What amazes me most about newspapers from over 100 years ago is their openness to discuss other religions. In today’s world, newspapers print articles that attack other religions and anything to do with our Pagan/Heathen heritage is tossed into the realm of evil. The following article comes from The Rice Belt Journal (Louisiana), 1903.
The Mystic Month of November
There is no particular reason why Thanksgiving day should fall in the month of November, except that all the harvests are gleaned by the period and the husbandman can rejoice and give thanks for the fruits of the earth which he has obtained by the sweat of his brow. It is particularly an agricultural holiday, possessing no significance whatever, so far as other occupations are concerned. But among the ancients November was a mystic month, a period of mysteries. This will be readily understood from the fact that November means “ninth month,” so named at a time when the year was divided into ten months. When the year was enlarged to twelve months, November retained its name, although it became the eleventh month according to the new calendar.
We perceive from the foregoing that as the number “nine” possessed a mystic meaning its character became attached to the eleventh month. Moreover, it was the month of rest after harvests and represented the perfection of growth.
The ancient Druids began the month with a great festival called “Samhain” or “fire of peace” and it was held on “Hallow’en,” or “Hallow eve,” a festival still retaining the name, but now devoted to merry pranks and superstitious practices by youth and maidens.
On this occasion the Druids assembled in solemn conclave, in the most central part of the district, to discharge the judicial functions of their order. All questions, whether public or private, all crimes against person or property, were at this time brought before them for adjudication.
With their judicial acts were combined certain superstitious usages, including the kindling of the sacred fire, from which all the fires in the district, which had been before hand scrupulously extinguished, might be relighted.
Then came the Roman Catholic church that established the festival of All Saints on the first of November, which means that all the saints not appearing on the calendar during the rest of the year were to be commemorated on that day. The day preceding the first of November was fixed as All Souls’ day, a day for commemorating the multitude of shadows, the spirits and souls of men not otherwise having a special day.
During the month of November the meteoric showers that are the mysteries of astronomy and the wonder and amazement of the uninitiated, are due to fall, when “the whole sky is marked as with a piece of chalk.”
Halloween, midway between All Souls and All Saints, was always a peculiar night, when elves, specters, wizards and shades of departed spirits played fantastic tricks upon those still in the mortal flesh. To keep up its reputation, all sorts of practical jokes were common, and still are in many localities, but the gradual fading of the belief in the walking ghosts has resulted in changing Halloween into a night of party giving. Maidens no longer visit wells to see the faces of their future husbands in the clear, limpid water; no more do they peel apples and throw them over their heads for the paring to form the initial of “his” name. The small boy no longer plays jokes with jack o’lanterns, change signs, or lay snares to trip up unwary pedestrians. Modern customs have broken the spell of many of November’s mysteries, and by and by, with the exception of a turkey dinner on the last Thursday of the month, it will be as other months. [Source]
