Samhain Activities

General Activities

• Bob for Apples Drink apple cider warmed and spiced with cinnamon to honor the dead. Bury an apple or pomegranate in the garden as food for spirits passing by on their way to be reborn. Carve a Jack-o-Lantern. Pick a spirit candle.  
  This is a white candle anointed with patchouli oil.  Say:
      "With this candle and by its light,
      welcome you spirits this Samhain night."
  Place it inside the jack-o'-lantern.

• Set out a Mute Supper.

• Have a New Years party to celebrate the turning of the wheel!

• Make a mask of your shadow self.

• Make a besom, or witches broom.

• Make a witches cord as an expression of what you hope to manifest in the year ahead.  Enjoy the trick or treating of the season.

• Wear costumes that reflect what we hope or wish for in the upcoming year.

• Make resolutions, write them on a small piece of parchment, and burn in a candle flame, preferably a black votive candle within a cauldron on the altar. This is like New Year's resolutions; as for many Samhain is the New Year.

• Divination - Samhain is the beginning of the pagan year; divinations were done to see the future of the coming year. It is said that this is the time of the Crone and it is incumbent upon us to see whatever wisdom she is willing to part with on our behalf. Many types of divination are practiced for Samhain. Dark Mirrors - Fire or Water Scrying - Tarot cards - and of course the Crystal Ball.  

• Make masks and costumes representing the different aspects of the Goddess and God, and wear them to your rituals, or use them to decorate your altar area.

• Toll "Lost in the Dark" bells.

Solitary Activities

• Try hanging out with friends and dress up to go see the Rocky Horror Picture show (I've never done this, but some of my friends do!!)

• Private Meditation

• Hold a Private Ritual and focus on the traditional themes for Samhain, such as Life, Death and Rebirth.

• Try learning a new form of divination to practice and then try to see what the coming year has in store for you.

• Clip articles from the newspaper that have things to do with paganism and put them in a scrapbook.

• Eat some candy!!

Information Taken from College Wicca © Rhaevyn Sunrise

Group Activities

• Host a Halloween party for your friends and neighbors

• Volunteer at a Publicly sponsored Haunted House

• Write an essay or editorial to the newspaper to educate people on the real associations and practices of Halloween and witches (pagans, wiccans, etc)

• Hold a Group Ritual with people of similar practices

Activities for Kids!!

There are not enough websites out there that offer information on activities to do for kids. Well, there are, but I personally don't like too many of them. As a pagan mother of 3 very busy boys of different ages, I decided to add my 2 cents to the web on what to do with your kids on Samhain.

• Carve Pumpkins with all sorts of neat designs. You can do an internet search

• Go Trick or Treating!

• I'm a huge fan of The Earth Child's Handbook Vol. 2 by Brigid Ashwood.  Actually both volumes are awesome, but I loved the activities and color pages in the second volume, which deals exclusively with the Sabbats.  You can find them on Amazon, though a bit pricey, they are worth it in my opinion.  Though if you order the digital print version, she'll send you pdf document of the books so you can print the pages out.  I have the hardcopies and the digital versions of both.  Trust me, these are MUST HAVES!!

• Read stories with a Halloween theme. The Meagan Stories are wonderful for this.

• Talk about the history of Samhain with your child(ren). Don't just start offering them a lot of information that they may or may not need to know. If they ask questions, give them simple, but honest answers.

• For more ideas and information on pagan parenting try visiting www.paganparenting.com.