Samhain

Samhain ( Sow-in)

This is taken to be the first festival of the Celtic year and has many well known traditions associated with it, under it's other name, Hallowe'en. Oddly it has no strong evidence as a New year, as it appears it was more commonly and mutely celebrated as Winter's Eve (Nos Galan Gaea, in Welsh) the time of the year where the excess livestock were culled and the rest sheltered for the winter, and the last harvest was in. In Ireland it was a meeting time for local lords and of seven days of feasting. Fire rituals from early times are also difficult to qualify as the evidence for them equally suggests other traditions may be involved. It has, however got an ancient history of being associated with supernatural entities and many protective practices have been documented over theses Isles, to keep them at bay. That said many of the other traditions we have to day are first documented much later in history.

It's connections with death are more easy to spot, heralding as it does the long, often cruel winter season. The Anglo-Saxons called the following month Blood Month due to the livestock cull. The Christian Church put its feast of the dead (All Soul's Day) on the 2nd November. Though in historical terms there appears to be no particular evidence to say that dead were honoured at this time before.

So how do we come to celebrated it that way today?

Firstly the Celtic calendar was first documented by Roman and Christian writers, who would not necessarily have noted that this was a Celtic New Year date, keeping that reference to their own prefered date. Secondly, many early tales take Samhain as a starting point for the hero's exploits, which may also be an indication it was at the beginning of the year. Thirdly, it is the start of the dark time of the year and the Celts were known to start their days at sunset, in other words at the beginning of the darkest time.

That Samhain was not exuberantly celebrated as a New Year may reflect that it was an uncertain time with the hardships only finally being overcome when Summer's Eve/Beltane had arrived, (which was certainly celebrated). The meeting of tribal leaders, after the warmer season (favoured as a better time for warfare) was over, could certain be seen as a time they may have celebrated those lost in the defence of their people.

This then could be taken as a time of quiet starting and hence death and respect for the dead coming before the new beginning. As the Celts appear to have believed in re-incarnation this would fit and, so placing of All Soul's Day at this time of year may have had more reasoning than the history for it suggests.

Today we celebrate Samhain as a time of death and rebirth. The end of the old year and the dark, tentative and dangerous beginnings of the new. Those that have recently passed on and our ancestral heritage is acknowledged. We are encouraged to reflect on death and the unknown. This can be very hard for us in our modern lifestyles, as our life is seemingly so much safer and death tidied out the way as quickly as possible. So to help this process we dress up as the scary things that once we believed would harm us, especially in the long winter nights... and we tell tales of such beings. Seen this way there is nothing diabolical about this festival, in fact it has become a very good way of focusing on these issues in a 'light of heart' way, allowing us some space and time to come to terms with our fears and death and consider how our fore-bearers coped with these unavoidable issues, how it shaped their lives and it's legacy for ours.

In our daily lives this period from Samhain to Yule is a time of introspection, for preparatory work and study.