Posted on 10/27/2006 4:25:11 AM PDT by sully777
THE TIMING OF HALLOWEEN -- Blame it on the Celts [and Irish]! Back when the Celts dominated most of Europe, hundreds of years before Caesar and his Roman Legions expanded their rule, they were celebrating their new year on the evening of October 31. This was known as the great festival of Samhain. Why on this date and time? Let’s just say that they were a dark bunch, and have been referred to as children of darkness.
The word “samhain” basically means the end or sunset of summer. The timing of the end of summer for the Celts harkened back to their early herdsman days. It was around November 1 (the month they called Samonios which began during the October/November lunation) when they recognized it was time to bring in the herds in Europe, thus marking the end of summer.
The timing had to do with the Celts belief that days were marked from sundown to sundown. Since they started days with darkness, it made sense that they would start their new year in the dark half of the year.
So what does all this have to do with Halloween? According to Michael Judge, in his book The Dance of Time:
“To the Celtic mind, the dark of night was felt to be nearer the other world, the land of ghosts and fairies, witches and magical beings, than the light of day…Night belonged to them, and to intrude on their realm was risky business.”
During the Samhain celebration, bones of slaughtered cattle and other animals were thrown into a blazing bonfire, and then the celebrants would extinguish their own fires. Each family then solemnly lit its hearth from the common flame, thus bonding the families of the village together. According to Irish mythology, during that night the great shield of Scathach was lowered, allowing the barriers between the worlds to fade and the forces of chaos to invade the realms of order, the material world conjoining with the world of the dead. At this time the spirits of the dead and those yet to be born walked among the living. The dead could return to the places where they had lived and food and entertainment were provided in their honor. Pretty spooky stuff.
Now for those of you who insist that Halloween comes from “All Hallow’s Eve” which is the day before the Catholic All Saints holy day, which used to be called “All Hallows,” derived from All Hallowed Souls, you are partially correct.
Samhain is really the festival that is responsible for the timing of Halloween. According to Judge, the church under Popes like Pope Gregory the Great in the 5th century AD assimilates pagan festivals into the church calendar, “allowing the folk traditions associated with the old holidays to continue, virtually unchanged, under the mantle of the new faith.” In the case of Samhain, Pope Gregory actually “moved the feast of All Hallows’, All Saints’ Day, from May 13 to November 1. Grafted onto one of the church’s greatest holy days, Samhain became known as All Hallow’s Eve, contracted over years of casual usage to Allhallows’E’en, and, ultimately, Halloween.”
Blame it on the Celts [and Irish].
(Source)
Only modestly inoffensive???
Re: 164. Thought you'd get a kick out of this.
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