Part of my new blog schedule is doing a “Myth & Magick” post on the 3rd Friday of every month. This month, to get us started, I’ve decided to talk about something that comes up in a lot of my books: Pagan holidays.
This is actually the first in a series of posts about the eight Pagan holidays, called “sabbats” that occur throughout the year. I’ll be covering them over the next twelve months, as each one comes around.
This month, we’re starting with one of the biggest sabbats for most modern Pagans: Samhain.
First, A Bit of Bitching…
We live in a world so completely dominated by Christianity that even things many people consider secular are, in fact, ultimately Christian in origin. Holidays aren’t the only example I could give, but they’re probably the biggest one. Almost everyone in the Western world celebrates Christmas, regardless of their own religious beliefs or lack thereof. Christmas is so much a part of the secular world that my day job forces me to take it off, despite working at home with full access to the systems I need to do my job, despite it being my department’s busiest time of year and them being desperate for people to not only work, but work excessive amounts of overtime. They still, at least every other year, flat refuse to allow me to work on Christmas.
And let me be clear: they’re more than happy to allow me to work on other holidays when it’s busy. They all but expect it, in fact. I get the side-eye for taking New Year’s Day off every year, despite it being every bit as much a paid company holiday as Christmas.
Part of this is because they’re afraid if they say people are allowed to work on Christmas that they’ll take it as a hint they’re expected to, but that’s a whole, big toxic-corporate-environment issue that isn’t relevant here. The point is, they assume I’ll want that day off, and are baffled when I try to explain I don’t celebrate Christmas because it’s a Christian holiday and my religion is something else entirely. And they absolutely don’t understand why I’m pissed off to be told “well, just enjoy it as a day off,” when I was required to work on the holiday I actually celebrate, the week before.
And if this is all sounding kinda ranty, yeah, that’s sort of my point. But we’re about to turn a corner…
My Fictional Worlds
When you study writing, one of the biggest things that’s drilled into your head over and over is readers read to experience tension. And that’s true, but it’s not the only reason we read. Nobody wants to read about a guy who gets up in the morning, excited to start his day, has a great breakfast, puts in a satisfying day’s work at a job he loves, then goes out for a great time with friends before going home, watching the lottery drawing on television, and winning the jackpot. Unless that’s just the setup for a lot of problems to come, that’d be a pretty boring story.
But, at the same time, nobody wants to read about that guy’s screaming alarm clock, screaming boss, and all the money wasted on losing lottery tickets if there isn’t some payoff, either. And, likewise, a Science Fiction fan wants that guy’s job to be in space, while a Fantasy fan might want the screaming boss to be replaced with a dragon.
We read for the conflict and drama, but we also read to escape.
For me, a lot of that escapism is about stories taking place in a world where I feel more comfortable. I write plenty of conflict, drama, and stakes, but I write them in a world where Paganism, queerness, and other things I’d love to see more of in our world are just… normal. Not to say I write a world where there are more of these things than in the real world, but I don’t write from the all-too-typical viewpoint that “straight, white, and Christian” is the default, and anything else needs pointed to and spelled out in the text.
This isn’t just about Paganism, and isn’t just about holidays, but that’s what we’re talking about here. I write a world where straight-white-Christian is just one of myriad ways to be, and isn’t an assumed baseline.
The Wheel of the Year
All of which finally gets me to the actual topic for this post. Or almost, anyway. Because there’s one last introductory bit, which I promise won’t be as ranty as the rest. I write about Wicca and other forms of Neopaganism a lot in my books. Sometimes, like in the Olive Tree Academy books, I put a lampshade on it and the characters actually explain things on page. Other times, like in The Nexus, it’s just sort of there, in the background, informing my story choices.
As I mentioned in the introduction, this is actually just the first in a series of posts on the eight Pagan sabbats that occur throughout the year. These eight holidays fall on the solstices and equinoxes, and the approximate midpoints in between.
