> As far as I know it’s build on a harvest festival which happened to be when the veil between our world and other worlds were thin. That didn’t necessarily mea

> As far as I know it’s build on a harvest festival which happened to be when the veil between our world and other worlds were thin. That didn’t necessarily mean spirits of dead people, but also faeries and stuff. A lot of these types of claims came from the book The Golden Bough, which gets things wrong: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough A good weblog post that goes into primary sources and how Bough influenced popular culture is: > Contrary to Seth Andrews’ claims about “the Catholic Church” stealing a pagan festival “involving the druid priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks and treats”, the date and most of the traditions are firmly Christian in origin. The November 1 date that is the centre of “Allhallowmas” was not derived from any “Celtic” original and the original Irish date for an All Saints feast moved from April 20 to November 1 due to the influence of Continental and English liturgical practice. That this meant the new All Saints Day fell on the “quarter day” of Samhain was pure coincidence. Contrary to repeated insistence in popular sources, scholars can find no clear indication of any ritual or religious practices on Samhain, and certainly none that can be traced to later Halloween traditions. Masks, costumes, trick or treating, Halloween games etc. all either have known traditional Christian origins or simply cannot be linked to anything definitely pre-Christian. * https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/ https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/