{"id":949,"date":"2007-11-07T17:48:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-07T17:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=949"},"modified":"2007-11-07T17:48:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-07T17:48:00","slug":"today-is-samhain-really-unless-its-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=949","title":{"rendered":"Today is Samhain, Really, Unless It’s Not"},"content":{"rendered":"

We celebrate the holy day commonly called Samhain<\/a> not on one day, but on several. In other words, there is no one contemporary Pagan liturgical calendar.<\/p>\n

As I write this, the actual moment in the solar cycle is about an hour away, according to Scott Monahan’s useful archaeastronomy site<\/a>. (Scott is also the videographer of the epigraphers arguing for ancient Celtic visits to America: Here is his latest YouTube video<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So take your choice: the Pagan festival occurs on (1) the night of October 31st, (2) November 1st, (3) the full Moon nearest to November 1st, (4) a weekend night nearest to November 1st, (5) the day or night when the Sun is at 15 degrees of Scorpio in the tropical zodiac, halfway between the fall equinox and the winter solstice (Northern Hemisphere). Number 5 is happening right now.<\/p>\n

I wonder if the push for official work-and-school-recognized Pagan holidays<\/a> will force us to pick one of five choices and live with it.<\/p>\n

Recently, an old friend complained in someone’s blog comments that our holy day was being “commercialized.” I beg to disagree. Let a thousand Spirit World<\/a> stores open selling plastic tombstones and sexy witch costumes. The popular holiday of Halloween provides a sea in which we swim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We celebrate the holy day commonly called Samhain not on one day, but on several. In other words, there is no one contemporary Pagan liturgical calendar. As I write this, the actual moment in the solar cycle is about an hour away, according to Scott Monahan’s useful archaeastronomy site. (Scott is also the videographer of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10,66,69],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-american-religion","tag-halloween","tag-samhain"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-fj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":551,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=551","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":0},"title":"Music for SamhainThe podcast, .mp3\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Music for SamhainThe podcast, .mp3 file, and playlist for Jason Pitzl-Waters' Samhain 2005 radio show are all available here.And if you have had enough masking, chocolate, and all that, the astronomical cross-quarter point of Samhain will come just after midnight, Mountain Time, on Sunday, November 6. More details at this\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13858,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13858","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":1},"title":"Angela Puca on the Origins of Today’s Pagan Samhain","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Let the velvet-voiced Dr. Puca explains how the festival of Samhain gained its present form -- and remember, Samhain is a season, a -\"tide.\" https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nhxOHthZpKQ?si=-YqKq5Zc1N2Wga8v","rel":"","context":"In \"Samhain\"","block_context":{"text":"Samhain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=samhain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1954,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1954","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":2},"title":"The Pagan Studies Samhain","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Our little celebration here at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting, during which we Pagan scholars and friends discard our tweed jackets and switch to Samhain black, made it to The Huffington Post.\u00a0 (Scroll to the bottom.) Thanks, Grove, I think. It's another example of how Wicca, in particular,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":757,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=757","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":3},"title":"Stopping the marching zombies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A medievalist takes on the \"Christians stole all the Pagan festivals\" meme.So the juxtaposition of Samhain and All Saints Day is just that - a juxtaposition, not an adoption or adaptation by the Church of a pre-existing Celtic holiday, unless you want to think that there were Celtic pagans living\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1247,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1247","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":4},"title":"‘True Samhain’ is Friday","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that the costumes are put away, note that Samhain calculated astrologically (Sun at 15 degrees of Scorpio) falls on Saturday, Nov. 6, at 6:42 a.m. Greenwich time, which would be roughly midnight on Friday here in the Mountain Time Zone.Last year Peg and I had a little blog-discussion of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3472,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3472","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":5},"title":"Not *My* Ancient Pagan Survival","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"All right, you have put away the skulls, bats, and dishes for your ancestors, all the while humming, \"It's the Most Magickal Time of the Year.\" It's time to think about Yule! And to ponder, is this custom an ancient Pagan survival? (Slightly NSFW.) As for your pre-Christian traditional Yule\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Samhain\"","block_context":{"text":"Samhain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=samhain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}