Witch's New Year, plus a few
Samhain (pronounced sow-in) (October 31st -Nov 1st) also known as: Halloween, ShadowFest, Martinmas, Old Hallowmas
Samhain is "The Last Harvest", preceded by Lammas and Mabon. The Earth nods a sad farewell to the God. We know that He will once again be reborn of the Goddess and the cycle will continue. This is the time of reflection, the time to honor the Ancients who have gone on before us and the time of 'Seeing" (divination). As we contemplate the Wheel of the Year, we come to recognize our own part in the eternal cycle of Life.
And, with it being our New Year, let me enlighten those who may be unaware as to what the REST of our holidays are, along with the history and origins of four of the most common Christian American holidays.
Wiccans call the eight festivals Sabbats, all of which fall on the solstices, equinoxes, and four other intermediate dates. The solstices and equinoxes are widely known as Quarter days; the four dates falling between them are the Cross-quarter days or "fire festivals". Esbats are also celebrated, but these fall on new & full moons.
Red and green decorations, colored lights, gifts and evergreen trees: on December 25th Americans gather around their Christmas trees and exchange beautifully wrapped presents. Followers of the Christian faith celebrate the birth of their deity, Jesus Christ on this day. Christians attend church, pray, erect nativity scenes, and give gifts to represent the gifts that the Orient gave Christ on his day of birth.
Although Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ it is a fact that the actual day of Christ’s birth falls nowhere near December 25th. Many scholars place this date near late spring or early summer. “The earliest record that places the Nativity on December 25th comes from a calendar dated A.D. 354” (Aveni 152). Roughly one hundred years prior to this date in the year 273 A.D., Roman Pagans set this date (December 25th) to celebrate the winter solstice, an important Pagan holiday (Aveni 153). The Christian rulers purposely set the Nativity to overshadow the Pagan holiday in an attempt to draw Pagans away from their practices and toward Christian principles.
Yule, a Celtic festival celebrating the winter solstice, has a significant influence on the Christmas traditions of today. The wreath, a traditional Christmas decoration, comes from the Celtic tradition where the wreath represents the “wheel of the year.” The Celtic wreath was made up of evergreen, holly, and pine cones, representing their god and goddess. Another Celtic tradition involves decorating evergreen trees with nuts, fruits, coins, and candles. The “Yule log” is also a Celtic custom that is still observed today in other countries such as Great Britain. In Celtic tradition the “Yule log” was decorated with holly and evergreen strands and then set ablaze at sunset. The log would burn all night until sunrise the following morning (Cantrell 92). Although Christians were successful overshadowing the winter solstice they were not able to completely remove Pagan themes from Christmas. However, Yule is not the only holiday that the Christian church adopted as its own: take a look at the holiday Ostara, more commonly known as Easter.
For American children Easter is a joyous holiday filled with candy and fun. A well known American Easter tradition is the arrival of the “Easter Bunny, ” who brings Easter baskets filled with toys, candy and other gifts. The night before Easter children color eggs and then leave them out for the “Easter Bunny” to hide for them. When the children awake they embark on an Easter egg hunt, where they wander around attempting to locate all of the hidden eggs.
Aside from the childish aspect of the holiday, Easter is generally a very serious religious holiday. To Christians Easter is a celebration of the supposed resurrection of Jesus Christ, three days after he was crucified by the Romans. Christians celebrate the holiday by attending church, praying, feasting, and communing with each other. However, it was not always like this. Before the second century A.D. Easter was a very different holiday (Aveni 66).
The earliest known holiday that resembled Easter can be traced back to twenty-fourth century B.C.E. in the Babylonian empire. The Babylonians, like most other Pagans, celebrated holidays that “were dedicated to the moon and the equinoxes” (Aveni 67). One such holiday, Akitu, was celebrated near March or April according to our present day calendar (Aveni 67).
According to Gary Cantrell, author of the book Wiccan Beliefs and Practices, the Pagan holiday Ostara celebrates the Spring Equinox around March 21st. It represents a new beginning, a rebirth of life as the first new plants emerge, and is celebrated with feasting. This is the time of balance between day and night, the time when light overtakes the darkness. It is one of the times of sexual union between the God and Goddess, symbolizing the fertility of the year to come. (Cantrell 98) The Pagan festival of Ostara is symbolized by an egg, as a representation of new life. The Christian church adopted this concept for Easter (Cantrell 99).
