Halloween Traditions

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Author: Jahily al'Karee, November 2013

Happy Halloween and/or All Souls Night everyone! I sent a call out this month to learn about your Halloween traditions, and once again y’all sent me some great stories – and in my case personally, some wonderful food for thought about some different traditions.

I’ll start on a more serious side of the holiday, with this account from one site member:

We believe in “all souls night” aka “Halloween.” This is a time when the boundaries between heaven and earth are close. We light the bonfire (aka bbq ) to show a light for those crossing over for the night. We bring out the old photos and share stories of ancestors and relatives who have passed. This would also be a time to visit the grave sites of those departed but we do not live close to any at the time. This is followed by “All Saints Day” when we remember the saints of the church. We do the trick or treating thing, but try to keep the focus on what the holiday should be about...remembering those who have passed.

Another site member sent me a wonderfully-detailed accounting of the Wiccan calendar and the traditions they follow on Halloween night, which begins the season of Samhain (pronounced Sow-ehn). {Please note – this section is quoted directly but due to space considerations, heavily edited. If you are interested in reading the whole account please PM me and I’ll be happy to share it with you!}

Samhain is celebrated on Halloween for us. It means a lot of things to those of us who practice Wicca: It's the New Year, or it can be the end of the harvest season. Most importantly, it's considered a time when the walls between the worlds are thin and you can most easily make contact with departed loved ones. We have a major ceremony; we begin by visualizing a protective circle. We acknowledge the Goddess and the God and the five major elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Spirit.

We have a part of the ceremony where we acknowledge the presence of our ancestral spirits. These ancestral spirits aren't necessarily ancestral spirits in the American Indian sense, per se. Rather, it's an acknowledgement of our departed loved ones (who, anthropologically speaking, fall under the category of ancestral spirits). We light the candles on the altar; we have items on the altar representing the season. We bring photographs of our loved ones (grandparents, etc.) or objects that represent them, and one of us will bless each and every object. Then we have our cakes and ale ceremony. However, because we often have underage individuals present, the ale can be simple hot cider, grape juice, or whatever juice is in season--we Wiccans like to acknowledge the bounty of the seasons in our ceremonies.

Finally, we Banish the Five Elements and thank the Goddess and the God for watching over us during the ceremony. Most ceremonies in Wicca require sustenance afterwards to help ground us, so we usually have a smallish meal. The Samhain meal is a huge feast that everyone contributes to; mostly, we like to keep the food limited to whatever's in season if possible. It's really a very solemn ceremony. If we're outside, there's often a bonfire. We wear special clothing to help remind us that we are at a ceremony.

The writer draws many similarities between services of their Christian upbringing to the Samhain ceremony. The person adds, “Wicca is simply a different way than Christianity that allows its practitioners to acknowledge the spiritual world.”

I loved this fun, Halloween tradition from another member. They painted such a great word picture, I can totally imagine this:

I'm fireman's daughter, so whenever the firehouse in town has events, my family is usually in the middle of it. Every year, our small town has a costume contest at the middle school. And every year the firemen lead the kids to the school. We start at one end of town. The trucks drive through town and those of us on the trucks throw candy out the windows to the children who line the streets. Once the trucks pass, the families fall in line behind us and everyone makes their way to the school for the costume contest. For as long as I can remember that's been one of my favorite Halloween traditions: getting to ride the fire truck and throw candy to all the other kids.

And one of my fellow Texans sent me this: “We get together and have a bowl of chili with the family before the kids go trick or treating.” Sounds delicious!

As a child, I remember having Halloween carnivals at school, and trick or treating with friends. I have a friend with a Halloween birthday, so often our celebrations in recent years include celebrating that too. Now our traditions focus on activities with our son – we take him to pick out pumpkins at a local pumpkin patch, and this year enjoyed a “Monster Mash” carnival at his elementary school. On Halloween night we will be visiting our church’s Trunk or Treat. This is an event where people decorate their car trunks, park them in a sectioned part of the parking lot, and the kids go from trunk to trunk. They also cook out hot dogs and have a hay ride.

However you celebrate this week, I hope you have a fun and safe time!