Halloween

Halloween is the modern name of the ancient Irish and Scottish holiday of Samhain (pronounced SOW-win), a Celtic-Gaelic word meaning “summers-end”. It begins at dusk on October 31, and marks the doorway to the dark half of the Celtic year, the opening of a new cycle.

In the 7th-century CE the Pope established All Saints’ Day, originally on May 13, and in the following century it was moved to November 1. The evening before All Saints’ Day became a holy, or hallowed, eve and thus Samhain became Halloween.

The Reformation put an end to the religious holiday among Protestants, although in Britain Halloween continued to be celebrated as a secular holiday. The celebration of Halloween was mostly forbidden among the early American colonists, until the 1800s.

Agenda

1. Days of Passion

2. Make a costume

3. Trick or Treats

1. Days of Passion:

On Fridays I make a plan for Nature-Culture flow and writing through the next week. My Nature-Culture theme this month is life and death, animals, and preparing for winter. I'm also working on the idea of the intersection of Nature and Culture: Is there a balance point, like a Yin yang, between the two? How can I better incorporate a sense of my wild animal instinctual being into my days, and thinking like an earth dweller rather than a person from mars?

• Writing: Sanctuary: Nature's way to make fertile soil, hugelkulture; Awareness of animals (and self as animal), and life and death; Natural living: Regenerative winter gardening; Give Back: Advocate for Homegrown park, little free plants, butterfly tags; Write a Habitat Haven neighbor letter
• Creativity: Begin work on EC trifold; Start a positivity abstract (about butterflies?); New butterfly tags; Sewing project? Leaf luminary and garland
• Garden: Sow native seeds; take a Mason Bee workshop; Build hugelkulture, plant clover and natives; Remove ornamental iris from 2nd street bed; Move soil, remove thimbleberry; Remove English ivy in hedge
• Community: EC meeting (assigning roles) + make tags together; schedule a sign-making day; Teach N-C to kids- life and death, tree and leaf names; EC report to Meeting

2. Make a costume:

Originally, folks probably dressed in costumes and masks at Samhain to scare off any spirits that were bad. Now we do it because it's fun! 

3. Trick or Treats:
It's a right of passage ceremony, really - you are deemed old enough to walk up to the doors of strangers and ask for candy. This year we have one veteran 4-year-old trick-or-treater, and a younger brother who is a fast study. At 1-1/2 he can already say all the right words

Today we will practice the etiquette and protocols: How to safely climb the steps, knock on the door, say "Trick or Treat", and pick out ONE candy, then say "Thank-you".