Pagan Halloween?

The idea that all the traditional holidays and festivals of the year are “pagan” in origin and were simply “stolen by the Church” is one that has permeated popular culture and is repeated without question in newspaper, magazine and online articles. Unfortunately, many anti-theistic polemicists cannot resist a chance to get in a jab at any aspect of Christianity being “really pagan”, so every October we see supposed rationalists parroting pseudo history about the “pagan origins of Halloween”, with no sign of any fact-checking, let alone engagement with scholarship. In fact, the claim that Halloween is “pagan” is largely a nineteenth century myth.

Om Podcasten

Atheist activism has a serious history problem. In the History for Atheists podcast, history writer Tim O'Neill tries to correct the misconceptions many of his fellow atheists have about history and debunks some common myths and fringe ideas about religious history generally.