Greetings pop pickers and please be welcome to tonight’s spooky edition of Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and yet another of our fortnightly mastications upon the marshmallowy pillows of musical magnificence.
Tonight, dear reader, as we respectfully mark both Bladder Leakage Awareness Week and the ancient Celtic new year, Ivory Cutlery (currently numb of buttock, sore of foot and tired of limb) will once again be taking the night off.
I’m currently on the road (left home in mid-September and won’t be home until mid-Nov) and I’m afraid the onerous real-world pressure of being a full-time useless pillock has somewhat limited my opportunities for detailed, rigorous, fact-checked, Puffin-quality research.*
*a transparent tissue of lies – it’s all done by Grok
Because of this, tonight’s missive will be a shoddy and shambolic affair; a puerile stream of consciousness, written rapidly in a succession of shabby hotels and deeply insalubrious crew catering areas.
And so, without further ado, laydees and gentlebodies, Fabulously Flamboyant Friday proudly presents… Samhain! The noble and ancient ancestor of Halloween, from a time so far in our Celtic past that even Keith Richards might have worn short trousers.
Samhain, apparently pronounced somewhere between “sow-in” and “sow-un” (and simply meaning summer’s end), is the traditional and ancient Celtic harvest festival that them there thieving Christians appropriated for All Hallows Eve (Halloween). Samhain traditionally marks the end of the Celtic year and the spooky start of the new; it marks both the end of the season of light and the end of the harvest season; and it marks the beginning of winter and our descent into the spooky season of darkness and death.
As far as our ancient Celtic ancestors were concerned, days began at sunset and lasted until the following sunset. This is reflected in their habit of beginning festivals (and indeed the Celtic new year) at dusk. For this reason, the festival day of Samhain is traditionally observed from sundown on October 31 to sundown on November 1 and, fun fact pop-pickers, some of our etymological Johnnies believe this practice is reflected in the surviving English two-week term of “fortnight”, which of course means 14 nights.
Samhain is the final of four major seasonal festivals in the Celtic year (along with Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasadh). It’s rooted in ancient Irish and Scottish traditions and (unsurprisingly, given the change in weather and the length of the days around this time of year) is seen as a time of transition and a period when the veil between the physical world and the otherworld, between the living and the dead, between the gods and we timorous mortals, was believed to be at its thinnest and most insubstantial. This of course made Samhain the best time for spooky communication with the dead, our noble ancestors, their spirits and our ancient deities.
Samhain is also one of the important fire festivals in the ancient Celtic calender (with the most important probably being Beltane, which is traditionally celebrated on the 1st of May) and is the third and final shindig in a run of three annual Celtic harvest festivals: Lughnasadh, Mabon and Samhain.
Lughnasadh, the first of the Celtic harvest festivals, is celebrated around August the 1st, traditionally about halfway between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. It’s named for the god Lugh – with Lughnasadh simply translating as “Lugh’s gathering”, and it’s a celebration to mark the beginning of the harvest season and the first reaping of the corn. It seems to have involved large gatherings, wild parties, athletic contests, horse racing, feasting, matchmaking, bonking and lots of trading – sounds like a damn fine day out to me!
Mabon (it’s modern name – named after a Taffy God) is the second harvest festival and is believed to be a festival built around the harvest of berries, fruit and vegetables. Mabon was also celebrated to mark the autumnal equinox (around September 21-24 in the Northern Hemisphere) and was the traditional time to give thanks for the year’s bounty, mark the balance between night and day and the beginning of our descent into winter and the hardships it would inevitably bring.
Mabon was traditionally the time for harvest festivals in schools when I was growing up and should probably been called The Festival of Tatty Tins from the back of the Cupboard. Corn dollies are also believed to have originated from this festival. They were made from the last sheaf of grain to be gathered and were believed to contain the spirit of the harvest, which needed to be protected and preserved throughout the coming winter.
The third and final harvest festival of the Celtic year was Samhain, which marked the conclusion of the harvest season, the end of the old year, the start of the new, and a time when communities girded their loins for the darker, colder months ahead.
Samhain gatherings involved bonfires, sacrifice, feasting, storytelling, music, souling (the offering prayers for the departed in exchange for food) and turnip carving (to ward off evil spirits). The festival was traditionally used as a tool to strengthen communal ties, a time of pulling together to face the winter hardships that lay ahead.
Families would leave offerings of food to appease the spirits, bones were used in divination ceremonies to tap the wisdom of the departed and to gain insight into the year to come. Bonfires were lit to guide the spirits, for protection and purification, and to symbolise the waning of the sun’s power as cold and darkness began to stalk the land. Animals unlikely to survive the coming winter or too old for milking or breeding come the spring, were culled for feasting or ritually sacrificed to Celtic deities as offerings to thank them for the previous year’s harvest and to encourage their goodwill for the coming year.
