Halloween

Halloween is a secular holiday combining vestiges of traditional harvest festival celebrations with customs more peculiar to the occasion such as costume wearing, trick-or-treating, pranksterism, and decorative imagery based on seasonal change, death, and the supernatural. It takes place on October 31.

Though it was regarded up until the last few decades of the 20th century as primarily a children's holiday, in more recent years common activities such as mask wearing, costume parties, themed decorations, and even trick-or-treating have grown popular with adults as well, making Halloween an all-ages celebration in the new millennium.

The name Halloween (originally spelled Hallowe'en) is a contraction of All Hallows Even, meaning the day before All Hallows Day (better known as All Saints Day), a Catholic holiday commemorating Christian saints and martyrs observed since the early Middle Ages on November 1.

But what are the celebration’s real roots?

Samhain (the Celtic term for Halloween, pronounced sow-in as in ‘sour’) was the time when the cattle were moved from the summer pastures to winter shelter. It was the end of the growing season, the end of harvest, a time of thanksgiving, when the ancestors and the spirits of the beloved dead would return home to share in the feast. Death did not sever one’s connections with the community. People would leave offerings of food and drink for their loved ones, and set out candles to light their way home. Those traditions gave us many of our present day customs. Now we set out jack-o-lanterns and give offerings of candy to children—who are, after all, the ancestors returning in new forms.

Death and regeneration are always linked in Goddess theology. Birth, growth, death and renewal are a cycle that plays over and over again through natural systems and human lives. Embracing this cycle, we don’t need to fear death, but instead can see it as a stage of life and a gateway to some new form of being.

So Samhain is a time to remember and honor those who have died, to celebrate their lives and appreciate their gifts, to tell stories about them to the next generation so their memory will not be lost. In Latino cultures, Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead on November 2, is a time to visit the graves of loved ones, to feast there and honor their memory with altars and prayers. We set up altars in our homes, with pictures and mementos, and in my house, we like to invite friends and family to an ancestor dinner, where we cook traditional foods and share our family stories.

Symbols typically associated with the celebration are:

• Bats
• Owls
• Black Cats
• Jack-O-Lanterns
• Skeletons
• Spiders
• Witches

If you were born on Halloween like I was, then your horoscope sign is Scorpio, which means,

Symbols for Scorpio are the scorpion, a ground-dwelling killer with a poisonous sting in its tail and the eagle, a far-seeing predator soaring above petty problems into the spiritual sky.

 

People born in this section of the year seem to be filled with inherent contradiction. The best and the worst seem to make this period their chosen battlefield.

 

Up to nearly twenty years of age they are usually extremely pore-minded, virtuous, and religious, but once their nature is roused they are often found to swing in the opposite direction. At the same time the greatest saints have been found in this period.

 

People who were born in this section of the year have great magnetic power, and as speakers appeal to the emotions and sentiments of their public more than to logic, but they sway their audiences as they choose. They are the searchers of the zodiac and have an insatiable desire for knowledge on every level. From spiritual and intellectual revelations, these people want the edge on everybody else.

 

So,

now you

know!