I'm sure anyone who stopped by here yesterday wondered if I was planning on doing a post about Halloween. And though I did think about it, I thought doing a piece on the Celtic New Year would be more fun. And the truth of the matter is that the holiday we think of as Halloween is actually a Celtic--and pagan--celebration.
The Celtic festival, Samhain, is the celebration of the changing of the seasons. The Celtic people believed in the duality of life; dark and light, cool and warm, male and female. The Samhain celebration was their way of saying good-bye to the summer season and welcoming in the winter. It was during this festival that they believed the spirits of their ancestors could cross the boundary of life and death, and as such, the people would hold a huge feast in their honor, and it's from this that we get many of our own Halloween ideals.
The Celtic people saw the apple as being a sacred fruit and the act of bobbing for apples was their vision of what the ancestral spirits would do to enter into immortality. They also believed that evil spirits would cross over with the ancestors. In order to keep these unwanted spirits at bay, the Celts would carve faces into turnips and set them out to ward off the evil spirits. And though today we use pumpkins, it was done for the same reasons.
One of the main aspect of the Samhain feast was the bonfire. This was a massive fire on which the bones of sacrificial animals would be thrown and burned for the spirits. In fact, the term bonfire is a Celtic term meaning "bone fire". In several archaeological digs, the bones of several hundred animals have been found. One of the most famous is the small village found about 2 miles away from the world famous Stonehenge. According to archaeologist Michael Parker Pearson, it appears that people from all over would congregate at the site at certain times of the year and throw huge celebrations. Could some of this have been done during a Samhain festival? It is possible as there is some evidence that Stonehenge was a site attributed with the winter solstice and the realm of the dead. And though the winter solstice and Samhain were a couple months apart, it may have been the beginning of the winter festivities.
As we begin our decent into the cold, winter months, we must remember that the time of the paranormal is only beginning. To our ancestors, the scary part of the year didn't just last one day. The winter was a terrifying time, especially if the annual harvest had failed to bring in enough to feed the entire village. There are still things out there that scare us, even though Halloween is over. But don't be afraid, my little ones. They're only legends, right?
(The bonfire picture is attributed to Wikimedia Commons and the GFDL)
