Family portrait at Samaïne
Samaine, Celtic festival of autumn. At Tom, Tine and their children in St Hippolyte in Aveyron, November 2022. The family celebrates Samhain, the first of the four major religious festivals of the Gaelic year. It is a period as much as a celebration, the peak of which was around November 1st. It is also the name of the holiday which roughly corresponds to Anglo-Saxon Halloween. The holiday itself actually lasts a full week: three days before the November full moon, on the day of the full moon itself, and then three days after. For the Celts, this period is in parentheses in the year: it is a transition, “an interval”6. It is the transition from the light season to the dark season, which marks a break in daily life: the end of fighting for warriors and the end of agrarian work for farmers-breeders.