Samhain

Today is the ancient pagan festival of Samhain. This quarter day marks the end of Autumn and the beginning of Winter. A point at which the harvest would be completed and animals would be brought down from their Summer pasture on the hills. Samhain thus celebrates the gathering together of foodstuffs to enable survival through the darkest and coldest part of the year. It is a time of both looking back and looking forward.

Traditionally this festival was marked by special fires and feasting. A ritual bonfire would be made by a community and lit. The smoke and fire was thought to have both both purificatory and divinatory powers. Burning embers would be taken into each home to kindle the flame that would remain lit throughout Winter.

Spirits (deities and the departed) were believed to take close part in the festival and places would be laid for them at the feast table. People would also dress-up as spirits in order to invoke their powerful help for survival through the winter and for good fortune in the coming year. This signficance has led some to suggest that Samhain marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next.

Like all the main pagan festivals, Samhain was diverted by the early church into a Christian festival. All Hallows (or All Saints) Day has been celebrated on 1 November since the 9th Century and is followed by All Souls Day (2 November). These twin festivals celebrate the departed: those who have achieved sainthood and those who have yet to reach heaven.

All Hallows Eve (31 October) is now known as Halloween. Originally exported to North America by settlers from Ireland and Scotland, it has since become re-imported as a secular festival with striking pagan elements. There is the dressing up in costumes that mimic the dead, the divination of fortune (trick or treat), the use of fires and flames and the celebration of the presence of the dead amongst the living.

Tonight is also Guy Fawkes (or Bonfire) Night, a British festival with clear pagan associations which celebrates of the execution of a Catholic conspirator who sought to assassinate a Protestant monarch. Established in 1605, this sectarian festival had at its centre a community bonfire at which an effigy of the Pope was burnt. Over time the effigy became transposed into that of Guy Fawkes and later the event became secularised as Bonfire Night. Surprisingly, this festival does not appear to have taken root in NI.