Happy Halloween!

 

Autumn. It’s my favorite time of year, not the least because of Samhain or what is more widely known as Halloween.  For Ancient Celts, Samhain (pronounced Sow-in) was the end of one year and the beginning of a new one.  They believed that on this night the veil between the living and those who have passed on thins.  I like to think so.

The other night my eight-year-old grandson asked, “Grammy, do you believe in ghosts?”  I truthfully told him that I had no evidence either way, but that there is much in the world that has not been explained and that I like to think that those whom I love and have died have not gone far and that on Halloween are closer still.

Contrary to what the American religious Right would have you think, Samhain has never been an occasion for worshipping the devil.  Neither the Ancient Celts nor modern Wiccans even believe in the existence of the devil although both acknowledge there to be evil in the world.  That evil was not and is not worshipped except by those who have perverted the traditions of the Ancient Ones.

In the 1990s my mother had a pastor who looked and sounded like Reverend Kane in the movie Poltergeist, who admonished their bible study group that Halloween ought not to be celebrated because it was demonic.  I was surprised that my mother had swallowed that because as a child carving pumpkins and trick or treating in our ‘50s tract housing development was a big deal that I participated in and my own children had trick or treated in the 1970s and ‘80s with no ill effects.  People like “Reverend Kane” prey upon others who are already afraid of life in this world.

I like Halloween because it and its Christian off-shoots of All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead are a chance to honor and remember our loved ones who have left this world.  Celtic tradition included a Dumb Supper where a place was set at the table for the missing family member.  Last week the Tacoma Art Museum held their annual Day of the Dead exhibit where artists and groups were invited to create altars honoring people.  These can include pictures, flowers, and objects that tell the story of the life of the person.  My daughter-in-law Ana and I liked the idea so well that we adopted it in our home, albeit on a smaller scale.

Halloween is fun, too.  It is a chance for children of all ages to dress up in some way completely foreign to their usual attire and celebrate the harvest.  The notion that somehow the devil is going to get children who celebrate Halloween is ludicrous and we are sad that a combination of that idea and our neighborhood becoming largely retired folks means that we don’t get any munchkins knocking on the door.  Americans are spending more and more money on Halloween each year so hopefully some inroads are being made on the Puritan notion that if something is fun it must be bad.

So on Wednesday night instead of turning off your porch light and being afraid of malevolent demons in the night, take time to think about those who have passed from this life and welcome them back for a set next to the warmth of a fall fire.  And maybe have a bit of your favorite candy.

 

Honoring the Harvest

They claim that politically the country is pretty well split down the middle between Democrats and Republicans.  There are other denominational differences.  There are Summer people and there are the rest of us.  I suspect that the Summer people outnumber the rest of us.  Any of them who live in the Pacific NW are welcome to move somewhere that never knows the changing of the seasons.  We mossbacks will get along without you just fine.

I am an Autumn person.  Much as I love the summer flowers, watching the changing of the leaves makes me happy.  I love the cool crisp mornings and evenings, flannel sheets, and soup in the crockpot when I get home from work.  I even love the rain and am hungry for it during this interminable dry spell we are having. As much as anything I love the holidays. 

Halloween or Samhain is the Celtic New Year and when it is believed that the veil between the living and the dead thins.  This notion was incorporated into the Christian Church when Europe’s pagans were converted.  As with most Christian holidays, pagans kept their holidays and simply called them something else such as All Saints Day and All Souls day.  With the growth of the North American Hispanic population we’ve seen more attention paid to the Day of the Dead.  As Americans, we tend to bury our dead and that’s the end of it.  My daughter-in-law Ana and I have embraced Day of the Dead, creating altars that include our beloveds who have passed over.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it can’t be commercialized and it’s for everyone.  It is not a religious holiday and doesn’t involve anything save family and food.  What’s not to like?  I am sure that Native Americans do not celebrate or view it in the same way since the holiday was meant to celebrate the survival of a white settlement in a land and bounty they willing shared only to be annihilated one way or another.  Thanksgiving is not about the Pilgrims for me.  It is about the ritual of eating with family and friends, honoring the harvest and bounty of Mother Earth and getting ready for Winter when all of Nature turns inward to rest and prepare for Spring.

Pumpkin Caving

Monday was pumpkin carving night for our family. First we needed pumpkins so GrandDave took Grandson Gabriel and his Aunt Amy to Patterson’s Fruit & Vegetable stand to pick out pumpkins. It would have been cheaper for GrandDave to go to Fred Meyer, but that doesn’t have the cache of something closer to the farmer and Amy loves Patterson’s. She keeps track of the turning of the seasons by the state of this Gig Harbor institution. She knows they will close after Halloween until the day after Thanksgiving when they will open with Christmas trees and a Santa waving from the corner on weekends.

