Was There an Irish God Named Samhain?

Many of us take it for granted that Halloween, which originated with the Celtic holiday of Samhain, has been secularized to the point that people of various religious (and non-religious) backgrounds get together to celebrate it each and every year.

But as I (and many others) recently witnessed in Nathan Fielder’s series “The Rehearsal”, there is still a lot of misinformation out there about the origins of Halloween—and the origins of Samhain in particular. 

Apparently, there are certain religious organizations whose members believe that Samhain originated as a Satanic holiday. Tangental to this belief is the idea that Samhain was named after a pagan god, Sam Hain, an Irish god of death. 

Of course, these beliefs conflict with the historical and archaeological evidence.

First and foremost, we know who the