A Traditional Halloween: If it’s Samhain you’re looking for, ditch October 31st! Pagans and Christians don’t agree on a lot. Pagans complain that Christianity is all show and no substance. One point of contention often leveled at Christians is that their holidays are frequently, if not always chosen in order to Christianize existing pagan celebrations.
Let’s face it, that’s absolutely true. But when it comes to Christian holidays, the precise date doesn’t matter. We don’t know when the historical Jesus was born, and even if we did, it doesn’t matter. Christianity doesn’t get it’s power from nature, but rather from a complicated relationship between an omnipotent deity and his son, who acts as a go between to keep the almighty from once more saying “screw it” and obliterating the human race, if not all of creation as well. When does all this take place? Nobody knows, the Bible doesn’t tell, and it really doesn’t matter. Keeps you on your toes.
Pagan religions on the other hand are an entirely different matter. For example, do you really think that the ancient Brits spent a thousand years or so building and perfecting Stonehenge so that they could isolate the exact moment of the summer solstice, only then to decide “hey! let’s hold the celebration on Monday instead so we can have a three day holiday?”
Of course not. These holidays, as are all pagan holidays, celebrated according to nature’s schedule. Because of this, many pagan cultures throughout time and from around the world quite often developed similar celebrations, held on the same days.
Which brings us to All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween. Or even Hallow’een to be precise in our brevity. It’s generally agreed that Halloween stems from the ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain, which is one of the quarter holidays, meaning it’s celebrated halfway between two other holidays, in this case the fall equinox and the winter solstice.
Is it really necessary that pagans celebrate Samhain on the correct date? To determine that, we need to understand what Halloween, or Samhain all about. According to Wikipedia, which waxes somewhat poetic on this, “Samhain (like Beltane) was seen as a time when the ‘door’ to the Otherworld opened enough for the souls of the dead, and other beings such as fairies, to come into our world.”
I don’t consider myself to be an authority on all things pagan, wiccan or any of the ancient mystery cults. But I can’t help but think if you’re looking for a portal to the Otherworld to open, allowing dead souls and fairies to pour through, then timing could be everything.
To believe that such an opening between the worlds even exists, is to believe in magic. The problem I’ve always had with Wicca for example, is that it lacks any ancient pedigree. You’re in essence celebrating a belief system that was developed from dubious sources in the 1950s.
I was browsing the occult and new age section at Barnes and Noble the other day, and found myself thumbing through a paperback version of a Book of Shadows, full of a wide variety of spells. I mean, can you really put a lot of faith in a spell you got out of a paperback? Isn’t that like pulp witchcraft or something? Can you imagine being bewitched from a witch brandishing a book she picked up for $9.99 with free shipping from Amazon?
Like Christians dully mumbling their call and response prayers on Sunday, with about half as much enthusiasm as they put into the Pledge of Allegiance, paganism seems to be lacking in energy, in soul, in short – in magic. And how can it be otherwise, when people reschedule their Samhain rituals for the preceding Saturday night because it’s more convenient for the coven. “I know Auntie Flo wants to come through from the other side, but darn it, Wednesday night the kid has violin lessons and I’ve got to be up and out by 5 a.m. for my spin class. Maybe she can come through on Saturday instead, if I write her a note?”
So yes, the date is important. Which is what totally boggles the mind when it comes to Halloween. It was so obvious, that I feel incredibly stupid that it took me till this week to notice it. Halloween can’t fall on the same day each year, because the equinox and solstice fall on different days each year.
By the time of the first written references to Samhain come into being in the early middle ages, it was already being celebrated on October 31 or November 1. But by this point, the holiday had in some ways at least, been Christianized. At any rate, the date stuck and the Christian All Souls Day Eve and Samhain became contracted into Halloween, with both sides laying claim to most of the traditions associated with the modern holiday. It took a break in the era of the Puritans, who saw the references to Purgatory inherent in the celebration as Popish poppycock. But Halloween came roaring back in the twentieth century, albeit in a tamer, more child-friendly format. Today it’s pretty safe to say, that Halloween as it’s now practiced, is superstition and magic free. And in that, the blame lays equally with the Wiccans and pagans, as it does with the Christians.
There are those who argue that Samhain is actually a practice far older than we know from its earliest accounts, and relate to the days when Ireland was more dependent on the pasturing of animals. It’s been written that the actual time could even be based on the first frost, rather than some celestial event. Which of course widens even more the range of dates in which it could fall. But the fact remains, there has to be a specific time in which that door between the worlds open, and it could very well be that it takes more than a calendar to recognize it.
Others say that Samhain came from “summers end,” but that seems far-fetched as summer in Ireland and the Gaelic countries ends much sooner than October 31. Others say it was a harvest festival, but there are already plenty of those, even closer to the actual time of the harvest. And finally, you have those that say Samhain actually just means a gathering, and if that’s the case, Halloween night is as good as any.
But that means the magic, if any, stems from the gathering of the people, not necessarily with any connection to nature. And that to me, seems to somehow miss the point. What kind of nature worshippers are we if we exclude nature from the party? In that sense, without intervention from this side, the door never opens to the other side, and then there certainly is no reason for Christians to attack Halloween as  a holiday for worshiping devils, pagan gods or even starting down that slippery slope which leads to witchcraft, and eventually orgiastic sex and heroin. Halloween is a mood, a frame of mind, and the modern celebration certainly doesn’t require any more than that – whether your taste is for the macabre or the kitsch. But if it’s Samhain you’re after, then authenticity counts.
The difference between Halloween and Samhain is in the stars and on the calendar. I know I covered this once before, but sometimes you need more details. A commenter asked if Halloween/Samhain isn’t October 31, as I had written, just when the hell is it?
