Samaín
Samaín – The Asturian name for Samhain, the Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the onset of the dark months of the year.
It is now fully Autumn in Asturias. I have seen snow from my window when I woke up. The air is full of wood smoke. I have taken delivery of butane bottles for the heaters I fire up every chilly morning. I haven’t yet bought roasted chestnuts at the market, but I know it will be very soon that they will appear. Because I have bought the first sidra dulce of the season. Halloween has come and gone. Oops, I mean Samhain, or rather Samaín. People are rather insistent on celebrating the Celtic original here, not the commercial spin off.
I live in the cuencas mineras, the mining valleys of the central part of Asturias. Nestled up against the soaring peaks of the Sierra Aramo, this is one of the more traditional parts of Asturias. Closer to the empty mountain ranges of León than to the bustling cities on the coast. The kind of traditional that ignorant people call backwards. The sort of place where people can be against teaching Asturian language in school because everyone learns it at home anyway. It is a place where the seasons are still respected. Where the calendar is at the mercy of the weather. And where people celebrate old festivals and old ways not as a way to recapture old regionalist feelings, but because they never stopped the old ways. Here, this month is Payares, not Noviembre. And Payares means Amagüestu and sidra dulce.
Origins of Samaín
One of the four great festivals of the Celtic calendar, Samaín marks the end of harvest and the settling in of winter weather. It was also a time of remembrance of the dead and of reverence to the local gods and spirits.
In the Celtic world, of which Asturias was a part, Samaín was a time of transition. Shepherds brought their cattle down from the high mountain pastures to the relatively temperate ones closer to the sea. Livestock slaughtering season (matanza) traditionally began on this date. People were involved in the last big push of agricultural activity before winter.
Like all Celtic festivals, bonfires and feasts were central to the celebration. Unique to Samaín however was the idea that the souls of dead kin came to visit. For this reason, a place was set at the table in their honor. Additionally, the aos sí (les xanes in Asturian) fairies would be out and about, asking for their part of the feast.
Divination was a popular part of Samaín celebrations, often using nuts and apples as the means of scrying the future.
Asturian Echoes
Pope Gregory IV is responsible for sidelining pagan traditions in favor of All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day. As this became widespread within the Catholic church, it was enforced by monarchs in Catholic kingdoms. Over the next few centuries, the Celtic traditions became completely subsumed into the Liturgical calendar. However, they remain as echoes. Whispers from the past.
In Asturias, much of the old flavor of Samaín persists, knowingly or not, in the traditions around Amagüestu. Memories of the chestnut harvest are celebrated with roasted chestnuts. The ancient tradition of remembering the dead is no longer one of setting a place at the table for them. Instead schoolchildren dress as their great grandparents did. These ancestral costumes stand in for the more common spooky Halloween costumes in America.
Halloween
Halloween, as currently celebrated, is a part of Samhain. The Celtic day began and ended not at sunrise, but at sunset, meaning that when the sun went down on October 31, November 1 (Samhain) began. The tradition of costuming and trick or treating comes from the aos sí asking for their part of the feast. From at least the early modern period people would dress up as these fairies and go door to door singing or reciting poetry in exchange for food or sweets.