Samhain, which occurs on October 31st, is one of these. Many consider Samhain to be the Witches’ New Year, making it a perfect one to start with here.
Finally… Samhain
You can think of Samhain as Halloween’s older, more serious, big sister. Where Halloween has come to be about fun costumes, candy, and jump scares, Samhain is the deeper source of those traditions. (There are Pagan scholars who would “well actually…” this ad nauseum, but this is a simple intro.)
Samhain is the last of three harvest festivals. As the final harvest, its meaning is partially symbolic. Sure, it’s around this time (historically, anyway) that the very last of the crops would be taken from the fields but, also, Samhain is about the harvesting of souls—a symbol of death. This is why the Grim Reaper is called a “reaper,” and why he carries a scythe.
Samhain is a time for honoring the dead, as well as for communicating with them, whether that be just by talking in the hope that they’re listening, or by doing divinations and séances, designed to elicit actual replies. The veil between the lands of the living and the dead is believed to be at its thinnest on Samhain, making such communications more effective at this time of year than any other time.
And the costumes and candy of Halloween? Again, these are fun evolutions of darker and more meaningful things. A thinning of the veil between us and the dead means that intentional attempts to communicate can work better, but that also means unintentional contact is more possible as well.
Samhain, like baby-sister Halloween, is a time for ghosts. Whether you’re calling up spirits intentionally or not, giving them offerings was believed to be a great way of staying on their good side. Those offerings would most commonly have been little cakes, sometimes called “soul cakes*” in the past, but candy is certainly a handy substitute! Kids in costumes, trick-or-treating from door to door represent those spirits, come to pay us a visit and asking for sweet offerings in return.
There’s a lot more depth to the history and meaning of Samhain, of course, but that’s a decent introduction, I think, and certainly enough to give some better context and background when encountering references to this holiday in my books. If you want to read more, a web search will give you more information than you’ll know what to do with. Here’s a good article to get you started, if you’re interested: Samhain: Meaning, Rituals, and Symbols of the Witch’s New Year | The Pagan Grimoire
One Last Thing
There’s one last bit that people sometimes gloss over when talking about Samhain. I’d normally have led with it, but I was busy ranting about my job and the forced-Christianity of Christmas. Sorry about that!
The big thing is… how the hell do you pronounce it??
Though most modern Pagans celebrate it quite differently than in the past, Samhain is an ancient Celtic festival. And if you have any experience with old Irish things, you’ll know that, to a native English speaker, the Gaelic and Irish languages are not intuitive at all, full of what feel like extra letters, in random places.
Samhain is one of these words. There are a few accepted ways to say it. I say “sow-win” where “sow” is pronounced to rhyme with “cow.” Others say “sew-in,” “sah-win,” or any of those first syllables but with “waine” as the second.
I won’t claim to be an expert in pronouncing ancient Irish words, but I can say, as a longtime member of the Pagan community, that nobody will look at you funny as long as you don’t pronounce the M or the H. Avoid “Sam-Hayne” and you’re good. (And if you still pronounce it that way in your head when you’re writing or typing it, to remember how to spell it, that’s fine too!)
Conclusion
So, that’s Samhain. Or the bare bones of it, anyway. (Pun maybe intended.) I write my fictional worlds to be places where someone who celebrates Pagan holidays will hopefully feel at home, but I certainly don’t write only for those people. Unlike those who would force me to celebrate their holidays at work, or who would have you believe their identity is the “standard” human experience, I strive to write a world where every voice and every experience, even the less common ones, are valid.
We’ll be continuing this trip through the eight holidays of the Wheel of the Year in December, when we look at Yule. Thanks for taking the time to read this rather long post!
*And yes, hypothetical Pagan scholar, I’m perfectly aware the tradition of soul cakes is actually Christian in origin, and thus something of a contradiction to my “I don’t celebrate Christian traditions” rant in the first section. Sue me.
