{"product_id":"the-story-of-samhain","title":"The story of Samhain","description":"\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eThe night the cattle came home was older than the name the church would give it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eIn the Gaelic lands of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, the year turned on the hinge between harvest and winter. That hinge was called Samhain — \u003cem\u003eSOW-in\u003c\/em\u003e, the first syllable rhyming with “cow.” It meant summer’s end. The herds were driven in from the high pastures, some animals kept for the dark months, some slaughtered. The fields were finished. The light half of the year was done.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eMedieval Irish tales already treat Samhain as a time of assemblies and open thresholds. The \u003cem\u003esídh\u003c\/em\u003e — the mounds, often ancient burial places — were said to stand open. The \u003cem\u003eaos sí\u003c\/em\u003e, the people of the hollow hills, moved more freely between their world and this one. Food and drink were left out so the visitors would pass on well-disposed. Later folklore added the practice of going masked or in turned-out clothes, so a person walking the roads would not be recognized by anything that should not recognize them. Turnips were hollowed, faces cut into them, and an ember or candle set inside. The light was both practical and unfriendly to whatever walked in the dark.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eNone of this was written down as a complete pagan liturgy. Most of what we can document comes from medieval texts that already sat inside a Christian Ireland, and from household custom recorded centuries later. The pastoral calendar is the firmest ground: cattle in, winter beginning, a night when boundaries were treated as thin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eIn the eighth century the Western Church fixed All Saints’ Day on 1 November. The evening before became All Hallows’ Eve. Over time the name shortened to Halloween. The church’s day for the saints and the later day for the souls of the dead sat on the same hinge the Gaelic year already used. Some older seasonal customs continued beside the new names; others faded or changed. Bonfires, disguises, and house-visiting survived in parts of Ireland, Scotland, and Britain. The turnip lantern stayed a local thing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eWhen large numbers of Irish and Scottish people crossed the Atlantic in the nineteenth century, they carried the night with them. In North America the pumpkin, larger and easier to carve than a turnip, took the place of the old root vegetable. The Headless Horseman and other American stories helped fix the pumpkin in the autumn dark. Costumes and door-to-door visiting grew into the modern custom of trick-or-treating. By the middle of the twentieth century Halloween had become, for most North American society, a children’s night of sweets, masks, and porch lights — largely secular, commercial, and only lightly connected to the old pastoral calendar.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eThe line is real but not unbroken. Samhain was a Gaelic seasonal festival of the year’s turn, the herd, and the open threshold. Halloween is the name that arrived when the Christian calendar sat on the same date, and then the new age form that grew after the customs crossed the ocean. The fire, the cattle, the carved root, and the sense that the night was thin all belong to the older end of the story. The candy, the pumpkins, and the costumes belong to the later one. Both are true of the same night, once the year has finished its harvest and the dark half has begun.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDimensions - 15.24 Tall x 19.05 Long x 7.62 Wide - CM\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eStrap = 106 X 2.87 CM\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eArtist- DigitalsbyOliver\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"EOH Leathercraft","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67898168967405,"sku":null,"price":209.0,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0790\/0164\/9389\/files\/IMG_1190_79071782-9bb2-4189-ad5b-fa5db5acc3aa.jpg?v=1792699485","url":"https:\/\/www.endofheavy.com\/products\/the-story-of-samhain","provider":"EOH Leathercraft","version":"1.0","type":"link"}