Celtic New Year

Celt is a community of people in European countries speaking Celtic languages (mainly Indo-Europeans languages). These people celebrated various festivals and the most important amongst them was Samhain, the Celtic New Year. 'Samhian' is the word for November in the Irish language. November 1 is the Celtic feast of Samhain. This Celtic New Year is named after Sama - the Aryan God of Dead. Samhain in Gaelic (Scottish language) means "summer's end". Samhain begins with An Geamhradh (the beginning of the dark winter) and ends with Am Foghar (the Celtic harvest). Some other names are also associated with the Celtic New Year:
The Third Harvest
All Hollows Eve
The Day of the Dead
And the famous Halloweens Day.

History of Celtic New Year

According to the Celtic mythology, Samhain or Celtic New Year was a gap in time. During this gap period, 'Our World' and 'Otherworld' came together and thought that the dead could return to warm themselves at the places they lived.

Celtic New Year Rituals

The Celtic New Year has an important feature of 'divination of events'. They use hazel nuts and symbols of wisdom for fortune telling. There were also some other Samhain traditions which referred to the Celtic Emhain Abhlach (Paradise of Apples) where the dead ate the scared fruit and became immortal. Celts practice many rituals for their ancestors at this time. They put food and drinks for the dead and let their house doors opened to give the dead a free passage to enter their house. But all the spirits from the Otherworld were not good. To stop the evil spirits, villagers carved images of spirit guardians onto turnips and kept these 'jack o'lanterns' in front of their doors.