Good question. Let’s try and sort this out.
Simply put, the difference between Halloween and Samhain is the way the date is chosen. Halloween is based on a fixed date on the calendar. Samhain, if you’re thinking of it in the traditional sense, is based on nature’s cycle, and when we try to reconcile the two ways of measuring time, it gets a bit messy.
Many of the traditions of Samhain, and Halloween too are date specific. They have to take place at the exact same time each year. You can’t measure that on a calendar.
Halloween is of course, October 31. It’s a holiday, not to be confused with a holy day. Holy days are days meant for reflection and celebrating in a pious way, holy events or people. A holiday is a day for businesses to make money and the rest of us to act all giddy.
Halloween got its start because of the proximity to a holy day, or holy days which began on November 1. Hence the name Halloween, short for All Hallows evening. November 1 is the feast of All Hallows or All Martyrs, the beginning of Allhallowtide, a time set aside for remembering the dead in Western Christianity. November 2 is All Souls Day, a day for remembering all the dead. In early Christianity it was commonplace for a vigil to be held the evening before a holy day, and so Halloween, a holy evening was born.
The original date for All Hallows was May 13. It was set with the dedication of the Parthenon in Rome, to supplant a Roman celebration of the dead. Around a hundred years later it was moved to November 1, the same date associated with Samhain.
By then, Samhain celebrations reflected in one way or another the traditions we associate with Halloween. It was the American influence which later tied up practices and beliefs of various cultures into a Hallmark package.
When the church grafted the holy day on top of these celebrations, it tied it together in a theological way to make Christian sense of pagan beliefs. Rather than force them to give up beliefs and practices, they instead give their beliefs a Christian origin story. They bet, rightly, that over time the masses would come to remember the Christian origin over the pagan. Hence the fact we have pagans holding celebrations during the vigil for a Christian martyr.
What the Church did was affix a seasonal holiday based on observation of nature, a fixed date on the calendar.
A common thread in early Samhain and Halloween beliefs is that on October 31, the veil between this world and next is at it’s thinnest. It was a relatively common belief that all the souls of those who had died during the year had to wait until this night to slip into the next world.
But as the veil was lifted, the long dead could slip back into this world as well, visiting people and places they knew in life.
Keep in mind that for the most part, these were illiterate, rural folk. Calendars weren’t on the wall to let people know it was October 31st. So how did they know the exact day? For the exact day would obviously be important, as the dead likely wouldn’t have an option for slipping into the next world on a Saturday because it was more convenient than on the year’s when the 31st fell on a Wednesday.
For dates, the ancients looked to the stars and the seasons. A cross quarter date is the day which falls halfway between an equinox and a solstice, and Halloween is roughly one of those. Computing these days would be relatively easy based on observations of the sun and stars, and it’s perfectly logical to believe that this cross quarter date, October 31, would be the Samhain that the ancients celebrated.
So it’s also logical to assume that this would be the evening when the veil between this world and the next would be lifted.
Except the year doesn’t last exactly 365 days, and so over time the calendar began to drift away from the actual seasons. So the calendar was adjusted, and leap year thrown in to keep things on an even keel. The result being that the day that the ancients celebrated as Samhain, the cross quarter holiday, now falls on or about November 7.
So if you’re wondering why you never get that visit from the dead on Halloween, it’s because you’re a week early.
At least. For things are never that simple when dealing with oral history.
The Pleiades is a constellation which is visible from the North Pole to the tip of Africa. Also known as the Seven Sisters for the seven stars most prominently visible, it’s nearly always there if you look for it. It was the first constellation I learned actually, as I had an ex with a patch of freckles on her inner thigh which reminded me of it.
The ancients, from Greece to South America venerated and sometimes feared the Pleiades. Some said that it was at this time that the ancient cataclysms occurred, as well as future ones, so it could be a time of fear and dread. Many cultures, including European cultures connected the constellation with the dead, and when they were overhead, the veil between the worlds was growing thinner.
On the night when they were directly overhead at midnight the veil was at its thinnest, and the dead could leave their graves and once more walk the earth. Sound familiar?
The Pleiades were directly overhead coincidently enough, about the same time as the cross quarter celebrations which we now equate with Halloween. In fact, for a couple hundred years before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, which we use now, October 31 found them at their highest point. Today it’s on or about the night of November 20/21.
So what’s the bottom line here? Just when is Halloween/Samhain? That depends on what you’re looking for.
If you’re looking for tricks or treats, celebrations, parties and lots of horror films on cable tv, then October 31 is perfect. If you want to move your party to the Saturday before that’s cool too. Oddly enough, people almost never have Halloween celebrations after October 31, though it would be closer to the true day.
If you’re looking for the time when the fabric holding the dead from the earth ripples open, then you have two choices. If your beliefs revolve around a seasonal viewpoint of creation, then November 7 is the day to break out the crystal ball.
If you take your cues from the stars, then no other time but the evening of November 20 will do.
Or you can do as the ancient pagans did, which likely was observed both the cross quarter and apex of the Seven Sisters on their celestial ride.
For my money, I buy into the Pleiades theory. The early Church specifically chose that date for All Hallows, which would divide the holiday of Samhain squarely in two as it would have peaked at midnight. In the Church’s way of thinking, they would be closing the door to the otherworld at midnight, as with the stroke of the clock it became a holy day. Right when the party was getting started.
Also, it’s a matter of what was simpler. We’re talking about rural celebrations here, often held by a semi nomadic people. Not everyone had their own Stonehenge to check for the precise date of the cross quarter. But they could look up to the stars and thanks to the Pleiades, come pretty darned close.
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