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A few schools, including one in Colorado and one in Massachussetts, are bowing to pressure from parents who say the holiday, with its pagan roots and ancient customs, goes against Christian teachings.

That’s a tough argument to make, said Danny L. Jorgensen, professor of religious studies at the University of South Florida.

“Halloween probably is a leftover from the pre-Christian past,” Jorgensen told LiveScience, “however, it is not the same as the original pagan holiday—whatever that may have been.”

Any associations the holiday may have had with real witchcraft were long gone by the time the holiday came to America in the 1840s with Irish immigrants, who were mostly Catholic. Their annual custom of getting dressed up in ghoulish costumes came from the Celts, who believed long-dead spirits returned to the earth on Oct. 31, their New Year’s Eve. Morphed by a 9th-century pope, All-Hallows’ Eve became a day for the Christian world to honor saints and martyrs.

That makes today’s version of Halloween, if it can be considered a religious holiday at all, as much Christian as it is pagan, Jorgensen said. “Halloween, almost by definition, was appropriated by Christian cultures—void of its sacred significance—as some sort of special event, if not a religious one.”