Samhain

Samhain and Halloween are not the same, though they fall on the same night and share several customs. Samhain is the pagan festival that closes the harvest and opens the dark half of the year, kept by pagans and witches as a night for the ancestors. Halloween is the secular holiday of costumes, candy, and porch decorations that grew alongside it. Many pagan families keep both, trick-or-treating with the neighbors and holding their own observance before or after.

Samhain is pronounced sow-in, with the first syllable rhyming with cow. The spelling is Irish and does not sound the way it looks to an English reader. Sah-win and sow-een are both heard in pagan and witch communities, and none of the three will cause confusion.

Samhain traditions kept by pagans and witches include setting an extra place at the table for the dead, lighting a candle in a window, naming the ancestors aloud before a meal, eating the last of the harvest, and divination for the year ahead. The dumb supper, a meal eaten in silence with the dead served first, is a twentieth-century witchcraft custom that many households keep. Bonfires and carved turnips come from the Gaelic festival and survive now as porch pumpkins.

Activities for Samhain range from a single candle to a full evening. The smallest version is one candle and one name said aloud. A fuller version adds a harvest meal, an ancestor altar, a walk after dark, and a divination session for the year ahead. Pagans and witches celebrating alone tend toward divination, journaling, and ancestor work, while families build the evening around the table.

Samhain is pagan, and Wicca is one of several pagan traditions that keep it. The festival itself is Gaelic and predates Wicca by centuries; the eightfold Wheel of the Year that places it opposite Beltane is a twentieth-century construction that Wicca helped popularize. Witches and pagans outside Wicca keep Samhain too, including Heathens, Druids, and solitary practitioners with no tradition at all.