Halloween ... a Multicultural Look

YGRAINE IS READY FOR THE HOLIDAYS!

I am babysitting my grand-dog right now. Her parents have moved in with friends while they demolish their current home and build a new one.

I don't understand people who say dogs don't "have feelings." It's so clear! Ygraine sat by the front window when her "daddy" drove away and whimpered. Reluctantly she took a piece of cheese I offered but returned to the window, hoping against hope ... Then she walked slowly and forlornly over to her place on the rug by the the television where she had sat the whole time her dad was here. I know she'll adjust in a couple of days. She's been here before. Right now she's miserable, missing her home and her folks. (Ever had that feeling?) I will gently work with her but right now I'm not what she wants and there's no way around it.

It's sad to see her refuse the love that's here for the love that's gone.
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TODAY'S READ IS A LOOK AT HALLOWEEN FROM A MULTICULTURAL STANDPOINT:

Halloween began as an ancient Celtic ceremony called Sawhain. It was the Celts major celebration, a festival of the dead but also the beginning of winter.

It was time for them to harvest their crops and store them, and round up the cattle and sheep and move them in closer. They believed at this time the ghosts of the dead mingled with the living. I think this is archetypal (in our bones) because things are dying this time of year. Plants are dying, leaves fall off the trees ...

Others think it was the harvest, why keep it to yourself? Invite all your ancestors and dearly departed to join in.

Sawhain was exactly 6 weeks after the Autumnal Equinox and 6 weeks before the Winter Solstice.

Now here's how one tradition developed. It was New Year's, a new beginning. Cold, too, so they'd have a fire. Someone from each household would be sent to collect embers from the community fire to start the fire at their own hearth. The easiest way to carry home the coals was in a hollowed out turnip, sometimes with a carved face on it to scare away evil spirits.
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The trick or treat? This is from bigchill.net:

Cakes and sweeties are also essential. Ghosts are especially benevolent towards children and everyone knows that the best way to lure children to the table is with sweet stuff.

Anyway, the Celts were celbrating Sawhain and then the Christian missionaries arrived to convert them to Christianity. In one of the sanest, most humane, edicts I've read, Pope Gregory I issued an edict that it was to be done this way: the missionaries should not obliterate the native religion, but rather use it. If they found the Celts worshipped a tree, they should not cut it down, but rather consecrate it to Christ, and let the worship continue.

Christian holidays were also set to coincide with local holy days. All Saints Day was assigned November 1st and meant to substitute for Sawhain, but Sawhain still it continued.

Jack Santino says, “The powerful symbolism of the traveling dead was too strong, and perhaps too basic to the human psyche, to be satisfied with the new, more abstract Catholic feast honoring saints.”

The Church tried again in the 8th century, naming November 2nd as All Soul’s Day, but Sawhain continued, and with time, All Hallows Eve (the night before) became Hallowe’en. People began to dress in costume to seek gifts of food and drink, which had originally been set out to appease spirits, to lure children to their doors with goodies, and to masquerade as spirits, and our traditions of Halloween evolved.

There’s a lesson in multiculturalism here; a way to change culture and blend beliefs and traditions. “Worship” was the constant in the equation, and dealing with dark spirits, which they kept and modified. The new was accommodated without changing the old too much. Remember this when you’re changing a household or office custom.
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