Pumpkin Logic

By C. Austin

• Samhain (Halloween) is the Celtic New Year’s Eve and November 1 is the first day of the Celtic New Year. Samhain also marks the end of the harvest. Crops not gathered by November 1 were abandoned to the shape-shifting goblin, the pooka.
• Halloween traditions that exist today were brought to North America in large part by Irish immigrants escaping the Great Famine in the mid- 1800’s.
• The original purpose of disguising oneself on Samhain was to fool the wandering dead who are afoot on Samhain and thereby avoid an untimely demise. All manner of fairy folk and ghastly specters await in the gloaming on Samhain so it is best not to linger in any one place too long.
• Bobbing for apples was but one of the divinations used on Samhain to presage the future. Others included the use of candles, nuts jumping in the fire and reflections in a bowl of water.
• Storytelling was once a prominent feature on Samhain, which allowed the heroes and monsters of Celtic lore to live once again.
• The “treat” on Samhain was originally supper, the “Feile na Marbh” or feast for the dead, left out for ancestors who had passed away and who return on Samhain to visit and bless their families. The “trick” was the wrath of the dead that was felt by those families who refused to honor the age-old tradition.
• Our jolly jack-o-lanterns owe their existence to the crafty Irish villain “Jack,” who was wanted by neither heaven or hell when he finally passed away. Doomed to wander the earth for eternity he carried an ember in a carved out turnip gourd and became known as “Jack of the lantern.” Immigrants to North American found the pumpkin a far better gourd than the tiny turnip, and so, our pumpkin carving tradition was born.
• And finally, even today, misguided individuals relate Samhain tradition and rituals with “devil worshipping.” The Old Religion from which most Samhain traditions arose does not recognize a character or deity that resembles the Christian “devil.” Like so many things, the “devil” exists solely in the mind of the beholder.

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