The Celtic New Year was celebrated at Samhain, the eve of October 31st, now celebrated worldwide with the rise of Christianity as All Hallows, Halloween or All Saints Day. Christianity found that a number of Celtic customs were compatible with their religion and hence adopted them. The festival ushered in a New Year and marked the beginning of winter. Its literal translation is "summer's end", from sam "summer" and fuin "end" (Gaelic). Samhain marks one of the two great doorways of the Celtic year, as the Celts divided the year into two seasons: the light at Beltane on May 1st and the dark at Samhain on November 1st.

All Hallows Eve was known as an intensely spiritual time when different dimensions of reality came closer. Poeple believed that the Celtic underworld became visible and that the veil between this world and the Otherworld was so thin that the dead could return to warm themselves at the hearths of the living. People also believed that some of the living were able to enter the Otherworld through the doorways of the sidhe, such as that at the Hill of Tara in Ireland. Also, in Celtic mythology, an integral part of Samhain was the ritual mating between the Goddesses and the Gods. So for those of you dressing up as Gods and Goddesses this year, watch out!

A new fire was kindled on the eve of Samhain, and from this sacred flame all the fires in Ireland were rekindled. This is where the idea of the bonfire came from and it is a tradition that still remains today. The word "bonfire" comes from Celtic "bone fires". Villagers used to put out all other fires in their homes and light their hearth fire from the village bonfire, thus binding all the families of the village into one unit.

Rituals on this night embrace providing hospitality to the dead ancestors. People welcomed the dead with food and drink. However, not all spirits from the Otherworld were good; there were evil spirits too. Yikes! To keep evil spirits away from their home, people carved images of spirit-guardians onto turnips and placed them at the doors of their homes. This is probably where our funky pumpkins came from.

As part of the Celtic festivities young people wore strange costumes and moved around the village, pretending to be dead spirits visiting from the Otherworld. The Celts believed that on the eve of New Year; the boundary between this world and the Otherworld dissolved, and the structure of society dissolved too. Boys and girls would dress up as members of the opposite sex and play pranks on the elders.