Had either Gabriel’s mother or Amy’s mother been the one taking them to get pumpkins there wouldn’t have been the tonnage that GrandDave took away from the stand, but we were grateful that he was off from work and could be in charge. Amy & Gabriel thought that everyone in the family needed their own personal pumpkin and that bigger was better. After they’d picked out huge ones and GrandDave had loaded them into the trunk of the car they celebrated with sandwiches at Subway and movies from Hollywood Video.

The actual pumpkin carving occurred at Josh & Jamie’s house in Tacoma following Gabriel’s and cousin Linda’s gymnastics classes. There plastic garbage bags were cut open and spread and the carving begun. We only got three carved, one for each grandchild, before we sat down to a wonderful supper of curried chicken and rice and salad. GrandDave escaped actual carving that night by keeping baby Lydia out of the pumpkin goo since everything she comes in contact with goes into her mouth, but he’s been working on getting the rest of the gourds carved. The clock says he’d better hurry!

Last night the elementary school near our home did “trunk or treat.” When my youngest was in elementary school they had a Halloween carnival put on by the students and parents. The Born Again Hypocrites have since pressured the school into ending this tradition so since we are a somewhat rural area where trick or treating can be a dark and dicey proposition some of the parents willing to brave the invocation of Satan came up with the “trunk or treat” that just doesn’t do it for us. Parading around a parking lot isn’t the same as going house to house. It may be less mess than the carnival, but isn’t as much fun. We are opting instead to go to Tacoma to the Proctor District where there are neighborhoods with real sidewalks and where they close a business district street just so the little ones can have a safe, yet fun Halloween experience.

Remembering the Roots of Halloween

Among the many egregious things the Christian Right has attempted to do is to eliminate the celebration of Halloween from public schools and public life. Chances are that every one of these so-called good Christian folks trick or treated themselves as children. This anti-Halloween movement seems to have begun to get noticed in the late 1990s when the rumors that Halloween was a Satanic holiday began to circulate.

It is true that like most of our holidays, Christian and secular, that Halloween has its roots firmly planted in the pagan past, but the association with Satan or the devil or his minions is entirely a fabricated by the Church to keep the people frightened. Our European pagan ancestors and those who practice paganism today do not even believe in the existence of the devil, much less worship him. That is not to say that there are not some disturbed people who do worship the concept of evil, but they have nothing to do with paganism or Halloween.

The celebration of Halloween in the United States is all about costumes, trick or treating, and sometimes mischief. My father told of boys tipping over outhouses and pranks of the like. What most Americans don’t realize is that Halloween or Samhain marks a sacred Celtic Day marking the end of summer and ushering in the dark half of the year. The eve refers to the day before All Souls day when the souls of those who had crossed over were honored and which the Christian Church co-opted as All Saints Day.

This ending of a season and the chance for introspection is a perfect time for transformation. The Autumn season is ideal for turning inward and examining what we would like the coming Spring and rebirth to be.

Let the Holidays Begin

We are a passionate family. Some of our passions are peace and liberality. In December of 2003 my husband put up a huge peace symbol on the side of our house. When New Year’s had come and gone Dave began taking down our outside lights, but I suggested that we leave the peace symbol up until the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were over. In the intervening years our house has become known as “the peace house” to children. An elderly man at the hardware store told the husband of a coworker of mine that we are witches and that the peace symbol is a witch symbol. We are also a point of reference when people give driving directions.
Along in the Spring the lights, which are on a timer, begin to give out and when the sign begins to look ridiculous my husband turns it off until he can get more Christmas lights. When it happened this year we could not find any Christmas lights except at Michael’s Arts and Crafts. What they had was intended for weddings and cost more than we were willing to pay so the sign stayed dark all summer. People stopped by when they saw us in the yard or complained when they met us at work or in the store. Last week Dave had a day off and we decided that Target might have Christmas lights. We were rewarded and bought two heavy duty strings. Yesterday the lights went up and on.
We are also passionate about Halloween. Is I posted before, Autumn is my favorite season and Halloween and Thanksgiving are my favorite holidays even though we get few or now trick or treaters for Halloween. One year we got only our youngest son and his best friend. They are now past 25 and haven’t rung the door bell in a long time. We decorate to please us and now have a grandson who thinks that every day ought to be Halloween. We used to wait until October first to get out the boxes of Halloween decorations. Now GrandDave’s birthday on the 22nd of September signals the beginning of our All Hallow’s Eve celebration. Grandson Gabriel could hardly wait and had been making his own decorations for weeks and parading around in his Dracula costume.
There was snow up at Crystal Mt. today, just a dusting, and the low tonight is to be 45. I can live without the snow, but I do enjoy the nip in the air and seeing the beginnings of Fall.