The Easter Bunny is also a product of tradition but does not come from Pagan concepts. There are many myths from different cultures that tell of the rabbit, called the hare in most tales. Although the story is told by many different cultures - such as Chinese, Spanish, Indian, and African - there is a consistency throughout all of them. A rabbit ends up on the moon due a particular good deed that it performs (Aveni 63-65). So why do we associate this hare on the moon with Easter? The number one reason: fertility. The rabbit has been a symbol of fertility for ages; rabbits are nocturnal animals and have a close connection to the phases of the moon (Aveni 66). “Their gestation period of twenty-eight to thirty days (the same as the human female menstrual cycle) is a near-perfect fit to the cycle of the phases of the moon” (Aveni 66).
Another popular Easter icon, the “Easter egg” also has symbolic meaning. Again the themes of fertility, rebirth, and life in general have a particular heavy influence. Beside the bunny and the egg, baby chickens are also popular Easter symbols, once more symbolizing rebirth (Aveni 66).
Around the second century A.D. the Catholic Church found the need to set a formal holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. The exact day the holiday should fall on was greatly disputed (Dowey 30). The complicated process of setting a date for the holiday was resolved by calculating phases of the moon (a Pagan concept). Sunday, a full moon, and the equinox were all factors to be figured in; when the calculations were complete “it turned out that Easter could occur any time between March 22 and April 25th” (Aveni 69).
Spring is a very important season for Pagans. The next holiday I am going to explore is Beltane. May Day is the most common representation of this holiday within American traditions. However, May Day seems to be a dying holiday. Many people do not even observe it anymore.
Every year on the first day of May in eighteenth-century German and Swedish towns, the citizens put on a kind of seasonal passion play. A pair of troupes consisting of young men on horseback would enter a settlement from opposite ends of the main street. One group wore animal furs and boisterously threw snowballs at their foe. The other, clad in leaves and flowers drove them back, hurled them from their mounts, and ripped straw from the straw packing of their undergarments. The script of this mock battle dramatizes that clash between summer and winter. The outcome is never in doubt: summer emerges victorious (Aveni 79-80).
May Day traces back to the Pagan holiday Beltane, which is a celebration of the second half of the Celtic year (Aveni 28). Beltane celebrations include dancing around the “May pole”, which is considered a very sexual act. The holiday is associated with the Goddess and fertility and is a very sexual holiday. When the Pagans celebrated Beltane there was no holding back their sexuality. Beginning on April 28th and climaxing on May 1st the festival-goers let loose “unrestrained and uninhibited sexuality” (Cantrell 101). The Roman-Pagan holiday Floriala, is almost identical to the Celtic Beltane celebration. Even after Christians “took over, ” the rules of “sexual monogamy and strict fidelity” were relaxed for the Floriala festivities (Cantrell 101).
Beltane comes from the Celtic word meaning “balefire.” “Jumping over the smoldering balefire was thought to insure protection for the individual, and even livestock were occasionally driven through the smoke clouds for the same reason” (Cantrell 100).
In America May Day is not widely celebrated. Followers of Pagan religions may celebrate Beltane by themselves or with their coven. A May Day tradition that has generally died out is the making and delivering of the May basket, which is a basket filled with flowers and various other gifts, then anonymously placed on the doorstep of a friend or family member. The placer of the basket knocks on the door and then runs away, leaving the receiver wondering who has delivered the delightful gift.
Every calendar must have a beginning and ending. For the Celts that day is Samhain, which in the Celtic language translates into “summers end.” Samhain is also known as the “Feast of the Dead” and in Celtic tradition it was believed that on this one night the dead could, if they chose, return to the world of the living and celebrate with their friends and family. Extra places were set at the table or food and drink were left on the doorstep of a home for the returning spirits (Cantrell 112). Another Samhain custom, still followed by Pagans today, involves placing a lit candle in the window of their home to light the path of the traveling soul (Cunningham 143).
Many of the Halloween traditions that we practice today come from old Celtic and Pagan traditions. For example, dressing up in costume as a ghost or goblin and wondering from house to house “trick or treating, ” comes from the Celtic tradition of leaving food on the doorstep of ones home for the wandering souls. Carving a “jack-o’-lantern” is also a Celtic tradition that involved carving a turnip and lighting it with a candle. The makeshift lantern would dissuade the wondering spirits from bothering the traveler, who would be making their way to and from feasts on Samhain night (Cantrell 113).
Many Christian families refuse to celebrate Halloween, calling it the “Devil’s holiday.” They will not allow their children to participate in the “evil” holiday and substitute the holiday with a “harvest festival” that usually takes place at a church or church member’s home.
