Raven Flight
What do you know about the history behind our holidays? You may know that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ, and that Easter is the celebration of the Resurrection. You may know that Halloween was originally a Pagan holiday, but did you know that the former two, as well as Groundhog’s Day and May Day, also have Pagan origins? They became what they are now after Christianity became the dominant religion
. We have just celebrated Halloween, which was originally called Samhain. It was the end of the third and final harvest in Pagan times and it was the Celtic New Year. To them it was the end of Summer and the beginning of Winter. It was also believed that on this day the veil between the world and the spirit world was thinnest, and that people who had passed on could come back and communicate with the living. This was not to be feared, as it is now, but something to be celebrated, because people could communicate with loved ones who were no longer with them.
Occasionally mischievous spirits could pass through, though. To protect themselves, people would carve faces into gourds and pumpkins to frighten these spirits away, hence the tradition of Jack O’Lanterns. Another tradition was for families to leave out plates of food for the passing spirits so that they would not play tricks on them. This is where modern day Trick or Treating comes from. Lighting Bonfires, or Balefires, as they were called then, was another tradition. This was to ward off the mischievous spirits and to help guide the light of the new year.
The Christians originally tried calling this day Michaelmas, in the name of the Archangel Michael, to repress the old Pagan beliefs. This did not work and the Christians changed it to the Eve of All Saints, because it precedes the Christian All Saints Day. This is why it is now called Halloween, or Hallowed Evening, because it precedes this major Christian holiday.
Halloween, or Samhain, was probably the most important Pagan holiday of the year, and other that Christmas and its variants, it is one of the most widely celebrated holidays today. Stay tuned to find out about Christmas in our next issue. Happy Samhain and Blessed Be.
