Samhain Today
Neopagans, especially Wiccans, have embraced Samhain as their most sacred holiday, an adoption based on Samhain's importance as a celebration of endings and beginnings. The modern pagan take on Samhain is more of a composite holiday, often mingling traditions of the ancient Celts with later European practices. Samhain is generally viewed by modern pagans as a time for reflection and meditation and a time to commune with the spirits of dead loved ones, honor one's ancestors, and prepare for prosperity or good fortune in the coming year.
A typical Wiccan or neopagan celebration of Samhain may include memorials for the departed, visits to cemeteries, and rituals to honor ancestors. Traditional harvest goods like pumpkins, apples, and mead are often featured.
Feast for the Ancestors: The Dumb Supper
A later custom that bears mentioning is the medieval practice of the “dumb supper,” still celebrated in many rural areas in Europe and popular as well with modern neopagans. In a typical dumb supper (the word dumb having its ancient meaning of “silent”), a banquet is prepared, with places set at the table for both the living and the dead. Prayers are recited, and candles or other sources of light are passed around the table and around each participant. The places set for the ancestors and loved ones are filled with their favorite foods, and the meal progresses in silent communion with the dead.
The Corn Spirit
An autumn tradition that almost certainly carries over from ancient pagan practices is the creation of the so-called corn dolly. While today's corn dolly is a simple harvest craft, it was once imbued with deep spiritual significance. In Celtic territories and elsewhere in Europe, it was customary to leave a small portion of grain unharvested, in the belief that removing all of the stalks would leave the spirit of the grain homeless and unable to return. The reserved grain would be shaped into the form of a man or woman or other symbolic shape and was often treated to lavish ceremonial processions and feedings. The bundle was sometimes dressed in clothing, and would be reverently displayed — sometimes on a pole, or kept in a cradle or bed.
The word corn in this case refers to its oldest use, as a generic term for grain. Today corn is used almost exclusively to refer to the Native American maize plant, a grain unheard of in Europe until brought back by New World explorers.
The resulting “doll” represented the essence of the grain, the god of vegetation who would be “born” at the beginning of winter, and ritually sacrificed in the spring by burning or plowing under before the sowing of new crops. There is some speculation that the corn dolly tradition replaced an earlier blood sacrifice.
The earliest reference to this tradition can be found in accounts of St. Eligius (or Eloi) of Flanders, who castigates his countrymen for following local druid customs, among them the creation of the vetula, or old woman of the corn.
John Barleycorn
Although the corn dolly represented a mother figure as often as a male figure, the best-known incarnation of the grain spirit is John Barleycorn, immortalized in verse by the beloved Scottish poet Robert Burns.
Burns sets out the story of the grain spirit as an homage to the barley harvest, and the brutal sacrifice of the barley, which results in his resurrection as another sort of “spirit”:
There were three kings into the east,
In Christian times, corn dollies evolved into a rural household practice, featuring elaborate symbolic figures crafted from straw left over from the harvest. These were usually placed over doorways or in barns as good luck charms; they were typically burnt at Christmastime possibly in mimicry of the old mistletoe traditions. Even today, it is not unusual to see elaborately braided corn dollies given pride of place in winter decorations, and there are literally hundreds of specialized designs that vary from region to region.
Guy Fawkes
Vestiges of the sacrificial vegetation god may survive today in the British celebrations of Guy Fawkes Day. Fawkes was a seventeenth century Catholic revolutionary implicated in the infamous November 5 Gunpowder Plot, in which he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and end Protestant rule in England. Fawkes was caught in the act and swiftly executed. Within a hundred years, an effigy of Fawkes had become a proxy for the ancient corn effigy. The harvest deity was replaced with a figure of the infamous traitor, which would be paraded from house to house by children who would beg coins or sweets in return. Afterward, the effigy would be burned in a great bonfire.
