Halloween descends from Samhain, the most significant holiday of the Celtic calendar. Being a pastoral people, the Celts counted their seasons according to the needs of their cattle and sheep rather than the agricultural seasons that farmers might mark. The year was divided into summer, when the herds are led our to graze, and winter, when they were brought back home again. Samhain, the day when the cows came home, was considered the first day of winter and also the first day of the New Year.
Samhain exposes a crease in time, a fissure between summer and winter, between the old year and the new. During this period, the dead have easy access to the living and are likely to pay a visit. Just as the herds return home to the warmth and security of the hearth in winter, so too must the ghosts of the dead seek being cheered by familiar surroundings and loved ones. Certainly one owes the same hospitality to the ancestors as one gives to the animals!
Burial cairns were opened to release dead souls and air out the interiors of their tombs. The old ones were offered sacrificed animals, entertained and fed in exchange for gifts of sweets from the underworld. But in addition to the benign and beloved ghosts wandering about on Samhain, there were also innumerable fairies and goblins, strange specters and evil spirits released into the dark by Lord Samhain, Lord of Death. During Samhain, people outfitted themselves in masks and costumes as a sort of protection ritual, believing that one could successfully hide behind such a disguise and thereby escape bedevilment by the masses of spirits on the loose.
For hundreds of years Christian missionaries tried without success to suppress Samhain and convert the Celts. In the eleventh century, Odilo, abbot at Cluny, claimed this heathen death feast for the Church. Hallow Tide, Holy Time, is a three-day feast -- All Hallow's Eve, All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day -- during which prayers are offered for Christian saints and souls, and only for Christian saints and souls. All others, those doomed souls whose burials were not consecrated in Christ, return to Earth on All Hallow's Eve to haunt the living. Menacing demons and flying witches along with their trusty black cat sidekicks, the persistent practitioners of the pagan religion, were also thought to be out and about and up to no good.
The potato famine of 1846 sent a million Irish immigrants to the United States. They brought with them their ancient Celtic customs, among them the feast of Samhain, which, as good Catholics, they now called Hallowe'en. This shadow festival of soul survival struck a responsive chord in the American people, who instantly adopted it. To this day, Halloween is celebrated in some fashion by practically every person in North America. Sales of decorations and goodies rival the lucrative Christmas season.
The Spaniards, French, and Portuguese who landed in the Western Hemisphere brought with them a Latin version of All Soul's Day. Their customs merged with those of the indigenous Indians, who, too, observed a fall feast of the dead. The Laguna Pueblo people visited the cemeteries to upkeep the gravesites and to serve ritual feasts to the departed ones. It was also the practice of the Aztecs to attend to the graves of ancestors in mid fall. These were weeded and swept, markers scrubbed and painted.
The amalgamation of the Catholic and Native American traditions is DÃa de los Muertos. On the Day of the Dead, like their Aztec ancestors before them, modern Mexicans gather to clean and decorate the cemeteries. They cleanse the atmosphere by lighting candles and copal incense on the gravestones. A picnic feast is then shared among the living and the dead, recognizing no difference between them. Those who are dead were once living, and those who are now alive will one day die.
There is demonstrated on DÃa de los Muertos a most primal and personal identification with death, a palpable intimacy. People paint their faces as skeletons and go about their daily business. They eat sweet breads and candies in the shape of skulls and coffins. Special toys, dolls and tableaus are sold depicting skeleton cops and skeleton banditos, skeleton bus drivers and skeleton baseball players, skeleton dentists and skeleton patients, skeleton brides and skeleton grooms, skeleton nuns and skeleton ballerinas, skeleton dogs and skeleton cats. Everybody has a skeleton, after all.
We modern Americans rarely -- if ever -- think about death if we can possibly help it. We like to watch it on a big screen well enough, or perpetrate it on innocent populations overseas, but in "real life," we just don't do death. This is why I think Halloween has become so poplar. It offers us a way to engage with our natural fascination with death in a way that is scary yet safe. At Halloween we get to acknowledge our fear of death while still having a good time.
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Grove Harris: Samhain 2011: Celebrating our Ancestors and the Earth
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That's good! And correct.
Great post, with lots of history, which I love. And some day I hope to attend a Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico. They do it up right.
Samhain blessings, everyone!
Nothing brings home this reality as this. That they are no longer in our material world
Halloween does little, but the lost of my father and son is the reality that brought it home to me. But then I try not to be of body, but SPIRIT.
These experience do bring THE REALITY that life is more than our material existence. Bank accounts, jobs, rep, dem mean absolutely nothing then. Our preoccupation with all of these can take away the potential JOY of our experience of these loved ones. We need to drive this balance, not circumstances. Yet it is so easy to be driven by such trivia and miss the life experience while it is here.
Much easier than reflecting backward or feeling the material loss once they are gone. Why I live in SPIRIT. My father and son, both live in the now. Much different approaches, but I should be so good. At least I had the experience of their lives. Something I still cherish so fondly and of course there energy is for ever as is everyones. Where that is, is a very fortunate place
Spirits speak in spirit. The case of my son it came in Meditative Light. My father was more of a warmth at learning of his death. My Granddad 40 years ago when I first started meditating was a calming and warming presence.
I spend little or no time doing this. These were occasions of circumstance only. Where they are is not for my material attachment. Let them fly in their light, why limit them to my material existence or they would be here, right?
Unfortunately, however, I don't think that the American way of Halloween renders any connection to one's personal demise. It's costumes, candy, haunted houses that rake in the bucks, and over the top decorating. Halloween, in a word, is fun. I just read on cnn.com that we spent $1.8 BILLION on Halloween costumes this year. (Priorities, priorit
Nah. That has nothing to do with it. It's an opportunity to come as you aren't, dress up, and party. It's the odd opportunity to run around after dark in a costume. It's a lot of things, but your theory ain't it.
Halloween is a secular event that doesn't rate a day off, unlike Xmas and Oester. (weaster) It's about indulgence, and candy, and being a fairy, superhero, fireman, space hooker.
If you think we're all pondering death while we stuff our cake holes with chocolate, you're wrong.
If we were pondering death, we probably wouldn't be packing away sugar, theobromine and alcohol!
And the colours are beautiful too!
Margaret W, Preston, UK
We're all just passing through.
Enjoy your brief journey.
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The second statement contradicts the first. The statement 'we do not do death' has no foundation. Perhaps, 'do not like' might be more accurate. In this context the monotheistic attachment to immortality is surely worth might be worth addressing.
This is my wish for humanity, that we stop asking permission to be our highest and holiest selves and just be it. Instead of saying "God bless you" we say "I bless you." No piece of paper is neccessary.