Halloween or Samhain, as it was once called, was a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the “darker half” of the year. Traditionally, it was celebrated about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.

Here we are again … yet, at this date, on the 31st of October, it’s actually the eve of summer in the southern hemisphere … down here in Oz! Why would we celebrate this traditional event at the onset of summer? If we celebrate something without knowing why we’re celebrating it, isn’t that unconsciousness? And where is unconsciousness going to get us?

According to scholars, this was originally a festival of the dead with pagan roots, along with games traditionally played as a form of divination. It celebrates the time between autumn and winter, life and death. At the ancient Celtic festival people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. Nowadays, typical festive Halloween activities just include trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, lighting bonfires, visiting haunted houses, playing pranks, telling scary stories, watching horror films, etc.If we were to acknowledge the true spirit of Halloween, why not celebrate it at the end of our autumn in April?