Samhain
🍂 Samhain: The Celtic Threshold of Light and Shadow
Today we enter Samhain (pronounced SOW-in), the ancient Celtic festival that marked the beginning of winter and, in many ways, the start of the new year. Samhain is a threshold feast — a moment between seasons, when the Celts believed the veil between this world and the next grew thin enough to sense the brush of eternity.
Contrary to modern imagination, Samhain was not a dark or fearful time for the early Celtic Christians. It was a season of gentleness and spiritual remembering — a time to honour the saints, the ancestors, and all those whose lives continue to shape us.
The early monastic communities didn’t reject Samhain; they wove it into Christian understanding. They recognised that life and death are held together in the embrace of God, that the communion of saints surrounds us, and that winter is the season of deep listening.
Samhain invites us to:
🕯 Remember our loved ones
🕯 Attend to dreams and intuition
🕯 Release the old year’s burdens
🕯 Prepare our hearts for the coming light of Advent
It is no accident that All Saints’ and All Souls’ follow closely after. This whole turning of the year whispers the same truth:
The love of God holds every soul, on both sides of the veil.
May Samhain draw you into the quiet mystery of God-with-us — in life, in death, and in all the holy thresholds between.
Blessings on the turning time. 🍁🕯️