Of spirituality and Samhain

If you’re a druid or pagan, next week is big. New Year’s Eve arrives Oct. 31. It’s known as Samhain, what the rest of us (erroneously?) call Halloween.

As a logical time for a new year, it has a lot going for it. Samhain salutes the end of harvest time and the start of winter dark. At this time of year, nature gets into the mood. The swirling orange leaves are a signal of dramatic transition. Even the annual daylight saving timetable reflects the planetary motions in play. (Daylight saving time ends Nov. 3 this year.)

The reigning new year at the start of January looks arbitrary and underachieving by comparison. It celebrates no agricultural benchmark. It rolls in like a momentary spasm between Christmas and the Super Bowl, a distraction from the wise men’s trek to Bethlehem. (They arrive on Epiphany day, Jan. 6.)

Samhain also honors a metaphysical idea. In the ancient British Isles, Oct. 31 was the night when the veil between the living and the dead was thinnest. The shadow play of imagination, with its great hunches about the great beyond, was given license amid bonfires and new beginnings. Contemporary Halloween captures a childhood costume version of this, with little goblins roaming the neighborhood for candy.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20131026/COLUMNIST0126/310260025/Ray-Waddle-spirituality-Samhain