Even non-religious families are reluctant to allow their children to participate in Halloween festivities out of fear for their child’s safety. It is surprising to know that there is little need for this skeptical look at Halloween. According to Anthony Aveni, “there has never been a single documented case of any Halloween-related enticement to kidnap but also by 1982 all reports of booby-trapped apples were found to be hoaxes devised by children — or parents” (123)! It is possible that there have been cases of sadistic people attempting to cause intentional harm to somebody but this should be no reason to put a stop to a holiday that is meant to be fun. Should American’s stop putting lights on their Christmas trees and homes because there have been cases when the lights caused a fire? The more logical solution to this problem would be simple caution.
In closing, Raven added:: "I would like to say that I have gained much insight upon writing this paper. I find it very interesting that so many of the holidays that we celebrate are so profoundly influenced by sometimes-ancient Pagan traditions. It is amazing to me that the Christian Church made such an effort to disguise the Pagan holidays Yule and Ostara with Christmas and Easter. It brings a question to my mind: What would it be like today if we still followed the Celtic calendar and celebrated holiday like Beltane and Samhain?"
I have to wonder the very same thing.....
Footnotes:
Aveni, Anthony. The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays. New York: Oxford, 2003.
Buckland, Raymond. Complete Book of Witchcraft. Minnesota: Llewellyn, 1986.
Cantrell, Gary. Wiccan Beliefs and Practices. Minnesota: Llewellyn, 2001.
Cleere, Gail S. A Shadowy Past. Natural History. 101.2 (February 1992)
Cunningham, Scott. Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Minnesota: Llewellyn, 2002.
Dowley, Dr. Tim. Introduction to the History of Christianity. Minneapolis: Fort Press, 1995
Halliday, W. R. The Pagan Background of Early Christianity. New York: Cooper Square, 1970
Heller, Scott. From Pagan Rites to Gifts in the Parlor: How America Re-invented Christmas. Chronicles of Higher Education. 43.17 (Dec 1996)
Major Non-Christian World Religions. World Almanac and Book of Facts. 617 (2004)
Samhain is "The Last Harvest", preceded by Lammas and Mabon. The Earth nods a sad farewell to the God. We know that He will once again be reborn of the Goddess and the cycle will continue. This is the time of reflection, the time to honor the Ancients who have gone on before us and the time of 'Seeing" (divination). As we contemplate the Wheel of the Year, we come to recognize our own part in the eternal cycle of Life.
And, with it being our New Year, let me enlighten those who may be unaware as to what the REST of our holidays are, along with the history and origins of four of the most common Christian American holidays.
Wiccans call the eight festivals Sabbats, all of which fall on the solstices, equinoxes, and four other intermediate dates. The solstices and equinoxes are widely known as Quarter days; the four dates falling between them are the Cross-quarter days or "fire festivals". Esbats are also celebrated, but these fall on new & full moons.
The festivals, with the usual dates of their celebrations, are:
* Midwinter/Yule on the winter solstice
* Imbolc/Brigid's Day on February 2 and the preceding eve
* Ostara on the spring equinox
* Beltane/Beltaine/May Day on May 1 and the preceding eve
* Midsummer/Litha on the summer solstice
* Lughnasadh/Lammas on August 1 and the preceding eve (1st harvest)
* Mabon on the autumnal equinox(2nd harvest)
* Samhain, on November 1 and the preceding eve October 31 (3rd harvest)
Red and green decorations, colored lights, gifts and evergreen trees: on December 25th Americans gather around their Christmas trees and exchange beautifully wrapped presents. Followers of the Christian faith celebrate the birth of their deity, Jesus Christ on this day. Christians attend church, pray, erect nativity scenes, and give gifts to represent the gifts that the Orient gave Christ on his day of birth.
Although Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ it is a fact that the actual day of Christ’s birth falls nowhere near December 25th. Many scholars place this date near late spring or early summer. “The earliest record that places the Nativity on December 25th comes from a calendar dated A.D. 354” (Aveni 152). Roughly one hundred years prior to this date in the year 273 A.D., Roman Pagans set this date (December 25th) to celebrate the winter solstice, an important Pagan holiday (Aveni 153). The Christian rulers purposely set the Nativity to overshadow the Pagan holiday in an attempt to draw Pagans away from their practices and toward Christian principles.
