Happy Samhain
What is a Samhain, i hear you ask;
Samhain is a Pagan Sabbat or seasonal holy festival day, though it is really both a season and a holy day. The Pagan year begins and ends with Samhain. It is a festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, the Holly King rules this darker half of the year. Samhain is celebrated on sunset 31 October to 1 November in the Northern Hemisphere, but here in Australia we are in the Southern Hemisphere, so we celebrate Samhain (Halloween) 30 April to 1May.
It is a time to Honor our ancestors, to remember and celebrate the dead. It is a time of reflection, a time when the walls between this world and the other world (specifically the world of the dead) are thin. You have seen this festival as Halloween, but there are other similar holy days dedicated to honoring the dead all around the world.
The thing is Halloween has only just begun being celebrated in Australia. I should say mainstream Australia, and i should also say trick or treating has started, and i should say mimicked not celebrated, as the holy days holiness seems to be mostly being ignored.
Now being able to celebrate my holy day with everyone else would be very cool. As opposed to say mainstream Australians celebrating the winter festival in the horrible Midsummer heat.
But alas it is not to be as the shops sell the Halloween paraphernalia in October, and the trickers come mumming around, what is the festival of Beltane where we would celebrate life, not death.
Now i sort of understand the other "holidays" being at the wrong time of year for Australians, as the seasonal holy days were appropriated from there Pagan practitioners in the Northern Hemisphere and simply transplanted here into the Southern Hemisphere, where the remaining seasonal symbolism simply doesn't make any sense. (Think Yule in the height of Summer.)
But this our sacred Samhain, our Halloween has survived with none of that baggage (at least not for most Australians) so it saddens me that there will be no trick or treats again this Samhain, though i always keep a bowl of treats out just in case.
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