Samhain was also believed to be the time when the veil between this world and the next was at its most insubstantial, which allowed the spirits of the dead to pass through and mingle with the living. The sacred energies produced by Samhain rituals were believed to allow the living and the dead to communicate; and costumes and masks were worn (mumming and guising) to confuse and scare away any malevolent spirits set free from the realm of the dead. Many of course suggest this is where Halloween’s association with masks and costumes originates.
And on the subject of Halloween, our early Samhain rituals seemed to change with the arrival of Pope Gregory I (540-604), aka Saint Gregory The Great – widely lauded for launching the first recorded large-scale mission from Rome, which set out to convert snarling grubby pagans into cherubic Christians. He is credited with successfully establishing and substantially expanding the theological influence of Rome’s medieval papacy and, fun fact pop pickers, for having significant influence upon the pop music of the day – giving rise of course to the term Gregorian chant.
There is a long and sneaky Christian tradition of absorbing, adapting and co-opting pre-existing pagan celebrations into Christianity. This was a very common strategy during the Christianization of Europe, a period when those of a missionary zeal would cunningly re-frame existing Pagan practices with a fresh coat Christian meaning – the better to smooth the transition for converts.
Christmas, of course, is a perfect example of this strategy. It can be traced to numerous pre-Christian winter solstice festivals and celebrations from all across Europe. Yule, a winter festival much celebrated by our Germanic cousins, had many of its customs and traditions (e.g. the Yule log – duh!) folded into the Christian celebration of Christmas.
And the much co-opted ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia, held in late December to honour of the god Saturn, was known for its feasting, merrymaking, gift-giving, Two Ronnies’ Christmas Specials and re-runs of The Great Escape. Additionally, the use of decorations (evergreen trees, wreaths and holly, etc.) comes from Pagan pre-Christian traditions that honoured evergreen plants as symbols of life and rebirth during the deepest, darkest part of our winter in the northern hemisphere.
And our Gregory, it would seem, was also rather keen on this cunning Christian tactic and embarked upon the Christian conversion of we grubby and ignorant Pagans with both gusto and elan. He decreed that Samhain festivities must be fortified and invigorated by the incorporation of powerful Christian saints, the better to ward against the sneaky sprites and evil creatures of the night. He also shifted the Christian celebration of All Saints Day (traditionally marked in May) to November the 1st.
The later 11th century addition of All Souls’ Day on the 2nd of November (a day to honour the dead) inserted a convenient Christian observance for a time of year already associated with an honouring of the dead in established Celtic tradition; and the 31st of October became All Hallows’ Eve, which neatly created a rather splendid three-day Christian festival.
Now I ask you – as an ignorant, mud-covered, bubo-ridden peasant – would you rather observe a paltry Pagan festival that lasted just a single pathetic day? Or would you rather boogie on down for three whole days of celebrations and larks-a-plenty with these fun-loving, new-kids-on-the-block, Christian sorts? Bit of a no-brainer, really… Anyway, All Hallow’s Eve would later of course became known as Halloween. And the rest, as they say, is history…
Now, I’m quite happy to forgive Pope Gregory for his sneaky anti-Pagan shenanigans. Without his cunning interventions we might not have the modern Halloween celebrations we see today. Without them, John Carpenter might not have made his iconic slasher filum, Halloween – a filum that made a star out of one Jamie-Lee Curtis (Lady Haden-Guest to you, pleb!). And if Ms. Curtis had not been so popular, she might never have landed her subsequent role in the John Landis filum, Trading Places, and therefore might not have performed her deeply memorable kit-off scene alongside that lucky bugger, Dan Aykroyd.
I can still remember the involuntary inhalations, gasps and oofs from my fellow cinema-going chaps when young Jamie first unveiled her rather spectacular norkage – followed swiftly of course by a narrowing of the eyes and a series of very stern and coldly appraising looks in our direction from our female companions in the audience. Quite frankly, I care not one jot about the persistent and unsubstantiated Hollywood rumour that Ms Curtis was born swinging meat an’ two veg. Because after all, Fridays is Fridays – and magnificent norks is magnificent norks.
Anyway, as I seem to have wondered badly off topic, I think that’s probably quite enough of my inane winter ramblings for one evening. So I shall wish you all a happy and prosperous Pagan new year, dear Puffins. May all your pillows be tasty, your gardens inclined and your puddles well jumped.
Goodnight, and may your frog go with you – Not ‘arf!
Featured Image: Image by Enrique from Pixabay
© Ivory Cutlery 2025
