The Samhain/Halloween Season is a busy one. There’s just so much to take in, and so many things to do! Costumes to put together, rituals to plan, pumpkins to carve . . . . it’s a bit overwhelming for many of us. With that in mind I thought I’d put together a list of Halloween/Samhain essentials to help you navigate through the Autumn Holiday Season.

RITUALS

Not surprisingly I’m going to list my own ritual first, but I’m fiercely proud of the Samhain Ritual I put together last year. Less great, but probably much easier to do is this Samhain Ritual I wrote several years ago. These two rituals from Compost Coven are worth checking out, and there’s a genuinely funny story introducing the first ritual there too.

If you are looking for some ritual ideas outside of the Wiccan realm ADF has a whole page of Druidic Samhain Rituals. That link will take you to ten different rituals, lots to pick and choose from there. I had difficulty finding an Asatru Winter Nights ritual, but I liked this solitary one from Grey’s Blog (and it’ll work for anyone searching for a solitary ritual). Not familiar with Winter-Nights, try this link.

I have a lot of trouble recommending a whole lot of online rituals because I think they are all far too short. A ritual needs to be more than 200 words.

HISTORY

There are a lot of good Halloween histories out there. I wrote one last year of course, but that’s only scratching the surface. If you are looking for a brief history this page hits some of the high points, and this one from the Huffington Post includes a few fun facts at the end along with some history. If you want a completely inaccurate history of Halloween along with a few laughs and a couple of scares this confused Christian has an interesting take, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t include my favorite Chick Tract for young people; the sad story of Stinky.

REFLECTIONS ON SAMHAIN & HALLOWEEN

There’s always lots of great Samhain and Halloween material out there in the Blogosphere unrelated to rituals and history. We’ve had some good ones here at Patheos Pagan the last week or so, John Beckett put together a great piece on why he loves Halloween, and David Dashifen Kees writes about Halloween as an interfaith moment on The Wild Garden. For something with a little more meat on its bones check out Vivianne Crowley’s To Death and Beyond and Gus diZerega’s Samhain 2013. My favorite post on Halloween this year has been What in Sam Hain? by John Halstead over on The Allergic Pagan. I promise it’s not just because he linked to three of my articles in his piece. Samhain the Voodoo Way over on Lilith Dorsey’s Voodoo Universe is completely worth checking out too.

I was hoping to get some Patheos writers outside of Pagandom into a discussion about Halloween, so far I’ve only been joined by Ambaa over at The White Hindu (though her take is fascinating and miles away from my own). It’s early maybe I’ll get a few more writers to engage on the topic.

Last year I wrote a piece entitled Honoring the Ancestors (or Not) about my theological issues with ancestor worship/honor. This year Aine Llewellyn shared similar thoughts over on Dalliances With Deities. With so many rituals focused on reuniting with our beloved dead its all a conversation worth having. John Beckett added to the conversation a little later than Aine and I did, you can read his thoughts here.

HALLOWEEN FOR THE YOUNGER SET

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Halloween-time is for both children and adults. Since I don’t have any kids I sometimes forget that first part, lucky for us Meg Yardley at Pagan Families hasn’t. I want to read some of those books. The amount of material out there in the form of crafts and activities for children is mind-boggling, luckily Pinterest can do all the work finding that stuff for us. What would Halloween be without some ghoulishly themed treats that look like a trick? You can find some right here. I’m also amazed at how fun some of these games thought up by Martha Stewart look. Me linking to a Martha Stewart article!? Now that’s scary!

Since originally putting this post together Patheos has added even more Halloween/Samhain Content. Click on the links below for even more perspectives on October’s best holiday. (What? You don’t think Columbus Day is better do you?)

The Metaphysics of Halloween by Chris Henrichsen from the Mormon Channel.

A Unitarian Universalist perspective by Carl Greg, at the Patheos Spirituality Channel, and one of his Pagan parishioners contributed to his blog too.

Have a Happy Halloween and a Blessed Samhain! It all starts for me this weekend and doesn’t let up until I’ve watched V For Vendetta on the 5th of November . . . .