We’re beginning to see trees change color and skeletons riding motorcycles. Both are, in their own way, celebrations of death and an expected life thereafter. These also are signs that we’re approaching one of humankind’s more bizarre celebrations, Halloween.
We apparently can thank the Celts for Halloween, which reportedly originated thousands of years ago with their festival of Samhain (pronounced “SOW-in”). It occurred in October at the end of harvest and the onset of the cold, dark winter.
That was the beginning of the season in which human deaths increased and when the dead were thought to briefly return to life in desiccated form. The “spirits” – a word derived from the Latin “to breathe” – were welcomed or warned away (depending on what you’re reading) by huge, artificial bone fires, now called “bonfires.”
Human skeletons have been symbols of death and the risking of life since time immemorial. Crusaders, Nazi SS troops, and pirates, among others, used skull and crossbone flags and decorations to scare others and warn of their bloodthirstiness. (Images taken in Surry, Maine, on October 9, 2021.)