Out 'Guising

First off thanks to all of you who took the time to comment on my 200th. You made me smile :)

Apologies for the quality - this was snatched on the doorstep with moving subjects!!!

I love Halloween - up here in the sleepy village of Dulmullo its very much a community thing. The kids come round in little groups and they tell a joke, sing a song, tell you how nice your pumpkins are and say thank you. I know its not the same everywhere! I have enjoyed making the pumpkins, dressing up J (he is the zombie bottom left of the shot) and baking cookies for the kids. I am no earth mother believe me but can pull the finger out if motivated to do so! Its another of those markers in the year as we leave the light nights and the summer firmly behind and look forward to the next 4 months of darkness. The spirits are rising!! Not long now till the next pagan celebration to break up the winter months!


Shamelessly copied from Wiki for my firend !Peopletwitcher

Samhain marked the end of the harvest, the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half". It was traditionally celebrated over the course of several days. Many scholars believe that it was the beginning of the Celtic year.It has some elements of a festival of the dead. The Gaels believed that the border between this world and the otherworld became thin on Samhain; because so many animals and plants were dying, it thus allowed the dead to reach back through the veil that separated them from the living. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. People and their livestock would often walk between two bonfires as a cleansing ritual, and the bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flame

The Gaelic custom of wearing costumes and masks, was an attempt to copy the spirits or placate them. In Scotland the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white.Samhnag ? turnips which were hollowed-out and carved with faces to make lanterns ? were also used to ward off harmful spirits.

The Gaelic festival became associated with the Catholic All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, and has hugely influenced the secular customs now connected with Halloween, a name first attested in the 16th century as a Scottish shortening of the fuller All-Hallows-Even.Samhain continues to be celebrated as a religious festival by some neopagans.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN