Felly, Mae hyn yn hyfryd iawn, ond gellid yn hawdd enwi "what mens' rights campaigners and conservatives think Feminism is" ac yn dal I weithio. 

Why do we celebrate Halloween? Most of the time, this question leads us to learn about Halloween’s origins. Perhaps you’ve heard about Samhain—the ‘Celtic’ name for the original festivities.  Perhaps you’ve learned something about where vampires and werewolves come from. Or, perhaps we feel the need to distance ourselves from Halloween because of its ‘pagan’ origins (ie, pre-Christian religious practices and expressions). Perhaps, we just psychologically need to be scared or need to laugh at death. Halloween has been getting paired more and more recently with the Meso-American celebration of Day of the Dead. This is a good thing, I think. Day of the Dead is a good reminder to honor and celebrate those who have passed from our midst. This aspect brings resonance to some of Samhain’s original activities.

All of that is worth exploring. But in this blog post, I’d simply like to highlight something I’ve already pointed out: Halloween’s Celtic connections. I want to unpack that cultural background a little and invite you to consider Halloween as a bridge to learn more about Celtic culture.

The Celts have ancient roots, and they aren’t just one group of people. By way of illustration, if I say Romance speaking languages, I’m referring to not just one language. Romances languages include Italian, Romanian, French, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish, Ladino, Galician, Sicilian, and Venetian. I was intentional about how many Romance languages I included in that list: there are a lot of Romance languages. And English speakers can generally differentiate between the main ones. What comes to mind when you think of French culture versus Spanish or Italian? They’re different, but all those cultures are connected to Roman culture and Latin language.

When we talk about ancient Celts, we’re referring to all the groups of people who had related Celtic languages. This would include the ancient Gauls of modern France (whose culture and language helped contribute to the development of French), the Celto-Iberians of ancient Spain, possibly even the Galatians of Asia Minor (ie, the church St. Paul wrote to in the Bible), and others. In fact, the Celts were all over the continent of Europe. But as time passed, various peoples intermixed with the Celts and replaced their languages with other ones, including Latin.

When we talk about modern Celts, we are referring to the Celtic peoples who had made their way to modern Ireland and Great Britain. There are six Celtic nations today: Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Isle of Man, Cornwall, and Brittany (which is actually in France).  They each have their own languages—and though in the Celtic language family—are quite different from each other.

I’ll provide more details in another blog on those details. But for now, just remember that we can learn to appreciate the cultures of this world a lot more, especially when they’ve contributed to a holiday that’s right around the corner 😉

Finally, check out the links below to some Celtic related things:

Here’s a video partially in Irish that explains the connections between Halloween and Samhain: https://vimeo.com/101398600

(If that link doesn’t work, go to this blog and scroll down to the bottom to the video that says “Spiorad na Samhna/Spirit of Samhain”:  http://www.newgrange.com/samhain.htm)

Here’s a video of a song I’ve been really digging by a Welsh band called Candelas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBa_AKEH48s

 And if you’re interested in learning more about Celtic languages, watch this great video!