The pagan New Year is called Samhain. Samhain is a Gaelic festival that marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. It is traditionally celebrated on October 31st, the eve of All Saints' Day, which is known as Halloween in modern times. Samhain is considered a liminal time when the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual world is believed to be thin, allowing for easier communication with spirits and the supernatural. It is a time to honor and remember ancestors, as well as to take stock of the past year and prepare for the winter months ahead. During Samhain, bonfires are lit to ward off evil spirits and provide a sense of warmth and protection.
Celebrators of Samhain believe that it’s a time of year when the barriers between the physical and spiritual world break down, allowing more interaction between the living and the dead. The doors to the Otherworld - the realm of deities and the dead - are opened, allowing spirits to more easily enter our world.
This liminal period enabled both ancestors to visit their families and malicious spirits to haunt townspeople. The customs of Samhain include rituals to welcome ancestors and honor deceased loved ones while also taking action to thwart off and protect against the evil spirits.
In Celtic culture, people would leave offerings outside of villages and fields for fairies (also known as spirits or aos sí). They believed that spirits needed to be appeased so that families and their livestock would survive the long winter.
Some Celts dressed as monsters to deter fairies from kidnapping them. There were specific monsters: Pukah is a shape-shifter that comes for harvest offerings, Sluagh entered houses and stole souls, The Lady Gwyn is a headless woman dressed in white and accompanied by a black pig. Image source: The Alchemist’s Kitchen
Such condemnations stemmed from worries about paganism, but they were perhaps also a reaction to the low attendance in churches during the celebrations. In that regard, New Year s Day and calendars generally can serve to structure our lives and in part to shape our resolve for the events we will encounter.
During Samhain, bonfires are lit to ward off evil spirits and provide a sense of warmth and protection. It is also a time for divination and fortune-telling, as people seek guidance and insight for the coming year. Traditional activities include apple bobbing, carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, and dressing up in costumes to mimic and ward off evil spirits.
Why Did Early Christians And Pagans Fight Over New Year's Day?
Romans looked forward to the free food and games that occurred at annual New Year's celebrations, but early Christian clerics were not as keen on the revelries. Long before the so-called "war on Christmas," there was the war on New Year's Day.
A 3rd century CE mosaic of the hippodrome at Carthage. The mosaic is now in the museum in Bardo.
Pascal Radigue (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Romans called January 1st the Kalends of January. It was termed the Kalendae in Latin or Καλάνδαι in Greek, and was placed on public calendars called fasti. The Kalends is what gives us the modern word "calendar." The Kalendae Ianuariae was a time of particular hope and anticipation for the coming year. It was filled with celebrations and religious rites that focused on the health of individual Romans and of the state.
Romans literally got off on the right foot by leading with their right leg as they entered temples, houses and other doorways on this and many other days. As archaeologist Steven J.R. Ellis has noted, one's right foot was considered far more auspicious than their sinister foot (left foot), and one always wanted to begin auspiciously in a new year.
New Year's celebrations normally began with a large parade within the city of Rome on January 1 that is not all that different from the Tournament of Roses parade that precedes the Rose Bowl. Senators, magistrates, clients and many others met at the houses of the two designated consuls for the year and–at least in the Republic and early empire–traditionally sacrificed two bulls at the temple for Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
The temple was on Rome's Capitoline hill. A vow was then made to invoke safety for the Roman people and the Republic in the coming year. Elsewhere in the city, worshippers at the temple to Aesculapius (the God of medicine) on the Tiber Island, celebrated the temple's dedication on January 1 of 291 BCE. Romans looked to Janus, the god of new beginnings, but clearly also thought of Jupiter and Aesculapius too.
By the later imperial period, the celebration centered more on the emperor and was extended to five days. The third day was now the one reserved for the vota to the health of the emperor and the empire. It was then followed by a series of chariot races that eventually lasted up to three days.
Along with coins and fruit, ceramic lamps were often given as small party favors at New Year's . [+] celebrations. This one has the goddess of Victory. On her shield is an inscription wishing a happy and fruitful new year. The 1st-2nd century lamp is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC-0).
The various festivals and rituals that formed Greco-Roman religion (and by extension, the festival calendar) did not stay unchanged within the Mediterranean for all of antiquity. Following the victory of Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 CE, Christianity was made licit and then encouraged by the emperor until his death in 337. With the Roman emperor as its visible patron, the relatively small religion grew mightily over the next few decades. In turn, Christian clerics also became more powerful figures within Roman cities as more people converted. And yet New Year's remained a time for traditional religion.
