neighbor’s front yard.

And that brings up a real question about intention: are we mocking evil, or normalizing it and enjoying the thrill? People put the decorations out in huge ways a month ahead of time, bigger than Christmas, and identify with villains, as though evil characters are their misunderstood alter egos. It seems to go to a strange place sometimes. And also the season can make the demonic seem toothless when it is not.

That’s part of the problem: Halloween, as it is today, can present the spirits that the saints dispel and displace, but it does not present those saints.

I would love to see a Western All Saints Day where the original meaning would take its place as the climax of modern Halloween, like the ball drop and fireworks are the climax of New Years. With all its fun, even with frights and tricks, it would be a logical capstone that ends the night with victorious Good. Instead of just running out of steam and going to sleep and it being over, there’s a big ending.

Until, Lord willing, something like that happens, I would suggest a few principles:

1. Keep children away from the demonic. And it is important not to send children and teens unattended where more occult practices may be going on at gatherings with friends. Keep in mind that naive openness to just any communication from spirits is a recipe for harmful deception.
2. Dress as something else. Like we said about St. Nicholas Day in some places: there was a time when those dressing up might be recognizably playing a role in the night—might even be chosen to present the cautionary tale of local evil spirits to teach children—like krampus. But that’s not happening here. Be a cowboy, princess, or Panda bear. If you’re wondering whether you should wear something, ask whether it normalizes evil and demonic things. Ask me, if you have a specific question. I cannot give firm answers on every costume gray area, and I think even if America became 90% Orthodox, it would be a wet blanket for the priests to micromanage every festival costume. In all things there is a need to calibrate your own conscience thoughtfully through the faith.
3. Don’t be too afraid.

—I’m sure this homily is confusing for a number of people, and for completely opposite reasons. Some of you are thinking, “Afraid? Why would I be afraid? I’ll be running down the street having a great time.”

And I don’t want to scandalize anyone. You’ll see my family and I out there, too. They won’t dress in anything demonic. I’ll be dressed as though I got promoted to archpriest (don’t tell the bishop), and I don’t want anyone to see us out there and think “that homily was hypocrisy.”

But there are people who need to be more circumspect about this holiday and what some people do during it, and hope for it to be. And other people here know the danger of the demonic, and are reasonably wary about a night where they know that dangerous spiritual practices occur at their highest pitch. Some people need to be more circumspect and aware. Others may need to hear this last point—

Don’t be afraid. Consider handing out candy at your door. Most people have no evil intentions. For most people it’s just a day for parties and candy. And you are not so vulnerable or unprotected that normal Halloween events going on around you will pollute your spiritual life. Make the sign of the cross over the bucket of candy. Burn incense and say your prayers. Evil does not hold its ground against God—not unless it has a refuge and hiding place in our will. Your intentions are important. Some people used to act like the mark of the beast in Revelation would be having a credit card or something—as though you might accidentally become a citizen of the kingdom of darkness by a trick—like there would be a little 666 hidden on your energy drink can. This is silly. We are not saved against our will. We are not lost against our will. God is not so far away as that. The Kingdom of God is within you. Don’t do anything involving witchcraft or mediums or things like that. Don’t take part in propping up what is unChristian. But there is no need to be afraid. God is with us.

Glory to our God who is the Lord of all Spirits.

Glory to Jesus Christ.