Off topic - Happy Halloween

[Richard Saville-Smith]

I’m assuming that we all know that for the Celts (as for Jews and Muslims) the day starts and ends at sunset. And, that the Celtic calendar starts with the dark half of the year which is marked by a 24 hour festival from sunset on 31st October to sunset on 1st November in which the forces of reality are at their thinnest. This New Year festival is Samhain (or similar) and was here a long time before Pope Gregory III shifted All Saints Day from May 13th and dumped it on top of the Celtic festival to snuff it out – in a blatant act of 8th century social propaganda. The old tradition bled through – particularly to the evening (before the Christian start of the day at midnight), and so we have Hallowe’en. Given that the Pope Gregory took a rather polar view of things and the Christians got the high-ground of being the “good”, it is unsurprising that the unruly Samhain festival was characterised by being evil. And so it is today when L’Osservatore Romana, the Vatican’s newspaper, claims that Halloween is dangerous and anti-Christian – he is probably right, but not in any moral sense. All of this is well known.

The bit I find interesting is in the perseverance of another of our great public celebrations – Guy Fawkes night. Why do we continue to celebrate the capital punishment of a 17th century Catholic who FAILED to blow up the Houses of Parliament? Surely things more worthy of public ritual have occurred since 1605? – the death of Hitler, 9/11 or 7/7 bombers etc? I take the view that the bonfires that invariably marked the Samhain festival found their continuing opportunity in the Guy Fawkes ritual. The variance of dates is of little significance between the 1st and the 5th of November. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted in the UK in 1752, that year eleven days were cut out from the calendar, but dates of festivals were granted an opt-out which has made things messy ever since. So what’s four days here or there in the context of a seasonal festival?

And the point of this for a digital community based in the Celtic fringe – I don’t know, but I wanted to take the opportunity of wishing you all a very happy new year whatever you’re doing.

Build a bonfire against the darkness.