There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

So halloween came and went, and I figured that it was about time I gave a glimpse of what goes on in Edinburgh during this festival. Now, when I first arrived in the UK for my year abroad, I was a bit surprised that the British don't really 'do' halloween. Maybe this is biased because I worked in a costume shop for the last 7 years and halloweeen was out big money maker. But here, people will just put on cat ears or a devil tail and voila- done. Of course, there are also parties and such, but the enthusiam and crazyiness is certainly not as strong. A few people will carve pumpkins and put of decorations, but no where near the crazy haunted lawns and homes people did back home. For the past two years, we've been carving pumpkins and hanging a wee ghoul in our window, and have never yet gotten trick or treaters. This year, Scottie and I made this little pumpkin guy..if you can see it, it's of a vampire about to chomp down on the sexy neck of a lady. Prrrrow!

Alas, no trick or treaters, and now this little guy is decomposing away on a plate on the chair. Amazing how mouldy these things go so quickly!


Anyway, so I thought that Halloween in the UK was a bit bland compared to the insanity that it becomes in the US...until I learned about Samhuinn. You see, Edinburgh has a HUGE pagan society named after their biggest festival, Beltane. The Beltane Fire Society puts on these massive pagan festivals during the year, complete with ceremony, ritual, procession- the works. Samhuinn took place Halloween. The Samhuinn festival, in a nut shell, marks the end of summer and the ushering in of the winter months. Since the trees are bare and the land barren of the earlier vegetation, nature seems to be dying, and thus, Samhuinn is believed to be the night of the dead. Also taking advantage of this closeness between the land of the living and the dead were the mischievous and malevolent spirits of the underworld, and measures had to be taken to protect against their pranks. Thus evolved the tradition of modern Hallowe'en to wear masks - originally to disguise oneself against the unwanted attentions of spirits and faeries.

The main of Samhuinn is the battle between light and dark, summer and winter. The two characters fight to the death, winter overcoming summer as inevitably as the seasons, but the medicine-man steps in to revive the summer figure, thus ensuring the return of spring and light.



Here, you have the May Queen's woman warriors seen old and dying. May and her fellow summer compatriots have aged over the year, and it is time to make way for winter.



The procession ends in Parliment square. Here, you can see St. Giles Cathedral in the back, and the fire performance of Samhuinn.

This is part of the procession. The blue people are in charge of leading the procession and letting the representatives of Winter, Summer, etc do what they need to do...kinda like bouncers. And they will whack idle standbyers in the way with their whips of willow.



Here are the thrones of the Winter king and the Green Man. They watch performances and drink and are merry...and then something happens, they fight, and Winter kills the Green Man, taking up his crown and declaring himself in charge. But don't despair, The creepy person in the back all cloked in the Mother Earth Healer figure that nurses the Green Man back from the dead to ensure that there will be a Summer after the Winter king has had his reign.
So loads of awesome-ness. There were just SO many elaborate costumes, and so much nakedness despite the 2 degree and raining temperature.

Seriously, check out the rest of the Samhuinn and Beltane festivals here. Also, see all the incredible photos of this enormous event here.