From: lilleyc@cs.man.ac.uk (Chris Lilley)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: When are you celebrating Samhain?
Date: 4 Nov 92 20:00:02 GMT
Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Manchester, U.K.

In article <BwwIyw.23s@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> dawn@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Dawn
Owens-Nicholson) writes:

>I am wondering when people are celebrating Samhain this year.

>I have noticed several different ways to reckon it:

Sorry about the delay in responding here - we had a netnews break and
I am still working through the backlog.

>1) October 31st  - seems to be the most common day on the net and
>                   elsewhere

October 31st is the eve of Samhain. In the celtic calendar, a day
started at dusk and continued to the next dusk. So, Samhain = sunset
on 31 Oct to sunset on 1 Nov.

If you look round the literature you will find references to this and
other eves, particularly Beltain eve. And also eves of various saints
days - St Johns Eve, St Agnes eve for example.

This usage is the reason for the name Halloween - the eve of all
hallows day (the Xian re-naming of samhain). It is also met in such
days as Xmas eve.

Understanding this also helps explain why the Celtic new year was at
Samhain - the year, like the day, started at the 'dusk' of the year.

Of course Samhain was not originated by the Celts. There are
alignments to Samhain and Beltain sunrises in a number of stone
alignments from the Neolithic and Bronze ages.

>4) November 10th  
>               - This is the day of the 2nd full moon after the 
>                 Autumnal Equinox.  I extrapolated this date from a
>                 post of BA Davis-Howe's regarding his reckoning of
>                 Beltaine as the the second full moon after the 
>                 Vernal Equinox.  I have never read of this method
>                 anywhere but in his post.

I have. The lifespan lunar calendar, for example, gives all the four major
festivals as both a sunrise date and a moon date. They use the nearest
full or new moon as appropriate. 

>I have not decided which date I am going to use yet.  In years past,
>I have always used Oct 31st.  However, this year I am leaning toward
>November 6th.  When are other folks celebrating this year?

For me, its a tide. Celebrating on one day seems like going to church
on Sunday. I feel it building up and I feel it decaying down again and
moving on to the next tide. Some years early, some years later.

In case anyone gets confused about this in the context of the earlier
part of my post, let me just say that information about what the Celts
did, while interesting to me, I see as in no way binding. Paganism to
me is a living religion, not a process of pedantic historical
re-enactment.

Chris
-------------------------------------------------------------------
OK so I do a bit of News, now and again. It's OK, I can handle it.
I could give up any time I wanted ;-)
-------------------------------------------------------------------

--
Chris Lilley
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Technical Author, ITTI Computer Graphics and Visualisation Training Project
Computer Graphics Unit, Manchester Computing Centre, Manchester, UK
Internet:   lilley@cgu.mcc.ac.uk        Janet:   lilley@uk.ac.mcc.cgu
Voice:      +44 (0)61 275 6095          Fax:     +44 (0)61 275 6040
---------------------------------------------------------------------------