The Queen’s Chronicles: SPOOKY GREETINGS

I extend all manner of spooky greetings for these three days of the dead:

October 31 Halloween
November 1 All Saints Day
November 2 All Soul's Day or Dia de los Muertos.

Halloween descends from Samhain, the most significant holiday of the Celtic calendar. Being a pastoral people, the Celts counted their seasons according to the needs of their cattle and sheep, rather than the agricultural seasons that farmers might mark. The year was divided
into summer, when the herds are led our to graze, and winter, when they were brought back home again. Samhain, the day when the cows came home, was considered the first day of winter and also the first day of the new year.

Samhain exposes a crease in time. A fissure between summer and winter. Between the old year and the new. During this period, the dead have easy access to the living, and are likely to pay a visit. Just as the herds returned home to the warmth and security of the hearth in winter, so too, must the ghosts of the dead want to be cheered by familiar surroundings and loved ones. Certainly one owes the same hospitality to the ancestors as one gives to the animals!

For hundreds of years Christian missionaries tried without success to suppress Samhain and convert the Celts. In the eleventh century, Odilo, abbot at Cluny, claimed this heathen death feast for the Church. Hallow Tide, Holy Time, is a three-day feast -- All Hallowed Eve, All Hallowed, and All Saint's Day -- during which prayers are offered for Christian saints and souls, and only for Christian saints and souls. All others, those doomed souls whose burials were not consecrated in Christ, return to Earth on the eve of All Hallow’s to haunt the living. Menacing demons and flying witches along with their trusty black cat sidekicks, the persistent practitioners of the pagan religion, were also thought to be out and about and up to no good.

The potato famine of 1846 sent a million Irish immigrants to the United States. They brought with them their ancient Celtic customs, among them the feast of Samhain, which, as good Catholics, they now called Hallowe'en. This shadow festival of soul survival struck a responsive chord in the American people who instantly adopted it. To this day, Halloween is celebrated in some fashion by practically every person in North America. Sales of decorations and goodies rival the lucrative Christmas season.

We modern Americans rarely -- if ever -- think about death if we can possibly help it. We like to watch it on a big screen well enough, or perpetrate it on innocent populations overseas, but in real life, we just don't do death. Which is why I think Halloween has become so popular. It offers us a way to engage with our natural fascination with death in a way which is scary yet superficial. At Halloween we get to acknowledge our fear of death while still having a good time.

All best blessings,

xxQMD


To read about Halloween in more depth, check out my book, Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles & Celebrations at: www.DonnnaHenes.net