Happy Halloween!!!!

If I’m giving proper credit, I’d have to thank the Celts for Halloween. It was they, after all, who celebrated the Fire Festivals that begat a long line of traditions. Most of those traditions are completely misunderstood today. It’s not about the devil or anything evil at all, contrary to what the Fundamentalists would have you believe. They believe Harry Potter is evil, for Pete’s sake. I really don’t get people sometimes. In any case, The Celts had four major holy days, which they celebrated with Fire Festivals. Why fire? Fire is a symbol of divinity (God!), truth, light, and beauty. Even the Fundamentalists light candles in the sanctuary. So they celebrated their New Year on the day they called Samhain, which Christians took as their All Saints Day.

As many cultures start the day at sunset the night before, the evening before became our modern ‘Halloween.’ The legend goes that the time of Samhain is an in-between time, a time when all of the souls of the past and present converge. It’s also been called a time of ‘no-time.’ The idea of time itself was unknown for three days during the festival so that chaos could reign. This was when people would often disguise themselves or alter their appearance and children would go around knocking on strangers’ doors asking for food (normally unheard of). There was much more to these three days than just a lot of chaos and oddness. This was the time when the locks between the present and the past were thrown open and all souls were free to communicate. It was never a bad thing, this communication, but was a source of spirituality and inspiration. Of course, they hadn’t seen any of the ‘Night of the Living Dead’ movies.

There was some darkness around it all though, as this was the start of fall and winter, a time when foliage dies and the land seems barren. The moon was bright during this time (it’s the time of a full moon), which was a nice contrast, but in some ways it made it worse. Ever notice how moonlight gives you chills but sunlight warms you up? The effects of the moon certainly added to the atmosphere. Creatures that lived in the dark and people thought to have a dark nature became associated with this time: bats, famous for their bloodsucking nature (who ever came up with THAT nice feature…ahem, God…..), spiritual women no one understood (i.e. ‘witches’), and pretty much anything supernatural (mummies coming back to life, men made into monsters, things that go bump in the night).

So what’s it all about, really? It’s about celebrating the spiritual new year, remembering and honoring those who have passed on before us, gaining an understanding of our past and future, relating ourselves to the changing seasons, and generally just having fun and getting smashed nowadays. Somehow I think the Celts would be appalled if they saw some of the drunken celebrating that goes on today.

My favorite thing about it, possibly, is the fact that you get to be someone else for a day, usually someone you’re totally not in the real world. I like the make-believe aspect of it all. That’s very typical of my nature though. Reality is just too much to take sometimes. I’d rather be in a make-believe place. I especially wanted to be in any other reality that fall, as we went through our days wondering what would happen next.

(excerpt from the novel The Sensation Inside, by Marty Mitchell)


Happy Halloween, from:



That's us CC folks. I'm the one on the far left. Yikes; I woke up on the wrong side of the make-up mirror! haha


Have a Spooktacular Day!!!