In late autumn, around the time we set our clocks back today, the ancient Celts believed the spirits of the dead rose from their burial places and crossed back into the world of the living. Held near the end of what is now the month of October, the Celts recognized this liminal time with the festival of Samhain, which, in English, translates to roughly to “summer’s end.”
On Samhain, Bonfires were lit to combat the encroaching darkness and to ward off the malevolent spirits mingling with those of their ancestors. To confuse the evil spirts further, people wore fearsome costumes and masks. The last of the crops were gathered in. Animals that had grown healthy and fat over the summer were slaughtered. The wildflowers in the fields had died back; the trees had given up their fruit and leaves and had gone bare.
Samhain served to recognize and accept death, but it was also a time of rebirth. The festival marked the beginning of the Celts’ new year, and was an occasion both to thank the gods for the past year’s harvest and to implore them for prosperity in the next.
When the Celtic nations began to become Christianized late in the sixth century, the Church co-opted Samhain to create All Souls Day, November 2, so that people could to continue to commune with their dead. All Saints Day, or All Hallows, was created on November 1, replacing Samhain’s sacred fires and menacing disguises with the ferocity of holy spirts.
It is from these that we get the modern holidays of Halloween or All Hallows Eve on October 31 and the Mexican Day of the Dead on November 1, both of which have increasingly become more opportunities for corporations to generate profits than anything resembling high holidays.
But if you turn a blind eye to the inflatable skeletons strewn across your neighbors’ lawns and the stacks of plastic cauldrons at the craft store, it’s still possible to sense the veil between our world and the next wearing thin.
I feel it in the gentle rustling of the wind-swirled spirals of dead leaves that break the silence on my walks. It’s in every acorn prudently buried by the squirrels outside my office window—in the ice crystals beginning to form along the running brook in the forest. It’s in the darkness of the early mornings, the darkness of late afternoons, and in my dreams, strange and restless and only vaguely remembered.
As I write this on the Day of All Souls, I sit beside my mother; my dear friends, Jason and Annette and Mario, and my stepsister, Molly—all taken much too soon. I’m with my cat, Puff, who was one of the greatest loves of my life. My other cats are here, too: Peach, my tiny black girl; Suri, who was raised with dogs; shy Julia who hated the cold, and Pumpkin Pie, who loved watching TV. I hear my great-grandmother Aurore’s faint Quebec accent as she talks with my grandmothers, Betty and Terese, and my grandfather, Lormier, who was my favorite. There’s a fire burning in the hearth, warm and safe, holding back the chill and the dark, with love.
ENP
Lovely! Brought tears to my eyes.