Samhain

[DavidMcCann]

Re: Samhain

When Samhain should be celebrated depends on what tradition one is and the rationale for when they date the holiday.

As some-one said in London a couple of years ago, the most sacred day is The One When Everyone Can Make It.

[thalassa]

Re: Samhain

As some-one said in London a couple of years ago, the most sacred day is The One When Everyone Can Make It.

lol, how true.


I say something similar at work about hearing protection--the most effective ear plugs are the ones you will wear.

[Medusa]

Re: Samhain

This is probably why people stick to Halloween. You guys debating this takes all the fun out of Samhain. It's like debating Christ's birthday. Just open your present, stick the fruitcake in your mouth and sing your Charlie Brown Christmas song.

[sionnach]

Re: Samhain

Hallowe'en is completely different. Samhain was on the 28th. All Hallow's Eve is a non-pagan Christian fasting day (which always happens before a feast day/period) before the feast day All Saint's Day, November 1st which was made so in the 4th century when a bishop consecrated a chapel in northern Italy in, I believe, the 4th century. There is nothing, not a jot, pagan about Hallowe'en.


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I'd be interested to know the basis for October 31st every year for Samhain regarding a culture which did not use our calendar but a lunar calendar and no written evidence. "October 31st" is rather meaningless in such a calendar. Can anyone explain?

In the pagan past the Celts and possibly those before the Celts did not have our current calendar so whether samhain was celebrated on the 31st on out calendar more a representative date than an absolute date. Despite that there may be archeological evidence that Oct. 31 is reasonably close to the celebration date and since few of us track sun and moon patterns with accuracy connecting it with one date is not so unreasonable for us today. In the Boyne Valley the mounds of Tlachtga and Tara have evidence of celebrations with large bonfires that apparently used to celebrate the end of the summer half of the year and the beginning of a new year and the winter half of the year. On the Hill of Tara there is a passage into the area called the Mound of the Hostages which is aligned with the rising sun around the time of Samhain which is around the time of Halloween. For our convenience we use a calendar instead

As for whether Halloween was pagan or not I would favor pagan origins. We know the Roman Churched used pagan celebration dates, sites, and even a goddess for conversion by renaming them and giving them a new meaning cloaking the original meaning. There is nothing in the Jewish celebration that correlates with Halloween (or at least I do not know of one). The Roman church that formed long after the death of Jesus blended many pagan celebrations and concepts in its formation. It was not an accident that Dec 25 was the date for the birth of Jesus and All Saints day was created to replace the celebration of samhain as they transitioned a pagan culture into a Christian culture.

[Louisvillian]

Re: Samhain

Hi there!
So tonight it's Samhain if I'm correct.
My question is, who of you celebrates Samhain and how do you do that?

I celebrated it as a solemn day of remembering the souls of the departed. A time when the veil is thin between our world and the Otherworld or Underworld. I made offerings to psychopomps, chthonic, and ancestral gods to pray for the safe comportment of my grandmother's soul to the halls of Hades, and a hope for a gentle afterlife for her.

The day before--Halloween--is rather different. I celebrated it with merriment and entertainment, indulgences of a sort. That's the purpose of the day, after all--confronting the power of death with humour, ridicule, and fun. Games and decoration and candy, guising and roleplaying. Yeah, a bit of the commercialised Halloween in there, but a lot of idiosyncratic stuff too.