Judging by the activities surrounding this holiday, one could easily be shocked to discover that this holiday is entirely Catholic in its origin. Catholic? It is certainly surprising that a day when people go dressed up as ghosts and witches, serial killers and other immoral human being types should be rooted in a Catholic feast day. But the truth of the matter is that the holiday of Halloween is, in fact, the remains of a great Catholic "holy day". Just how, then, did this Catholic feast become a secular holiday? And what was the feast of "Halloween"?
Well, the day that we now know as "Halloween" was originally called "All Hallows' Eve". This name may sound somewhat strange to you, but it is easily explained. The word hallow, somewhat out of practice in our English language, is still used in at least one place: The Our Father. As one says the prayer we find, "Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name ..." In this context, we see that the word means basically "holy", but it also seems to suggest a holiness that is revered and treated with honor, respect, and admiration. But what does "All Hallows' Eve" mean? An eve is generally the name given to the day before another day that is very important. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are in all probability the most well-known and observed.
So we now know that the name "All Hallows' Eve" must mean that the day following it must be the feast of "All Hallows", right? And that is precisely what the next day, November 1st, is. Nowadays, though, we refer to it as "All Saints' Day". This day has been set aside by the Church to honor those Saints in Heaven who do not yet have a special feastday on the Church calendar. It is also intended to provide additional honor and veneration for those Saints that have a feastday on the calendar but were not honored sufficiently on their day. A true Catholic Saint is like no other person on earth. These are those few who have grown spiritually to the point where they love God with their whole mind, heart, body, soul and all of their will. This requires heroic self sacrifice which they endure for the love of God and the benefit of the Church and the salvation of souls. Our Holy Mother, the Church, has always understood the honor that these incredible men, women and even children deserve to be given. She has always held up her Saints as role models to her other children on earth. She has encouraged us that great respect and love should be shown to these remarkable and all too rare blessed of God. The feast recognizing all Saints has very early origins in the history of the Catholic Church.
So when we are honoring all of the Saints that are in Heaven, we are indeed honoring all of the "hallowed" people in Heaven! Suddenly it is no longer a mystery why the day previous is called "All Hallows' Eve".
But why did people commemorate the day before? Eves, as these "days before" are called, were actually a very important part of the upcoming feast. On eves, the Catholic faithful would fast (as the eve indicated), go to Confession, and otherwise prepare their souls for the feast the next day. In fact, two feasts were so important for us Catholics to prepare for, that the Church extended these "eves" to last a longer amount of time. These "eves" are Advent and Lent, the two preparatory periods before two of the greatest feasts of the Church, Christmas and Easter. Christmas actually has its own eve in addition to Advent; Easter doesn't, though, because it is preceded by Holy Week. Understanding now that eves were special preparation days before great feast days, we see that All Saints' Day is a fairly important feast day in the Church.
But how did All Hallows' Eve, a feast day of the Church, become Halloween, a secular holiday that basically commemorates all that is frightening, and in a sense all that is supernatural yet unheavenly? Well, as society drifted farther and farther away from Catholicism, people wanted less and less to remember things that they liked as having come from their Mother the Church. People enjoyed observing these days, but did not like them being attached to the Roman Catholic faith. Feasts like Christmas, Easter, St. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and All Hallows' Eve are celebrated the world over yes, but all in a very secular way. Christmas has become the day when people get presents from Santa Claus, Easter's the day when the "Easter Bunny" gives us chocolates and candies. Saint is omitted from the title of "St. Valentine's Day" as it becomes a day to give those you love a card and some candy. And while St. Patrick's Day is still commemorated with "Saint" in the title, it is more a celebration of Ireland and the Irish people than the amazing fidelity that the Irish had for their Catholic Faith during their persecutions from the Protestant English. And All Hallows' Eve, the day before we remember all of the Saints in Heaven, has become the secular holiday of Halloween, a day to go around dressed up as everything but a Catholic Saint while we collect candy to the offer of "Trick or Treat"!
Have your ever considered what the phrase "Trick or Treat" really means? One might think that it means that one is requesting a good "trick", like a magic trick, or else some candy. Unfortunately, this phrase did not originate from anything like that. It was actually a threat; it literally was aimed at getting the treats by force. For when this whole "tradition" of going around collecting candy was first beginning (if it can really be called a tradition), the children really were threatening to play a trick on those who did not give them treats. You know, the kind of "practical joke" type - like trampling through their garden, breaking something expensive, etc. Obviously most people aren't going to deny anybody candy these days, but the meaning of this phrase still holds the same - and as we have seen, a very unkind meaning at that.
Incidentally, the term "holiday" is also a result of this secularization of society. It came from the term "Holy Day of Obligation". A holy day of obligation is the term given to a feast day that is so important that we are obliged by the Church to go to Holy Mass. But holy days of obligation have the same "rules" as Sunday, so people were also free from work on these days. Evidently, people liked having days off while also commemorating something important. Unfortunately though, they didn't like commemorating the things of God and His Church. Hence the change from "Holy Day" to "holiday".