Yule, a Celtic festival celebrating the winter solstice, has a significant influence on the Christmas traditions of today. The wreath, a traditional Christmas decoration, comes from the Celtic tradition where the wreath represents the “wheel of the year.” The Celtic wreath was made up of evergreen, holly, and pine cones, representing their god and goddess. Another Celtic tradition involves decorating evergreen trees with nuts, fruits, coins, and candles. The “Yule log” is also a Celtic custom that is still observed today in other countries such as Great Britain. In Celtic tradition the “Yule log” was decorated with holly and evergreen strands and then set ablaze at sunset. The log would burn all night until sunrise the following morning (Cantrell 92). Although Christians were successful overshadowing the winter solstice they were not able to completely remove Pagan themes from Christmas. However, Yule is not the only holiday that the Christian church adopted as its own: take a look at the holiday Ostara, more commonly known as Easter.
For American children Easter is a joyous holiday filled with candy and fun. A well known American Easter tradition is the arrival of the “Easter Bunny, ” who brings Easter baskets filled with toys, candy and other gifts. The night before Easter children color eggs and then leave them out for the “Easter Bunny” to hide for them. When the children awake they embark on an Easter egg hunt, where they wander around attempting to locate all of the hidden eggs.
Aside from the childish aspect of the holiday, Easter is generally a very serious religious holiday. To Christians Easter is a celebration of the supposed resurrection of Jesus Christ, three days after he was crucified by the Romans. Christians celebrate the holiday by attending church, praying, feasting, and communing with each other. However, it was not always like this. Before the second century A.D. Easter was a very different holiday (Aveni 66).
The earliest known holiday that resembled Easter can be traced back to twenty-fourth century B.C.E. in the Babylonian empire. The Babylonians, like most other Pagans, celebrated holidays that “were dedicated to the moon and the equinoxes” (Aveni 67). One such holiday, Akitu, was celebrated near March or April according to our present day calendar (Aveni 67).
According to Gary Cantrell, author of the book Wiccan Beliefs and Practices, the Pagan holiday Ostara celebrates the Spring Equinox around March 21st. It represents a new beginning, a rebirth of life as the first new plants emerge, and is celebrated with feasting. This is the time of balance between day and night, the time when light overtakes the darkness. It is one of the times of sexual union between the God and Goddess, symbolizing the fertility of the year to come. (Cantrell 98) The Pagan festival of Ostara is symbolized by an egg, as a representation of new life. The Christian church adopted this concept for Easter (Cantrell 99).
The Easter Bunny is also a product of tradition but does not come from Pagan concepts. There are many myths from different cultures that tell of the rabbit, called the hare in most tales. Although the story is told by many different cultures - such as Chinese, Spanish, Indian, and African - there is a consistency throughout all of them. A rabbit ends up on the moon due a particular good deed that it performs (Aveni 63-65). So why do we associate this hare on the moon with Easter? The number one reason: fertility. The rabbit has been a symbol of fertility for ages; rabbits are nocturnal animals and have a close connection to the phases of the moon (Aveni 66). “Their gestation period of twenty-eight to thirty days (the same as the human female menstrual cycle) is a near-perfect fit to the cycle of the phases of the moon” (Aveni 66).
Another popular Easter icon, the “Easter egg” also has symbolic meaning. Again the themes of fertility, rebirth, and life in general have a particular heavy influence. Beside the bunny and the egg, baby chickens are also popular Easter symbols, once more symbolizing rebirth (Aveni 66).
Around the second century A.D. the Catholic Church found the need to set a formal holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. The exact day the holiday should fall on was greatly disputed (Dowey 30). The complicated process of setting a date for the holiday was resolved by calculating phases of the moon (a Pagan concept). Sunday, a full moon, and the equinox were all factors to be figured in; when the calculations were complete “it turned out that Easter could occur any time between March 22 and April 25th” (Aveni 69).
Spring is a very important season for Pagans. The next holiday I am going to explore is Beltane. May Day is the most common representation of this holiday within American traditions. However, May Day seems to be a dying holiday. Many people do not even observe it anymore.
Every year on the first day of May in eighteenth-century German and Swedish towns, the citizens put on a kind of seasonal passion play. A pair of troupes consisting of young men on horseback would enter a settlement from opposite ends of the main street. One group wore animal furs and boisterously threw snowballs at their foe. The other, clad in leaves and flowers drove them back, hurled them from their mounts, and ripped straw from the straw packing of their undergarments. The script of this mock battle dramatizes that clash between summer and winter. The outcome is never in doubt: summer emerges victorious (Aveni 79-80).
