All Saints Day/ Dia de los Muertos

It's all Hallows day.  All Saints day.

When my parents were living, the flowers on the altar at our home church were always dedicated to their deceased elders on this day on the church calendar.

For decades.

I think of that every year.

Down here in Oklahoma, the traditional Mexican, now "Catholocized,"observance of Dia de los Muertos is a big deal.  That's today, too.

I have incorporated a little bit of the Muertos tradition in my annual decorating for this time of year, without trying to be guilty of cultural appropriation.

After all, I can buy Muertos figurines at Walgreens, so I figure there's a certain degree of cultural permission being given.

Just like there is with the theoretical ancient origins of Halloween.

As a person who tries to study part of my own genetic cultural traditions (the Welsh part, which was originally culturally Brythonic speaking Celtic) and incorporate those into the basis for my spiritual practice, I find it kind of funny or ironic that SO many neo Pagans swear that the church tried to take away the ancient agricultural and Pagan festivals by putting their own Christian festivals on the same day to try to win converts.

While I do believe that the church DID alter the dates of some of their festivals to try to coincide with local practices as the church spread west into Europe, I just find it silly that the neo Pagan movement comes right out and says things like "OUR ancient festival of Samhain was on October 31/November 1 , and the church came along and changed it to All Hallows/All Saints day (or insert dates and other Pagan holidays).

Nope.

First of all, there was no universal ancient festival of Samhain.  That's a relatively new designation for Halloween (all Hallows eve...a CHURCH holiday) given to a fixed point on the modern calendar by the originators of Wicca in the 20th century.

In effect, it's rather the reverse of what the neo Pagans have to say about it.

Sure, there were harvest festivals in Ireland that might have been called Samhain, but there was no UNIVERSAL, PAGAN DAY, on a calendar, that was called "Samhain" prior to the advent of Wicca in the 20th century.

Yes, folks, the TWENTIETH century.  The late 1930s, in fact.  Not even close to 100 years ago yet.

I say that there was no universal ancient festival of "Samhain" on that date, because there was no Christian calendar for our ancient Pagan ancestors, and not all of our ancient Pagan ancestors spoke Irish Gaelic!

Can you follow me here?  Just for another minute?

There were other names, in other cultures, for the varied festivals that were no doubt held during the end of the harvest season.  However, as far as we can conjecture, these festivals were "movable feasts" which probably took place with the phases of the moon, rather than fixed dates on any calendar--since there was no fixed calendar.

The calendar we use today was not even instituted until 1582, and it was calculated by a Pope.  This makes the calendar we use today fundamentally Christian in origin.

See what I did there?

We can, of course, guess that the agricultural practices of our ancestors involved certain progressions through the cycles of the seasons, and we can figure that around this time of year, when the moon was full, they finished tilling in their fields, and they culled their livestock, and they put food by for winter.

They may have also revered their ancestors at this time, because there seems to be something of a theme that is world wide in tucked away areas in remote villages in Europe where the old ways are still whispering, as well as in big modern metroplexes like Mexico City.

But this reverence was not always limited to a date of Oct.31/Nov. 1.

This was the time of year when the plants of the earth were dying back, when the land took on an attitude of death.  It was a logical time to look into the eyes of winter, and of mortality, and think of those who had died.

SO.  When people say Happy Samhain on Oct. 31st, and facebook gets filled up with images of meaningful memes about listening for the ancestors, I just sort of shake my head a little in wonder.

I have to wonder if anyone realizes that Halloween is not Samhain is not ancient.

I'd just like to say, please do some research.

If you want to try to follow ancient ways, you should probably spend a little bit of time at least reading about what might have actually been, and not just say "wow, that meme on social media is cool, I'm going to blindly follow that belief."

And, really,  all we can do is pretend to follow ancient ways.  We weren't there, and our ancestors, at least in Celtic lands, didn't write anything down.

My Welsh ancestors (very long-ago Ancestors) were what were called Druids.  The biggest Druid training/education center in the ancient world (as far as we can tell) was on an island off of the western coast of Wales.

One of the most powerful aspects of what the Druids did (as far as we can tell) was to NOT write anything down.

So there's that.

All we can do is hope that what we can learn is at least close to the truth of how things were. But we really should try to learn SOMETHING about it, instead of following blindly along with whatever we see on line.

For me?  I tend to celebrate this late fall festival for about four weeks...possibly as it was in the very, very old days....from the new moon before to the new moon after.  This year, Samhain's full moon was on 10/27.

The days around the full moon near the end of October/beginning of November are when I can sense the shift in how things feel. Sometimes, it's well into November.  It's a movable feast, as I said before.

It's certainly not limited to Oct. 31.

But I also have to say that I LOVE Halloween, and have a lot of fun with it.  It's really cool when the full moon falls close to Halloween, and I can combine the two things.

I know there are Pagans out there who feel the same way, but in social media, which is, sadly where many people now get what they think are "true facts about Samhain,"  all I can hope to do is reach out to someone and cause them to think.

I don't know that I am right, or wrong,  but I have done a lot of research (only recently using the internet) over my 25 years as a Pagan, and, well, that should count for something.

Happy Hallows and Muertos to those of the Christian persuasion!