Under the emperor Julian, a central concern became reviving traditional Roman religion and rejecting Christian customs. Julian celebrated the Kalends of January in the eastern city of Antioch in the year 363 and used the much-anticipated fanfare surrounding the inauguration of consuls, the chariot races and the speeches delivered to the emperor to great effect in his revival program. In other words? Julian needed New Year's to help him bring back traditional religion, which we might today call paganism.
As ancient historian Fritz Graf noted about Julian in his book on Roman festivals held in the eastern portion of the empire: "The celebration of the Kalendae had even become more important, and the emperor perhaps even somewhat desperate." Julian would die only six months later while on campaign in the East against Persia. His plan to fully revive paganism might not have been successful, but the Kalends of January remained an important part of the calendar in the ancient Mediterranean.
Critics of the Kalendae became fiercer following the return to Christian emperors after the death of Julian. The proclamation of Christianity as the official religion of the state in 380 paved the way for the closing of pagan temples and banning of pagan sacrifices. A priest named John Chrysostom may have been at the New Year's Day celebrations at Antioch in 363 and he wouldn't soon forget them. Between 387 and 398, the then-priest gave a sermon condemning the New Year's celebrations that gripped the empire every year. It was a scathing homily given just prior to his becoming a bishop and neatly outlined the clerical view of the holiday.
As Graf notes, the preacher became shrill, claiming: "We are fighting a war, not against the Amalekites, not against other foreign attackers, but against the demons who parade through the marketplace. The devilish all-night celebrations that are held today, the jests and songs of blame and censure, the nocturnal dancing and this entire ridiculous comedy." That is right, you guys. This was the late antique prequel to Footloose and the fictional John Lithgow was being played by the very real John Chrysostom. Chrysostom warned that the opulence of the New Year's celebrations would then be carried forward for the rest of the year.
Well into the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE, clerics railed against the evils of the Kalends of January festivities. Such condemnations stemmed from worries about paganism, but they were perhaps also a reaction to the low attendance in churches during the celebrations. A bishop near the Black Sea censured his congregants for not attending church on January 1 and in North Africa, Augustine of Hippo also spoke out against the Kalends and begged the people not to attend the games.
Despite the clerical condemnation, Roman emperors still often used the Kalends of January as a way to renew the loyalty of the Roman people. Yet clerics wished to emphasize another festival: the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ (January 1) and then Epiphany (January 6).
As historian of early Christianity Andrew S. Jacobs writes about in his book, Christ Circumcised: A Study in Early Christian History and Difference, Christians wanted total separation of the Christian celebrations from the Kalendae Januariae, which they viewed as blasphemous: "As Christianity became a public religion, the sweep of time–daily, weekly, annual, cosmic–became a site of distinction." Into the fifth century, worship of the events surrounding the life of Christ increased and gained in popularity. During the medieval period, relics like that of the holy foreskin played a material part in solidifying the festival in the Christian mindset.
In 541/542 CE, the emperor Justinian put a further nail in the coffin of the Kalendae Januariae by abolishing the consulship altogether. Church councils also continued to condemn the celebrations with a finite ban in the 7th century CE. The traditional state calendar of the Romans continued to be rewritten like a palimpsest. Despite this, we have records of smaller feasts and revelry for New Year's Day continuing into the Middle Ages.
Medieval remembrances may have been quieter and without the ostentatious parades, sacrifices or chariot races of Rome in the high empire, but they do reveal something about the role of marking the new year in our daily lives. Regardless of culture or religion, we continue to use ritual not only to mark reflection on the past, but to inspire hope for the future. In that regard, New Year's Day and calendars generally can serve to structure our lives and–in part–to shape our resolve for the events we will encounter. Even John Chrysostom can't get rid of that itch.
As a Roman might have said to you on this day: "Annum novum faustum felicem vobis!” (An auspicious and happy new year to y'all!)
Illumination of the Circumcision of Christ from the Byzantine Menologion of Basil II. The . [+] circumcision occurred eight days after Christmas and was commemorated in the Christian calendar.
Public Domain via Wikimedia
Well into the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE, clerics railed against the evils of the Kalends of January festivities. Such condemnations stemmed from worries about paganism, but they were perhaps also a reaction to the low attendance in churches during the celebrations. A bishop near the Black Sea censured his congregants for not attending church on January 1 and in North Africa, Augustine of Hippo also spoke out against the Kalends and begged the people not to attend the games.
In modern pagan and Wiccan traditions, Samhain is still celebrated as a time to honor the cycle of life and death, as well as to connect with the spiritual realm. It is seen as an opportunity to reflect on the interconnectedness of all things and to release what no longer serves us. Overall, Samhain is a significant pagan New Year celebration that embraces the cyclical nature of life and provides a time for reflection, remembrance, and renewal..
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