Ceramic pumpkin lantern/tealight holder, painted

Harvest Festival - Autumn Equinox.

Among the Germanic peoples, the harvest festival lasted three days, from September 21st to 23rd. They held a large feast and drank mead. The gods were thanked for the harvest. They left a sheaf of grain in the field so that Odin's horse, Sleipnir, would also have something to eat. A wreath was woven from the last of the harvested grain. As an offering, they also often left the last apple hanging on the tree.

Sometimes a harvest fire was lit for this purpose, and sometimes it was customary to throw a small offering of fruit, grains of cereal, and other gifts into the fire.

Samhain (also known as Halooween) is one of the four major Irish Celtic festivals and takes place on the night of October 31st to November 1st. It is a festival of the dead, a time to remember the ancestors. It was believed that during this time the souls of the dead returned to their homes. The festival also celebrated the end of summer and the bringing of the livestock into the barns.

Customs and traditions differ or overlap in some respects across cultures. Samhain and the autumn sacrifice festival are of pagan origin, and were sometimes persecuted, reinterpreted, or used/misused by the Christian church for its own purposes.

It is up to us to cultivate the old customs in their original tradition....