Dia de los Muertos folk art by Kevin T.; available at Photobucket.

Samhain is one of the most widely known of the Pagan holidays in (perhaps tied with Yule). It’s certainly the least understood.
I suppose that’s fitting. It is the holiday Pagans themselves celebrate with one foot in the mundane world of candy, costumes and parties, the other at the edge of the Farthest Shore.

The biggest community-wide notice of the holiday is the annual Witches’ Ball. It’s a fund-raiser for June’s Pagan Picnic, and is held at a popular local banquet hall. It’s a great Halloween party for grown-ups. And this year, they’ve added a community ancestor altar. I’ll be there.

I’ll also be at an event Saturday. Maria Guadalupe and her group of local artists are throwing a Day of the Dead party at MoKaBe’s, corner of Arsenal and Grand Blvd., from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. There’s a samba parade as a grand finale. Wayne St.Wayne and other artists will be painting bones on volunteer skeletons, and other partygoers, if time allows. The admission of $5 and up benefits WORD in Motion Inner City School, SLAM Poetry St. Louis, and the Leonard Peltier Defense Fund.

It piqued my interest because, first of all, Day of the Dead fascinates me with its similarities to Samhain as I understand and celebrate it. Second, because the flier mentions the parade is in honor of many different peoples and groups, including “Celts, Druids, healers burned as Witches.”

They didn’t add, but I could, “children being tortured and killed in the latest witch scare.”

And later that night, I’ll finish the Samhain celebration quietly, at home. That’s the way most Pagans celebrate the deepest part of the event. We gather with close friends or family. At most, a community group that feels like extended family. The customs vary, but the meaning is the same: to let those we have loved and lost know that we remember them. To ask that they remember us in their new lives. To ask for counsel and aid if it can be given. To peer through the illusion of linear time and see whether we can make out the dim outlines of possible futures.

I’m planning a dinner that contains foods my grandparents loved. I’ll fix a plate for the Ancestors,and put it on the table I keep for them all year. I’ll arrange the pictures and mementos that help me connect to them.
There will be a fresh glass of water on the altar cloth. Many Pagan traditions believe water gives ancestral spirits the energy they need to help us in this world. I’ll light the white candle that shows I am thinking of them. I’ll ask to become more like them.
Like my Grandpa Bill, who had the optimism to buy his first acreage in the darkest parts of the Great Depression, because he was sure times would get better. Like my Grandma Edith, who never hesitated to dump a man who wouldn’t let her dance and at the age of 72, married a 56-year-old. Like Grandma Lucile, who planted a garden every spring and left the results up to God-although she helped Him along with hard days of weeding, hoeing and watering.

I still miss them all. But life ends. We don’t become immortal by denying death. We can’t hide from it. It doesn’t matter what you dress as on Halloween night-Samhain is always there on the other side. The old Celts knew it. They knew not all the cattle would make it through the winter. So in late fall they culled the herds. Some cattle died to feed the farmers. The cattle that remained had enough fodder to make it to spring calving season.

There’s no evil in that. It’s just life. Things are born, other things die to make room for them. Acorns fall from oaks. Dead leaves decay to make the earth fertile for the new growth. From death comes life.

For me, simple observation of nature trumps all theology on the afterlife. I see the cycle every year. I don’t know exactly what form my own transmutation shall take when I leave to join the Beloved Dead. I simply believe it will happen. Matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed, just transformed.
So on Halloween, we put on masks and give out candy and celebrate still being alive. On Samhain, we reach out to those standing just the other side of the veil between life and death. Only the form has changed. We still remember, and so do they.

For more information on the origins and customs of Samhain, here are three good sources:

Samhain, Wikipedia. (Yes, Wikipedia has its flaws. But this article does a good job of hitting the highlights.)

Detail on origins and customs of Samhain from our friends in the United Kingdom.

A guide for creating an ancestor altar and ritual of remembrance, excerpted from Kindling the Celtic Spirit: Ancient Traditions to Illuminate Your Life Throughout the Seasons, by Mara Freeman and published by Harper San Francisco. My  own altar design is based on Orion Foxwood’s descriptions in The Faery Teachings.