Where Halloween Comes From: The Catholic Roots of All Hallows’ Eve

Before the costumes and the candy, there was a vigil. The word Halloween is a shortened form of All Hallows’ Eve: the evening before All Hallows’ Day, which the Catholic Church calls the Feast of All Saints. “Hallow” is an old word for a holy person, a saint. So Halloween, quite literally, means “the holy evening.”

The three days of Hallowtide

For centuries, Christians have kept a short season at the start of November, sometimes called Hallowtide:

• October 31, All Hallows’ Eve. The night of vigil, the way Christmas Eve comes before Christmas.
• November 1, All Saints’ Day. A feast honoring all the saints, known and unknown.
• November 2, All Souls’ Day. A day of prayer for the faithful who have died, the ordinary people we have loved and lost.

The feast of All Saints has been celebrated in the Church for well over a thousand years, and tradition holds that it settled on November 1 in the eighth century. Historians still debate how much older harvest festivals, such as the Celtic Samhain, shaped the customs that grew around the date. What is clear is that the Church gave the season its meaning: a time to remember the dead.

How the old customs became today’s

Many Halloween habits look different once you know where they came from:

• Candles and lanterns. Lighting a candle for someone who has died is one of the oldest ways of praying for them. Carved lanterns grew out of the same instinct to keep a light burning in the dark.
• Costumes. Medieval communities held processions where people dressed as saints, and sometimes as figures of death, to remind everyone that life is short and that the saints are close.
• Soul cakes. On All Souls’ Day, poor families went door to door singing and offering prayers for the household’s dead, and received small spiced cakes in return. It is the ancestor of trick-or-treating.
• Flowers on graves. In many parts of Europe, families visit the cemetery on November 1 and leave flowers, most often chrysanthemums, on the graves of those they love.

Why flowers belong to this season

Flowers have always been how we say what we cannot say out loud. Left at a grave, they say you are still ours. On an altar, they say you are still remembered. At Divina, we think the season is at its best when it is gentle: a candle, a name spoken, something beautiful placed where someone can see it.

If someone you love is grieving this season, or lives far from the grave they would like to visit, flowers can do that visiting for you. We offer cemetery delivery with the headstone name and section noted in your delivery details, and every order can include a handwritten card in your words.

A simple way to keep All Hallows’ Eve

You do not need a church or a plan. A few small things are enough:

1. Light a candle on the evening of October 31 and say the name of someone you miss.
2. On November 1 or 2, visit a grave, or place a photo and fresh flowers somewhere in your home.
3. Tell one story about them to someone younger.

That is the whole tradition, and it is a lovely one to hand down.