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It has been completely debunked that there was ever a "God of the Dead."

Seriously... years ago it's been debunked. I'm shocked the EA is still perpetuating that myth.

The word "Samhain" meant "Summers End" and that's what it was about... it was the end of the summer.

It was the season when they brought in the last of the harvest, stocked the firewood and planned to close up for the winter.

Considering winter killed in those days in that part of the world-- when there was no heat, no grocery stores, no antibiotics, etc.-- it was a time for apprehension. One flu bug could wipe out half your family. One unattended fire could burn down the house. Running out of food too early most likely meant starvation.

That, and the fact that the land itself around them appeared to be withering and dying, is probably why the season became closely associated with death.

Imagine having all these worries and fears on your mind, being cooped up for months with little food and little to do, the days are very dark and dim, the nights are very long, the wind howls as it whips around outside, branches scratch, etc... I imagine it was a very scary time, so it was no big surprise it became associated with scary things,

The book The Worship of the Dead points to this origin: “The mythologies of all the ancient nations are interwoven with the events of the Deluge . . . The force of this argument is illustrated by the fact of the observance of a great festival of the dead in commemoration of the event, not only by nations more or less in communication with each other, but by others widely separated, both by the ocean and by centuries of time.

This festival is, moreover, held by all on or about the very day on which, according to the Mosaic account, the Deluge took place, viz., the seventeenth day of the second month—the month nearly corresponding with our November.” (London, 1904, Colonel J. Garnier, p. 4)

Thus these celebrations actually began with an honoring of people whom God had destroyed because of their badness in Noah’s day.—Gen. 6:5-7; 7:11.

(Genesis 6:5-7) Consequently Jehovah saw that the badness of man was abundant in the earth and every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only bad all the time. 6 And Jehovah felt regrets that he had made men in the earth, and he felt hurt at his heart. 7 So Jehovah said: “I am going to wipe men whom I have created off the surface of the ground, from man to domestic animal, to moving animal and to flying creature of the heavens, because I do regret that I have made them.”

(Genesis 7:11) In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.

Such holidays honoring “spirits of the dead” as if they were alive in another realm are contrary to the Bible’s description of death as a state of complete unconsciousness.—Eccl. 9:5, 10; Ps. 146:4.

(Ecclesiastes 9:5) For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten

(Ecclesiastes 9:10) All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in She′ol, the place to which you are going.

(Psalm 146:3, 4) Do not put YOUR trust in nobles, Nor in the son of earthling man, to whom no salvation belongs.  4 His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; In that day his thoughts do perish.