This is not about what Hallowe'en is. If you don't know, then you're probaby an alien from outer space anyway. For me, it is Samhain, the Pagan sabbat that celebrates the end of the year and the beginning of the next. It is a time when the veil between the living and the dead is at it's thinnest, and we remember our beloved and honoured dead. The actual day of Samhain is november 1, but it begins on the night of october 31. Quite how it became the pumpkin, trick-or-treat, dressing up party it is today is probably down to the early Christians. They were prone to highjacking Pagan festivals and shoe-horning their own into them in order to influence more people to their religion. As they associated Paganism with evil, it is easy to see how Hallowe'en got it's horror connitations, which were watered-down and cosyfied (it's a word!) into the children's festival.

I will say here and now; I have never dressed up for Hallowe'en, except when I was a child, when it was practically compulsary to masquerade as a witch. We did go door to door, but for pennies, not sweets. In the UK, the bonfire night festival on november 5 has always meant more than Hallowe'en, and teenagers especially ask for money to buy fireworks. The bonfire was part of the original Samhain sabbat, meant to chase the cold and the dark away. The end of the year, in the UK, has always been a time to indulge in stories about ghosts and monsters. The nights are longer and darker, and the forest seems to edge closer, with the long fingers of the leafless trees grasping at anyone who is brave enough to wander among them. Families huddle closer to the fire to keep warm and for comfort from the dark. And then the stories begin, to while away the hours and to terrify listeners. Who is walking outside with an odd limping gait? Could it be a zombie, attracted by the lights? What is it that flies through the sky and sets the dogs to barking? Vampires, warewolves and everything strange are creeping through the night, and the souls of the dead are so close they could almost be touched. Oh dear, I think I've scared myself!

As a Pagan, what do I do for Samhain? I am not a witch or a Wiccan, so I don't do spells of rituals. If the weather is not too horrible, then I find a place to sit in the garden and remember those I loved and cared for, who went on ahead to the Summerlands. It's a bitter-sweet time for me, as my mother died at Samhain in 2010, so the thinning veil means more to me at this time.