A Candle and All Hallow's Eve

Last night I participated in an old Irish custom I've read about in books.

When I was but a child, my mother's friend gave me a book for my birthday called Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts by Edna Barth. I've always had an affinity for Halloween and the change of seasons, which in Los Angeles happens in very subtle ways, and I was delighted to read the book.

Barth's book was written at a child's level to help children understand the meaning of Halloween and the origins that spawned the Halloween symbols of carved pumpkins, ghosts, witches, owls and cats.

Barth writes, "There was nothing make-believe about the fears of the Scotch, Irish and English on this same evening [October 31st] years ago. This was the night when ghosts, the spirits or disembodied souls of the dead, were thought to return to their former homes, looking for warmth and cheer.....Throughout Gaul and Britain, huge Samhain fires lighted the skies above hilltops. Their bright flames were meant to guide kindly ghosts on their journeys home and frighten evil ones away."

In Lisa Carey's novel In the Country of the Young, Oisin MacDara is a moody, lonely, solitary artist who, as a child, had the gift of "second sight" where he was able to see spirits that lived alongside the living. After his twin sister's suicide, he loses the sight and wishes every day to regain it. The book jacket reads, "Then on a quiet All Hallow's Eve, a restless spirit is beckoned into his [Oisin's] home by a candle flickering in the window: the ghost of the girl whose brief life ended on Tiranogue's shore more than a century earlier. In Oisin's house she seeks comfort and warmth, and a chance at the life that was denied her so long ago."

In the vain hope and mostly superstition, but also as a link to my Celtic ancestors, I lit a candle in my window, last night on October 31, as a way to welcome my aunt and uncle home, wherever they may be.