"Then, Autumn, work thy witchery!"

October 31st. Halloween. All Hallow's Eve. For me, it's Samhain - one of four Gaelic seasonal festivals adopted by many neo-pagans, traditionally marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the darkest part of the year. The word is Gaelic and is pronounced in a few slightly different ways depending on the region, but I say it "sow-en" (sow as in female pig, not sow as in seeds).

With autumn well underway, people had to take stock of what they had to last them through the winter. Animals were brought in from pasture, and any they felt wouldn't make it to the spring, or any they wouldn't be able to feed, were killed and the meat salted. All crops except perhaps some hardy winter vegetables would have been harvested and eaten or preserved by this time. So for many it may have been the last chance to eat many fresh foods, particularly meat, until the spring. In the Celtic calendar, where each day began at sunset, Samhain was the end of the old year and the start of the new - just as life starts in darkness, so did their days, and their years. It's also considered to be a liminal time when the veil between worlds is thinnest, a time when spirits can roam, a time for remembering and honouring the ones who came before us. The time when the Goddess dons her robes as Crone and the Horned God begins the Wild Hunt.

I've never really been into the general, more commercialised, Halloween. I like some aspects, more to do with the emphasised autumn-ness, and bats, black cats, ravens, and an air of mystery and magic. But I don't like horror or creepy things, don't think I ever went to a party, and only remember going trick-or-treating once, and went home after about ten minutes - not my thing. (If you look at the Wikipedia page for trick-or-treating, it gives an interesting variety of possible origins to and history of the custom.) As a more seasonal, nature-based, folk-tradition festival, I love Samhain. Having said that, I don't really do anything to celebrate. I've been to events a few times, I love to do that when I get a chance. The one held each year at Butser Ancient Farm is good, very much my kind of thing - after dark at a reconstructed Iron Age farm in the middle of the countryside, sitting on log benches around the hearth fire in the beautiful main roundhouse, listening to folk music and storytelling, loving the smell of woodsmoke, munching on a burger or hot dog outside afterwards. And last week I visited a friend in Cornwall and we went to the annual All Hallow's Dark Gathering in Boscastle, home of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic - there was storytelling, Morris dancing, a lantern parade, Mari Lwyds and Osses and a Pwnco Ceremony (look them up), a really cool fire dance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eBpZVQrEQ), and a 9pm wander round the dimly-lit and atmospheric but interesting museum (with a warning to not look into any of the mirrors...).

Anyway... as I said, I love events like that when I can get to them, but generally all I do is light a couple of candles and watch one of my favourite films - Practical Magic. It's become a tradition for me, and I only ever watch it once a year, on October 31st or as close to that date as possible. For years I've wanted to do something more, to expand on that tradition and make Samhain a bit more of a little seasonal celebration, but have never got around to planning anything. Next year, I'd love to cook some nice autumnal comfort food for dinner, like a vegetable stew with dumplings, or soup with fresh crusty bread, and bake a pumpkin pie. It'd be nice to get out some photos of relatives who have died, and spend a bit of time remembering them in some way. I also like the idea of finding stories of other people from the past, and sharing them, so that they're remembered again for a little while. Maybe I'll collect some natural fallen items to bring inside for a few days as decorations - pine cones, acorns, apples, leaves or foliage. I should also watch more than one seasonal film, more than just Practical Magic, there are many I haven't seen in years. And read some Halloween-y poems (the title of this post is from Incantation by George Parsons Lathrop). Ooh, and maybe I'll make myself a Samhain playlist on Spotify - the Ghostbusters theme song, Loreena McKennitt's "All Soul's Night", Show of Hands' "Hallow's Eve", Damh the Bard's "Samhain Eve", and awesome Omnia's "Wytches' Brew", "The Raven", and "Wylde Hunt".

Side note. Halloween has become a huge commercial holiday, and, like all of them, is extremely, awfully, wasteful - roughly seven million costumes end up in landfill each year, as do around 18,000 tonnes of carved but uneaten pumpkins. It's part of a wider, systemic waste problem, but that's just not okay, is it? In doing a quick search for having a more eco-friendly Halloween, I've just come across the charity Hubbub, which works to get mainstream consumers interested in sustainability issues. Here are some of their ideas to make the time of oranges and purples and blacks, a little greener:

• Costumes and decorations - Rewear/reuse or upcycle old ones, swap with others, buy second-hand, see if you can rent one, or make your own: https://www.hubbub.org.uk/diy-halloween-costume
• Pumpkins - Remind yourself and teach any children in your life that these are vegetables. Use the flesh inside to cook or bake something, and roast the seeds for a snack or use them for birdfeed; for recipes visit https://www.hubbub.org.uk/Pages/Category/recipes and select Halloween. After the carved pumpkin has been used and if you have a garden or allotment, put it in the compost, or chop it up and bury the pieces in the soil so it breaks down, or leave it on a shed roof or a table for the squirrels and birds to benefit from. DO NOT leave it on the ground or dump it in the woods - pumpkin can make hedgehogs very ill, at a time when they need to be storing nutrients and gaining weight for hibernation. If you don't have a garden or allotment and your council doesn't take food waste, maybe see if a friend or neighbour or a relative who does would be willing to take it.
• Not Hubbub, but some more zero-waste ideas, including a good one for a costume! https://www.pawsandpines.com/zero-waste-halloween/

In our modern world, it's very difficult to relate to the lives our ancestors would have led. We may notice that the days are colder, the leaves are changing colour and falling off the trees, and it's dark by the time we leave work (you know you're British when you and everyone around you comments on this every single year as if it's new and surprising) - but many of us spend most of our time indoors, surrounded by concrete and artificial lights, don't grow our own food, can have warm homes and hot water at the touch of a button, and can have pretty much any type of food at any time of year. There are some good and valuable things there, we have gained a lot - but we have also lost a lot. We no longer have the deep, ingrained knowledge and understanding and appreciation of, and connection to, the natural world, the land, the seasons, the ways of animals, that our ancestors had. We have forgotten much, and take a lot for granted.

Our ancestors' lives and activities would have varied with the rhythm of the seasons, whereas nowadays we do the same thing all year round at the same fast pace. We're not built for this, our bodies haven't had time to evolve with our technological advances. This is a time of year when the Earth's energies are pulled inwards, life hibernates, waiting for the return of spring, and it's a good time for us, too, to look inwards, at ourselves; look back at the year we've had, think about what we've learned and how we can use that knowledge in the future. It's a time for introspection, slowing down, pausing, resting, recovering. It's not too long to wait until the winter solstice, when the light starts to return.