Halloween, also known as All Hallows' Eve, can be traced back about 2,000 years to a pre-Christian Celtic festival called Samhain (pronounced "sah-win"), which means "summer's end" in Gaelic.
Samhain was an annual communal meeting at the end of the harvest year, a time to gather resources for the winter months and bring animals back from the pastures. Samhain is also thought to have been a time of communing with the dead. There was a belief that it was a day when spirits of the dead would cross over into the other world.
Samhain was also about the changing of seasons and preparing for the dormancy of nature as summer turned to winter. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on this night the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred.
Photo by Karsten Winegeart on UnsplashDeath is a concept that does occupy children, and a topic which sooner or later we need to discuss. Halloween provides a safe way to play with the concept of death. People dress up as the living dead, and fake gravestones adorn front lawns... activities that wouldn't be tolerated at other times of the year.
As we know from teaching kids yoga, making it fun is a great way to explore deep and meaningful and even uncomfortable topics.
In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.
When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
So it seems it was a celebration not just of death, but also of rebirth and new beginnings.
For this class, I highly recommend that you come dressed up to help and create the right atmosphere…
Along the yoga games and poses in this class plan you will find some facts about Halloween’s traditions, feel free to share those with your students as you find appropriate.
There is enough here for a 2 hours class, so pick and choose as needed. Have fun!
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