All Hallows’ Eve: Recovering the Catholic Joy of Halloween

There is a peculiar holiness in laughter, especially the kind that bubbles up in the face of death. The ancients had their bonfires and banshees, true, and the moderns their candy and capes, but somewhere in between, there was, and still is, the bright beating heart of a Christian feast: All Hallows’ Eve, the night when Heaven’s family throws open its windows and lets the sound of joy spill into the streets.

Once, long before the aisles of Walgreens glimmered with plastic fangs and polyester saints, the Church threw her own party for the faithful departed. All Hallows’ Eve, the vigil of All Saints’ Day, was the Church’s evening of laughter at the grave, a riot of light against the darkness. When Pope Gregory III fixed the feast to November 1 in the eighth century, it was to honor those saints known and unknown, those loud with miracles and those humble and hidden. And the night before? A holy romp, a Christian kind of playfulness that stood on the bones of mortality and said, “We know how this story ends.”¹

It’s told often that Halloween came from pagans dancing around fires to ward off ghosts, but in truth it was the Church that baptized those old customs in holy water and set them singing psalms. What once was dread became delight. Christians held vigil, not to fear the dark, but to meet it with prayer, bell, and bread, the confident rustle of a people who believed that death had been defanged.²

Every Catholic knows the phrase but few pause long enough to marvel at its absurdly generous sweep: the communion of saints. A living fellowship that blurs the lines between here and there, the breathing and the buried. The saints in Heaven, the souls in Purgatory, and the lot of us mortals trudging toward both, they are all one Church, one wild family.³

So when children don robes, wings, and halos on Halloween night, they are not only pretending; they are participating. The Church teaches that Heaven is a community, not an exclusive club, and that by grace we are all invited. Even the skulls and skeletons, the macabre images that decorate old cathedrals and new porches, were never meant to terrify, but to remind. Dust thou art, yes, but dust bound for resurrection. Every saint is a story of God’s stubborn refusal to let dust have the final word.

In medieval England, the children of the Church would wander the streets with song and sack, asking for soul cakes, small buns given in exchange for prayers for the dead.⁴ This was trick-or-treating’s great-grandmother, who walked with a candle instead of a plastic pumpkin. The cakes were eaten not for gluttony but for gratitude, a communion of sorts with those who were still journeying home.

And the costumes? Oh, yes, costumes. Some donned garb of saints to honor them; others mocked demons with horned masks and silly faces, a theological jest that said more than a thousand treatises: evil is a joke since Christ walked out of His tomb.⁵

Even the pumpkin, humble, hollowed, and lit from within, became catechesis. Its gaping grin held a candle to proclaim that the light of Christ shines through the carved scars of creation. Every flickering jack-o’-lantern is a little sermon in wax and flame.

But now, how thin our festivities have become! The candy has multiplied, but the prayers have vanished. Houses drip with cobwebs, but souls rarely discuss the ones they love who’ve gone before. Halloween has been emptied like a gourd, its theology scooped out and replaced with chocolate wrappers. Yet it need not stay so.

Catholics can reclaim this night by reviving its threefold joy: honor the saints, pray for the dead, and laugh at the devil. Bring back the vigils and the bells, the prayers whispered under the porch light, the small catechisms disguised as costumes. A family might carve their pumpkins by candlelight while reading lines from the Beatitudes. A parish might bless the graves of its dead on All Hallows’ Eve, then host games and pies for the children. The point is not to sanctify sugar, but to sweeten sanctity, to put resurrection back in the revelry.⁶

Perhaps the holiest hour of Halloween is the moment just before the door opens. The child in the costume stands small and brave, ready to knock, to ask, to receive. It is a parable in miniature: we, too, stand at the door of eternity, small and brave and a little ridiculous, waiting for someone to open and give us what we cannot earn.

All Hallows’ Eve is not morbid. It is merry, because the cross has emptied the grave. It is comical, because evil has lost its dignity. It is Catholic, because it remembers the dead and celebrates life through laughter and liturgy intertwined. And if we listen closely, through the whine of wind and rustle of leaves, we may yet hear what the Church has been whispering for centuries on this night of joy: Death, you’re out of tricks.

Notes

1. Vatican News, “The Catholic Roots of Halloween, the Vigil of All Saints’ Day,” October 30, 2019.

2. EWTN, “Halloween: Its Origins and Celebration,” December 31, 2024.

3. Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997).

4. Good Catholic, “A Good Catholic’s Guide to Halloween,” October 30, 2024.

5. uCatholic, “The Catholic Origins of Halloween,” October 27, 2019.

6. Word on Fire, “It’s Time for Catholics to Embrace Halloween,” October 30, 2019.

Bibliography

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997.

EWTN. “Halloween: Its Origins and Celebration.” December 31, 2024.

Good Catholic. “A Good Catholic’s Guide to Halloween.” October 30, 2024.

uCatholic. “The Catholic Origins of Halloween.” October 27, 2019.

Vatican News. “The Catholic Roots of Halloween, the Vigil of All Saints’ Day.” October 30, 2019.

Word on Fire. “It’s Time for Catholics to Embrace Halloween.” October 30, 2019.