Culture after culture for millennia set aside a few days a year when the dead are allowed near. Samhain is one of them, Halloween another, and many more came and went. They celebrated it in different months, with different gods, and different food and events. The meaning was the same. Every October or so, they blurred into one celebration, remembering the dead, celebrating when the veil thins enough to allow both worlds to communicate. Welcome to the Samhain season!
“Culture after culture set aside a few days a year when the dead are allowed near.”
Samhain Is Not Halloween
It might be difficult to pronounce the Celtic name Samhain. It’s pronounced “SOW-in,” with the first syllable rhyming with cow. However, the Scottish Gaelic says it closer to “SAH-vin.” Most people use both “SAH-win” and “SOW-in.”, but not “Sam-hein.”
Samhain is old medieval Irish placed into the dark half of the year, with feasting, assemblies, and contests. The doors to the Otherworld open, and the fairy host walks. Although we publicly know very little about actual rites, historian Ronald Hutton points out that the stories rarely describe any religious observance. The “Celtic New Year” label comes mostly from nineteenth-century folklorists.
Halloween is something entirely different. It is “All-hallow-even,” the night before All Saints’ Day on November 1. The Frankish Empire made that feast binding in 835. Early in the eleventh century, Abbot Odilo of Cluny gave the next day, November 2, to prayer for the dead. That is the origin of All Souls. Souling, guising, turnip lanterns and trick-or-treat came much later, piece by piece. “Trick or treat” first shows up in print in 1917.
On the topic of whether Samhain fed Halloween, scholars argue both. The historian Kyle Smith says the Samhain story is flimsy and Halloween grew out of the Christian cult of the saints. It’s hard to say if the question is settled. Anyone who does should back it up with valid sources.
Modern pagans keep Samhain too, as one of the cross-quarter days of the Wheel of the Year, the wheel assembled by British neopagans in the mid-twentieth century. Some mark Samhain on October 31, while others use the astronomical midpoint between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. So set your calendar. this year, it falls on November 7.
Egypt and Greece
Interestingly enough, Egypt gave the dead two seasons. In summer, at the new moon, the Beautiful Festival of the Valley carried the god Amun across the Nile to the west bank. Families followed, brought flowers to the tombs, drank there, and slept beside their dead. In autumn, in the month of Khoiak, priests shaped small figures of Osiris from earth and barley and watered them until the grain sprouted. Death, grain, rebirth. All in one gesture.
Greece kept the Genesia on the fifth day of Boedromion, a day to honor dead ancestors, parents above all. A different festival, the Anthesteria, in late winter, was stranger. The souls of the dead were said to walk among the living. People chewed hawthorn leaves and smeared pitch on their doors. On the third day offerings went to Hermes and the dead, and then the dead were politely sent away.
Rome and Persia
Rome had a pit. It was called the mundus, and Festus called it “the gate of Orcus.” Three days a year it stood open, August 24, October 5 and November 8. The Roman writer Varro said that when it is open, a door stands open for the gods of the underworld. Public business stopped.
Persia’s Zoroastrians gave the dead ten days at the end of the year. Frawardigan honors the fravashis, the spirits of the living, the unborn and the dead. Families clean the house and light a lamp to welcome them. The practice appears in the Avesta itself. In the tenth century, al-Biruni wrote that the pious spirits were believed to return to their families. The mood is not dread. It is welcome.
The Norse, India, China and Mexico
The Norse held Winter Nights in mid to late October, with sacrifices to the elves and to the dísir, female beings tied to fate. Sources are sagas written centuries later and invites us to be careful. In those sagas, autumn dreams foretell death.
In India, Pitru Paksha gives sixteen lunar days in September or October to the ancestors. Families offer rice balls and water for three generations back, and some leave food on the roof for the crows.
In China, the Ghost Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month. People burn paper offerings, float lanterns on water, and leave the front row of street theater empty for the ghosts. Its Buddhist roots run back to Indian texts, one of them probably from around the third century BCE. I witnessed something on one of the western river of Kyoto, Japan while living there. No words can correctly convey these festivities.
In Mexico, Día de Muertos on November 1 and 2 weaves indigenous traditions into the Catholic calendar of All Saints and All Souls.
Not Everything Happens in October
Egypt’s valley festival is a summer event. China’s Ghost Festival is in late summer. Persia’s comes at the year’s end by its own calendar. Rome’s pit opened in August, October and November. This removes the neat idea that every culture opened the door in the same cold week. But the gist still holds. Many of these days sit near the harvest, when the year itself seems to be dying back, not all, but most.
And as to the often used word “veil”, it is a modern take. Nobody on the ancient side of this story wrote the word “veil.” as far as we can find.
“Nobody on the ancient side of this story wrote the word ‘veil.’ We did.”
What the Korean Language Knows
In Korea, a respected person who dies is said to have dolagasida. The verb means “to go back” or “to return.” The same verb says you went home. Death is a homecoming, spoken politely. I find that particular interesting as I remember being younger and hearing about people passing on. Today, we often hear the blunt word, dead, as in he or she is dead. I like that term more than the modern drab death word. It opens up more reflection than the simple drop dead expression and then nothing.
A Question to Take Into November
The living have always needed somewhere to put their grief. Sometimes they built calendars or set a day, lit a lamp, left out bread or flowers or paper money, and told the dead they were remembered.
Anyone on your list this year? And what would you set out for them? I often wonder what they would say and perhaps even more, what could they say if allowed.
“The living have always needed somewhere to put their grief. So they built calendars.”
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