At the Turning of the Year

There is something about this time of year that makes us look both ways.

Back at what has passed. Ahead at what is coming.

Long before January became the beginning we mark on our calendars, Samhain stood at one of the great turning points of the traditional Irish year: summer was over, the harvest was gathered, livestock came down from the higher pastures, and winter waited at the door.

It was a threshold.

Perhaps that is why so many traditions surrounding Samhain concern themselves with things that exist at thresholds too: the living and the dead, light and darkness, home and the unknown, the year that was and the year yet to come.

Some of those traditions survived. Some changed. Some crossed oceans and became almost unrecognizable from where they began. A turnip became a pumpkin. An old custom became a children’s game. Folklore became Halloween imagery sold in shops thousands of miles from the places that first told the stories.

And yet the old stories are still there.

For this small Samhain edition of CelticMFF Magazine, we wanted to go looking for a few of them.

We travel to Ireland to explore Samhain and the traditions surrounding the turning of the year. We follow the wonderfully gruesome history of the carved turnip through Ireland and the Isle of Man. And in Wales, we meet the Hwch Ddu Gwta—the Tailless Black Sow who, according to tradition, was very good reason not to be the last person lingering outside on Calan Gaeaf.

This isn’t meant to be an encyclopedia of Samhain. There are far too many regional traditions, stories and centuries of change for that.

It’s simply a visit.

And perhaps that’s appropriate. CelticMFF itself is standing at a threshold. We’re new. We’re building something that we hope will become a gathering place for the festivals, music, films, people, places and stories scattered across the Celtic world and its diaspora.

There will be much more to come.

But before we hurry toward Christmas and another year, it seems right to spend a little time here—at the turning.

To remember what came before.

To wonder what comes next.

And to keep a light burning for the stories worth carrying with us.