I don’t refer to this time as Samhain.  To me, it is both Hallowe’en and Last Harvest. And it’s not just one day, either – it’s the beginning of a helter-skelter run of activity that spans thirteen weeks.  Yes, I’m not one to do things by half!

Hallowe’en is the secular part of my celebration.  It normally falls in the week-long half-term holiday that separates the two halves of the first term of the school year here in the UK, so celebrations begin as the schools finish. For Hallowe’en, we decorate the house and garden with orange and black displays, carved pumpkins, daft signs, and even the Witchlets’ teddy bears get into the action as they dress them up in old costumes they have grown out of.  I take the Witchlets trick-or-treating on the evening of Hallowe’en, all dressed up as ghosts, ghouls, zombies or witches.  Unlike our American friends, children in the UK tend to dress up in ‘scary’ costumes, or Hallowe’en themed ones (both Witchlets were dressed up as pumpkins in their first year!).  Then it’s back to the house to await trick-or-treaters arriving at our door, and handing out sweets.  I also throw a Hallowe’en themed party on the weekend nearest Hallowe’en night for the Witchlets, their friends and our family.  We have been lucky every year so far that it tends to be quite warm and they can run around the garden!

Last Harvest is my spiritual celebration.  It marks the last of the ‘outside’ portion of my spiritual work for the year.  I do not follow the calendar; my timing is set by the local landscape around me.  When the time is right, when the smell of winter just tickles my nose as I step outside – that is when my Last Harvest routines begin by one last walk to ‘my’ woods to whisper lullabies in the ears of deciduous trees, say prayers with the old Yews that act as guardians for this place.  Elderberry wine, made the previous year, is poured at the feet of these old guardians with thanks for their centuries of service.  The vegetable plot is put to bed, leaving the green compost to rot down in places, spreading my compost over the bare areas, leaving garlic cloves sleeping underground to poke through in spring.  The last of the leeks and swedes are left to store in the earth they grew in.  My neighbour leans over the fence and hands me the last of his unwanted apples from his small but incredibly productive apple tree.  I pass back a couple of bottles of hard cider made from the previous year’s crop, and a home-made apple and blackberry pie.  One evening, after my neighbour is fast asleep, I lean over that very same fence and whisper thank you to the tree, pouring more cider into the ground near its roots.

While it is the end of my outside year (more or less!), it is the start of the most frantic inside part of my year.  It starts now, and my backside doesn’t seem to hit a chair again until after Twelfth Night in January!  Every year I pull out my Tarot cards and do a reading for the thirteen moons ahead, and promise myself I will work with my cards far more in the coming year (a promise I have failed miserably to keep so far) and look over last year’s reading (if I can find it; again, something that has failed miserably on several occasions).  I begin by calling back my Beloved Dead – those who were close to me who are no longer living in this plane.  They are invited back with a solitary ritual, but celebrated and welcomed with a family meal, where The Hubster and I tell their stories to wild-eyed Witchlets.  Some of these stories are now over a hundred years old – they are stories that my Great-Grandmother told.  They are a tiny oral tradition, not written down, but told and embellished (because aren’t all great stories living things that evolve and grow?) slowly over time.