Happy Halloween!! Wishing everyone a fun and happy time! Halloween can be a fun celebration for those who participate.
On the very cusp of saying goodbye to summer and hello to winter time it is an important time in the calendar.
Today we find many ways to celebrate this season and the Halloween festival. We decorate our homes with orange and black, spiders and ghosts and ghouls, or a display of gorgeous squashes outside the front door. We might go trick or treating with young children dressed in amazing inventive fancy dress or go to parties dressed in Halloween costumes.
Some of us buy decorations for our homes, others craft their own and some even become family traditions. Even if you don't decorate or do anything yourself it can be fun driving or walking around the neighbourhood looking at all the inventive decoration. It is a festival that everyone can be involved in if they wish.
Nature Relating to Halloween, Festival Of Samhain
With all this going on I was reflecting on the origins of Halloween and how it relates and links to nature. Halloween has a strong connection to nature through its ancient origins and the season of this celebration.
Halloween developed from the ancient Celtic pagan festival of Samhain pronounced sow win. This festival has deep roots in nature and marks the point of transition between summer and winter or from the new life, growth, light and warmth of the summer time to the lower light levels , slowing down of plants and leaf loss, darkness and colder days throughout the winter months. So this festival marked the change of seasons as seen in nature and the constant rhythm of life and death.
During Samhain, and as the nights drew in and became much colder, people would naturally gather around warm bonfires. These fires symbolised the warmth and light of the sun and of course provided physical warmth so crucial in the cold nights. In addition they were a spiritual beacon, with the belief that they were guiding the spirits of the departed back to the Otherworld.
People believed at this time of year that the barriers between this world and the other world were broken down and that meant the living could interact with the other world more easily.
To disguise themselves they dressed as monsters and various animals so that the fairies would ignore them and thus avoid being kidnapped to the other world.
The costumes worn by people during Samhain often included elements of nature such as leaves, animal skins, or masks made from a range of already harvested crops from the fields. In this history, we can see the origins of where our current costumes enjoyed at Halloween may have originated.
