Many of our readers tomorrow will celebrate with their children the Halloween party, imported from the United States. Others, on day one, will go to the cemeteries to pay tribute and remember their deceased. We are preparing another party, older, that we celebrate in my house every year. We're preparing Samhain.
Children, like the elders, enjoy it very much, it makes them feel magical emotions and imagine ancient times. It fosters the love for Nature and the understanding of how united we are to our ancestors and the mysterious forces that surround us.
Samhain is an ancient Celtic celebration, that possibly unde its roots in the Neolithic and that have recovered the Neopagan cults. It was held in the middle between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, being the date on which all crops should be harvested and winter began.
The Celts considered two seasons in the year and this ended in Samhain, when everything died and hid to pass a winter lethargy.
On this date the doors were opened that communicate the realm of the living with that of the dead, and everyone could meet again and remember the feelings of affection or family union they shared. In fact, all the ancestors were summoned and shared, symbolically, a dinner and a party is that end of the year.
Actually, Halloween is the derivation of what remained alive of this party in the Irish that emigrated to the United States and has been changing. Even the feast of All Christian Saints was placed on this date to make it superimpose the celebrations of retreating paganism.
In Mexico it is celebrated differently, with true altars reminiscent of the deceased and a popular imagery very striking. I have a friend from there, our reader, who usually sends me photos and comments about her beautiful family and popular party.
I know there are families who don't like Halloween, so for them I tell you the way we celebrate Samhain, this date of passage between the stations and contact with the beyond.
We use pumpkins, that we have not been able to avoid, white candles throughout the house, black rags on a kind of altar where we leave nuts and apples as a gift, we decorate the windows with candles to guide the ancestors' spirits to our home. We put dried leaves as decoration in the house and chestnuts.
That afternoon we usually go to the field, where we can find large trees that remember past times, and we approach them with respect, thinking about how beautiful and wise nature is that takes care of us.
We cook a dinner with autumn products: pumpkin soup, nuts, beef, apples. And at night we had dinner with candlelight with great recollection and thinking about those who preceded us, trying to feel them close to us, taking care of us.
We usually decorate the house with symbols of the Triple Goddess and Cerunnos, the gods of the Celts and write a simple prayer of thanks for being alive and loving for those who are no longer among us. In a paper we put into words our best wishes for the new year and burn the paper with a candle, burying the ashes in the garden. Children are excited that moment.
We put music, bagpipes and Celtic sounds, but also classical music that makes us feel the party more intensely: Mahler's first, the Valkyrie Cavalcade, the overture of Tanhaüser, or the Night on the Peeled Mount.
Tomorrow, while others will celebrate Halloween and there will be those who prepare for All Saints Day, we will do Samhain, an old party full of symbolism that also excites children. I would love you to tell us how you celebrate tomorrow's party, because I know that in some places it is done with traditions that we do not know and that surely make your children enjoy.
