Samhain

The Night Summer Ended

When we decided to make a tea for Halloween, it seemed too easy to just call it Halloween.

Because what we call Halloween today rests on a memory far older than the plastic skeletons displayed in shop windows, the orange buckets filled with candy, and the costumed children going door to door.

When you dig a little deeper beneath the witch hats, artificial spiderwebs, and hollowed-out pumpkins, another word emerges from the soil:

Samhain.

Samhain, the name for November in modern Irish, referred in the ancient Gaelic world to the great seasonal threshold marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter. In the agricultural and pastoral calendar of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, the bright half of the year was closing; people, animals, and provisions were being prepared for the darker months. Herds of livestock were being brought back from summer pastures, decisions were being made about which would be fed throughout the winter, crops were being gathered, and the final tasks were being completed before the cold arrived.

To describe Samhain simply as “the ancient Celtic Halloween” is both oversimplifying it and grafting modern imagery onto the past. People living two thousand years ago weren't wearing plastic vampire fangs and eating pumpkin-shaped candies. Samhain was, above all, a seasonal change; a crucial threshold where summer and winter, abundance and scarcity, outdoor life and the time to retreat indoors, all meet.

But in the old world, thresholds were never just a matter of the calendar.

It was believed that moments of transition from one place to another, from one season to another, or from one state of life to another, disrupted the normal order. Samhain was one such time. In medieval Irish texts, this night is described as a period when the portals between the human world and the Otherworld open; a time when supernatural beings, fairies, and ancient powers can roam the earth more freely.

As is often said today, “the veil between the living and the dead was thinning.” This poetic phrase may not be a verbatim expression of the ancient texts; however, it aptly captures the sense of boundary that Samhain conveyed. The sun set early, the harvested fields emptied, the roads shrouded in darkness, and one could no longer be certain of what was moving just beyond the light of one's home.

This uncertainty did not only breed fear; it also multiplied the possibilities.

Attempting to read the signs of the future on Samhain night, particularly playing divination games concerning marriage, fortune, and death, held a significant place in later Irish and Scottish folklore. Apples were placed in troughs filled with water, nuts were thrown into the fire, and small objects were hidden among food. People tried to discern who would marry, who would embark on a journey, who would experience abundance, and who should be cautious, simply by observing how an ordinary nut cracked in the fire.

Because the future was already unknown. It was simply believed that on Samhain night he became a little more talkative.

Large bonfires were also part of this dark threshold of the season. It is impossible to reduce the history and precise meaning of the bonfires lit on the hills to a single narrative; some of what we know comes from medieval texts, and a significant portion from rural traditions recorded much later. Nevertheless, the custom of gathering around the fire, considering it protective and purifying, and searching for signs in its ashes or in the way it went out, lived on long in the memory of Samhain.

That night, the fire was both warmth and a boundary.

There were people around him. Beyond that, darkness was doing its own thing.

Over time, ancient seasonal traditions intertwined with the Christian calendar's All Saints' Day and All Dead Day practices. All Hallows' Eve— the eve of All Saints' Day—was shortened to Halloween . The old customs didn't disappear entirely; they continued to live on amidst new beliefs, changing in name, meaning, and form. Traditions such as bonfires, masks, door-to-door visits, remembering the dead, and leaving food for the night became mixed in different periods.

What emerged was not a holiday invented overnight, but a cultural creation that grew layer by layer over centuries.

The most recognizable face of this creature today is the pumpkin.

However, in the old Ireland of Samhain, there were no pumpkins. This plant, native to the Americas, joined the Halloween tradition in the European world much later. In Ireland and Britain, people first hollowed out turnips and other root vegetables, placed an ember or candle inside, and carved frightening faces into the peels. These lanterns sometimes represented supernatural beings, sometimes warded them off, and sometimes were used to scare neighbors in the darkness of the night.

The ancient “ghost turnip” preserved at the National Museum of Ireland looks far more unsettling than the smiling pumpkins we’re used to today. With its tiny eyes carved into its hard root, its sunken nose, and clenched teeth, it has no intention of amusing children or sprucing up a patio. It’s the kind of face you really wouldn’t want to encounter on a dark country road.

When Irish and Scottish immigrants brought their traditions to North America, they found pumpkins much larger than turnips, abundant, and easy to carve. The fearsome root face eventually transformed into an orange lantern. This native American plant became embedded in an ancient nightly tradition from Europe and eventually became the symbol of Halloween worldwide.

This transformation suits Samhain's spirit in a strange way.

Something ancient had entered another body in a distant land.

When we included pumpkin in the recipe for Samhain tea, we weren't just thinking of the most recognizable image of modern Halloween. We returned to the idea of harvest that lies beneath it. Pumpkin is one of the last big fruits to come from the field; heavy, durable, and suitable for storage throughout the winter. While the earth quiets down outside, inside the house it transforms into soup, bread, pies, and desserts. Therefore, it carries both the abundance of the harvest and the desire to preserve that abundance for the darker months.

Witches, ghosts, and prophecies aside, perhaps the oldest truth about Samhain is this:

Winter is coming, and what's in the pantry matters.

The cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg in the recipe stem from a long tradition of desserts built around pumpkin. These spices reappear in the autumn cuisine of Britain and North America, found repeatedly in fruit cakes, gingerbread, baked goods, and later, pumpkin pie. The mixture we know today as pumpkin spice actually refers not to the pumpkin itself, but to the spices added to desserts made with it.

