hoppy hollereen!

hollereen... play dress up & stay out after dark & get a ton of candy. it is like the kids designed the whole concept. when i was a kid, this holiday was a big deal in our neighborhood. we lived in a huge, new development jampacked with families & kids. so many kids that our elementary school was terribly overcrowded with portables all over the place. it was the perfect kind of neighborhood for hollereen - houses upon houses, and even some condos at the end of the road. condos! what seemed like a bazillion candy outlets right there in one spot. we would go out, get full bags, come home, dump the bags, and head out again. super!

halloween is, of course, and ancient holy day. the celts celebrate this time - smack in between the autumnal equinox & the winter solstice - as the new year. the celtic for november is samhain, so the celebration of the new year is generally refered to as samhain. in the month of may, between the spring equinox & summer soltice, falls the celebration of beltane. celts believe that both samhain & beltane offer a sort of down time between our world & the next... a time when we can more easily contact or be contacted by those who have passed on to the next phase of existence. if you think of it as a door or even as a curtain... they are right there on the other side, if we understood how to make contact, we could. the celts believed that beltane & samhain were prime time for the curtain to be drawn back - that even if we weren't sure how to draw it back ourselves, it might happen for us. this can be a good thing, but also a scary thing. so, they lit big bonfires to keep away evil spirits. they hollowed out turnips & carved faces on them - to capture the evil spirits. they dressed up as ghosts or as crazy people, to ward off the evils. they left tiny cakes & snacks to appease the evils -- treats so that the evils would not trick them. children would dress up, too, and since spirits -- good or evil -- aren't known for being all that snackie, the kids would sneak the snacks.

so, that's samhain in a nutshell. go ahead and call out a howdy to those who've passed over -- what harm can come from feeling a closeness with our ancestors? and, while you're at it, pass the candy corn, because everyone knows that no harm comes from candy corn, either.