Beltane or Halloween? It depends where you live.
As a Wiccan myself for over 30 years and therefore someone who considers this day as one of my eight sabbats (special celebratory days), I am getting more and more irritated at the misuse of this festival and particularly as it is being celebrated in this country of NZ at the wrong time of the year.
I have written using this blog about this issue back in 2014, but because nothing has changed and society continues to refer to this day as Halloween, as though we were citizens of North America enjoying the late Autumn instead of living in the Southern Hemisphere in late spring, I decided to inform people once again. Here it goes...........................
All Hallows' Eve or Samhain the Witches New Year, is the night when the veil between the world of spirit and daily life is thin and able to be transcended, is in fact an Autumn festival which is why you can traditionally see pumpkins hollowed out with candles sitting inside shining their light in the windows of houses. It amazes me that "kiwi" parents think that it is appropriate to celebrate this autumn festival day in a New Zealand spring- sure there are pumpkins in the shops to buy but these are ones that have been stored in cool places after having been picked in the autumn harvest.
According to Starhawk in "The Spiral Dance", the Sabbats are the eight points at which we connect the inner and outer cycles: the interstices where the seasonal, the celestial, the communal, the creative, and the personal all meet. We are not separate from each other, from the broader world around us; we are one with the Goddess, with the God."
All Hallows Eve or Witches New Year is a time when we wiccans honour the darkness, when the separation between life and death, between those born and the unborn and the veil between the spirit world and our present reality is at its thinnest. It is the time for reclaiming the Crone, Hecate or as we know her the Triple Head Goddess.
In Juliet Batten's book "Celebrating The Southern Seasons" she describes the Celtic Samhain as meaning 'summers end' being one of the major transitions of the year with the other being Beltane. Samhain was "the feast of the dead with storytelling and divination playing an important part." The fact that this is a festival for the dead explains perhaps the modern happening of dressing up as ghosts and goblins and "trick and treating"
In New Zealand, as we are in the Southern Hemisphere, the 31 October is actually Beltane - a spring festival when the wiccan community dance around a pole holding on to coloured ribbons in celebration of the coming of summer. It is the time to choose a mate for the summer season and traditionally this festival day is a raucous party time for the young women and men of the community.
The 31st of October is Halloween in the United States of America because now in the United States it is autumn, but in my country of choice, Aotearoa/ New Zealand, it is late spring evidenced by the pear and peach blossoms and various flowering plants now growing in my garden.
I also note that the pumpkins available in the shops are from last autumn's harvest and so at a cost of over $5 each reflects that this is Spring time rather than Autumn when they normally would be harvested.
I wish to reclaim All Hallows' Eve for all wiccans and ask those people living in the Southern Hemisphere who wish to celebrate this pagan festival to do so at the correct time of the year-30 April.
Today here in New Zealand it is Beltane and I for one am happy it is Spring and not Autumn as it means the year is coming to close and holiday time is on its way.
I wish everyone who reads this in NZ a Happy 31 October Beltane rather than my unhappy Halloween!!!!!!
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