Samhain

Yesterday was Samhain/Halloween, my favorite holiday. I love everything about it, from the crisp autumn weather that preceeds it, and the gorgeous bouquet of colors that resides right outside our door. I love the mystique, the spookieness...and the visitors that come around during the thinning of the veil. Because even though it is not a scarey ghost experience, I must admit that it can get a little freaky seeing someone standing in the hallway when you are alone in the house. I know that it is just family or friends or even someone who once lived in this old house, stopping in to say hello, but when you are just going on with daily activities and look up to see them, that makes the heart skip a beat...and then beat fondly. Memories resurface. It's a reflecting time.
In my teenage years, I was like many, an angsty poet, a kind of "bubblegum goth", hormonally depressed from the teenage transistion of child to adult, but happy to a manic point when around my friends, who I regarded as being like me. Misfits, but as teenagers, aren't we all? In those years we referred to fall as the Dying Time, trying to make it sound alot more ominous than it was. Now I know that it is not time for dying, but for reflection, preparing for the hybernation of winter. Crops are harvested and begin to die back, true, but they fetilize the fields and make way for next years planting. The leaves fall from the trees, but the trees do not die, they sleep to get ready for Springs abundance. In pasttimes it was the time for slaughter, so there would be meat through the winter, but all that dies is reborn. Corn and grain, all that falls shall rise again.
Last night we had a wonderful Samhain, as one of my best friends was married. She and her husband were handfasted last year on the same day, and a year later they solidified that relationship in matrimony. It was a beautiful and moving ceremony, that included the two and their three children. It was also a fun wedding, we were in costumes, so their officiant was Jack Frost, and their maid of honor was a pin-up (that was me). Her daughter was an ice princess, his son had a punked up mohawk, my daughter was a flower girl and wanted to wear an old fashioned eyelit dress, another friend was Thor, and my husband was a gangster. We had a small claw machine for the kids, they made punch in a hallowed out pumpkin with dry ice and gummy eyeballs floating in it. There were candles everywhere, it was wonderful. After the reception they had a party, but my daughter and I came home. I lit candles on the memory altar for those that have passed on, and we read spooky stories, then played with the claw machine and ate trick or treat candy. A wonderful holiday that we are recovering from today!
Blessings!