Samhain

Celebrating the Seasons of Life
Samhain to Ostara
Lore, Rituals, Activities, and Symbols

The Origin of Halloween

Our modern spooky Halloween festival - also sometimes called Holloween - can be traced back to the Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts had two main festivals: Beltane took place at the beginning of May to mark the start of summer. Samhain (or 'Samain') took place six months later at the end of October to indicate the end of summer and the beginning of the long dark nights of winter.

The Samhain festival - which lasted several days - represented the death of the summer sun god Lugh. On the last night of October the sun god passed over between the worlds. On this night the gateways between life and death were therefore open. This ties in with the Celtic beliefs in the cyclic nature of the universe and in reincarnation.

The Samhain rituals are believed to have been officiated by the Druids.

Some people have claimed that Samhain was actually a Celtic god. In fact there is no convincing evidence to support this. It seems likely that this is a misinterpretation of Celtic paganism by those of a theist persuasion.

Samhain becomes Halloween

Samhain was absorbed first by the Romans into their Feralia, a festival to honour the dead, and also with their harvest festival in honour of Pomona. This merged Roman festival was itself incorporated by the Christians and rebranded as All Saints Day, leaving the night before to naturally become Halloween.

It was a standard practice of many early religions, especially the Christian church, to take local customs and places of power and co-opt them into their own belief system. This was probably one of the earliest known examples of the "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy that (unfortunately) is so commercially successful today.

Today the celebration of Samhain and other ancient festivals is still kept alive by various pagan and Wiccan groups.