In Samhain, spices transform pumpkin from a vegetable into a sweet treat for the dark season.

Cinnamon brings the initial warmth. Its round, familiar, and inviting scent evokes a feeling of returning home from a night out. Cloves add a sharper, older, and almost medicinal darkness to it. Ginger ignites a small fire beneath the cup; and nutmeg adds a dry, woody, and slightly mysterious depth to the whole composition, reminiscent of something from the farthest corner of the kitchen cupboard.

Vanilla is the gentle voice within this dark ensemble. It rounds off the sharp edges of the spices, brings out the sweet side of the pumpkin, and infuses the recipe with the reassuring feeling of a freshly baked cake. But it doesn't make it entirely innocent. For beneath vanilla's calmness, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg still await.

Just as turning on the lights of a house doesn't erase what's happening in the forest outside.

Black tea is the symbol of Samhain night.

Pumpkin and vanilla create a warm kitchen atmosphere, while cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg settle around the fire. But beneath all this warmth remains a dark, bitter, and serious ground. The tea doesn't allow the recipe to transform into a sweet autumn treat, completely relaxed. It always leaves a small piece of the night itself in the cup.

Thus, Samhain ceased to be a charming, pumpkin-flavored Halloween tea. Instead, it transformed into a threshold tea, with the last fruits of the harvest, spiced cakes, and warmth shared by the fire on one side; and the empty fields, the lengthening night, and the ancient entities thought to linger outside the door on the other.

The illustration on the box doesn't simply recreate a single historical period as it was. Like Samhain itself, it brings together symbols from different centuries in the same dark garden.

The five-pointed star in the center is not, as many might initially think, an inherently malevolent symbol. The pentagram has been used in various cultures and eras as a symbol of order, wholeness, the human body, the five elements, and protection. Its upward-pointing, enclosed form is particularly associated with the balance of natural forces in later esoteric and modern pagan traditions. Rather than invoking a threat, the symbol depicts a protected space within the darkness.

The circles, knots, and continuous lines surrounding it evoke cycles whose beginning and end are not easily found. The essence of Samhain is also a circle rather than a straight line: the harvest ends, the earth rests, winter comes, and from the darkness, a new season is prepared. What we call the end is often the unseen side of the cycle.

The moon appears repeatedly in different parts of the label. The full moon, crescent moons, and triple moon imagery suggest that time was measured by a rhythm far older than human calendars. It wouldn't be accurate to consider the triple moon a direct Samhain symbol from ancient Ireland. Its modern form belongs more to the modern Neopagan and Wiccan visual language; it represents the growing, full, and waning moon, sometimes also the phases of a young woman, a mother, and an old wise woman.

But its historically more recent nature doesn't render it meaningless in this context. On the contrary, it shows that Samhain has continued to live on through the centuries, acquiring new symbols.

The witches on broomsticks flying in front of the full moon didn't just appear out of nowhere on ancient Samhain night. This image has been distilled from late medieval and early modern European depictions of witchcraft, nineteenth-century illustrations, and finally, modern Halloween visual culture. If we recognize the witch flying in front of the moon at a glance today, it's not because the ancient Irish depicted her that way, but because art, fear, and popular culture have reproduced the same silhouette over and over again throughout the centuries.

The bird on the label, however, is the figure that offers the darkest glimpse into Samhain's Irish roots among all these symbols.

Ravens and crows have been associated with night, death, and prophecy in many cultures. In Irish mythology, they appear particularly around Morrígan, the enigmatic figure of war, fate, and sovereignty. Morrígan sometimes appears as a woman, sometimes as multiple figures, and sometimes as a dark-colored bird circling above the battlefield. Whether she is merely observing who will win, or whether she herself determines the outcome, we can never be entirely sure.

We don't need to say that the bird in the box is directly Morrígan. It carries more of that same old bird memory: a silent messenger who has seen something before humans, knows what is coming, and seems to have no intention of saying it.

Sunflowers, purple spikes reminiscent of lavender, autumn leaves, and pumpkins bring back the harvest amidst images of death. For Samhain is not just darkness, spirits, and witches. It is a celebration of the last harvested crops, dried herbs, and colors brought home before the approaching winter. On the label, life and death do not stand in separate corners; they grow intertwined among the same plants.

Perhaps this is the most important contrast in the illustration.

On one side, there's the full moon, ravens, witches, and protective signs. On the other, the warm steam rising from the cup and the orange pumpkins just ripening on the ground. Night outside, tea inside. An unknown world on one side of the door, a kitchen smelling of cinnamon and vanilla on the other.

But the door isn't completely closed.

The reason we wanted to delve into Halloween's roots while preparing Samhain tea wasn't just to find a more enigmatic name. We wanted to remind ourselves that beneath this cheerful night of fear lies a true sense of season: a night when people take the arrival of darkness seriously, count what they have, reflect on what they've lost in the past, and try to discern what the future holds from the subtle signs.

Therefore, the recipe is both sweet and dark.

Pumpkin harvesting, vanilla cuisine, cinnamon and ginger fire speak volumes. Cloves and nutmeg deepen the shadows. And black tea closes in on the last night of October.

The first thing you feel when you pick up the cup is the warmth.

Then the spices.

Finally, a faint sound is heard from the other side of the door.

Maybe it's the wind.

You can never be entirely sure about that on Samhain night.