May Day traces back to the Pagan holiday Beltane, which is a celebration of the second half of the Celtic year (Aveni 28). Beltane celebrations include dancing around the “May pole”, which is considered a very sexual act. The holiday is associated with the Goddess and fertility and is a very sexual holiday. When the Pagans celebrated Beltane there was no holding back their sexuality. Beginning on April 28th and climaxing on May 1st the festival-goers let loose “unrestrained and uninhibited sexuality” (Cantrell 101). The Roman-Pagan holiday Floriala, is almost identical to the Celtic Beltane celebration. Even after Christians “took over, ” the rules of “sexual monogamy and strict fidelity” were relaxed for the Floriala festivities (Cantrell 101).
Beltane comes from the Celtic word meaning “balefire.” “Jumping over the smoldering balefire was thought to insure protection for the individual, and even livestock were occasionally driven through the smoke clouds for the same reason” (Cantrell 100).
In America May Day is not widely celebrated. Followers of Pagan religions may celebrate Beltane by themselves or with their coven. A May Day tradition that has generally died out is the making and delivering of the May basket, which is a basket filled with flowers and various other gifts, then anonymously placed on the doorstep of a friend or family member. The placer of the basket knocks on the door and then runs away, leaving the receiver wondering who has delivered the delightful gift.
Every calendar must have a beginning and ending. For the Celts that day is Samhain, which in the Celtic language translates into “summers end.” Samhain is also known as the “Feast of the Dead” and in Celtic tradition it was believed that on this one night the dead could, if they chose, return to the world of the living and celebrate with their friends and family. Extra places were set at the table or food and drink were left on the doorstep of a home for the returning spirits (Cantrell 112). Another Samhain custom, still followed by Pagans today, involves placing a lit candle in the window of their home to light the path of the traveling soul (Cunningham 143).
Many of the Halloween traditions that we practice today come from old Celtic and Pagan traditions. For example, dressing up in costume as a ghost or goblin and wondering from house to house “trick or treating, ” comes from the Celtic tradition of leaving food on the doorstep of ones home for the wandering souls. Carving a “jack-o’-lantern” is also a Celtic tradition that involved carving a turnip and lighting it with a candle. The makeshift lantern would dissuade the wondering spirits from bothering the traveler, who would be making their way to and from feasts on Samhain night (Cantrell 113).
Many Christian families refuse to celebrate Halloween, calling it the “Devil’s holiday.” They will not allow their children to participate in the “evil” holiday and substitute the holiday with a “harvest festival” that usually takes place at a church or church member’s home.
Even non-religious families are reluctant to allow their children to participate in Halloween festivities out of fear for their child’s safety. It is surprising to know that there is little need for this skeptical look at Halloween. According to Anthony Aveni, “there has never been a single documented case of any Halloween-related enticement to kidnap but also by 1982 all reports of booby-trapped apples were found to be hoaxes devised by children — or parents” (123)! It is possible that there have been cases of sadistic people attempting to cause intentional harm to somebody but this should be no reason to put a stop to a holiday that is meant to be fun. Should American’s stop putting lights on their Christmas trees and homes because there have been cases when the lights caused a fire? The more logical solution to this problem would be simple caution.
In closing, Raven added:: "I would like to say that I have gained much insight upon writing this paper. I find it very interesting that so many of the holidays that we celebrate are so profoundly influenced by sometimes-ancient Pagan traditions. It is amazing to me that the Christian Church made such an effort to disguise the Pagan holidays Yule and Ostara with Christmas and Easter. It brings a question to my mind: What would it be like today if we still followed the Celtic calendar and celebrated holiday like Beltane and Samhain?"
I have to wonder the very same thing.....
Footnotes:
Aveni, Anthony. The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays. New York: Oxford, 2003.
Buckland, Raymond. Complete Book of Witchcraft. Minnesota: Llewellyn, 1986.
Cantrell, Gary. Wiccan Beliefs and Practices. Minnesota: Llewellyn, 2001.
Cleere, Gail S. A Shadowy Past. Natural History. 101.2 (February 1992)
Cunningham, Scott. Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Minnesota: Llewellyn, 2002.
Dowley, Dr. Tim. Introduction to the History of Christianity. Minneapolis: Fort Press, 1995
Halliday, W. R. The Pagan Background of Early Christianity. New York: Cooper Square, 1970
Heller, Scott. From Pagan Rites to Gifts in the Parlor: How America Re-invented Christmas. Chronicles of Higher Education. 43.17 (Dec 1996)
Major Non-Christian World Religions. World Almanac and Book of Facts. 617 (2004)
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