Midnight on October 31, obviously.
Except…not necessarily. If you happen to be reading this after sunset on October 30, then by one very old way of measuring the days, Halloween has already begun. Which is one of those small historical details that immediately makes a fantasy writer sit up and pay attention.
A Day Didn’t Always Begin at Midnight
We’re so accustomed to the idea that a new day begins at midnight that it feels like a fact of nature. It isn’t. In the old Celtic reckoning, the night came first. The day began at sunset and continued through the following daylight hours.
This matters when you start looking at the great Celtic feast days, including Samhain, which marked the beginning of winter and is one of the ancestors of our modern Halloween traditions. Samhain didn’t begin when everyone got up in the morning. Nor did anyone have to wait for a clock to tick over to 12:00 a.m.
It began with the coming of darkness. There’s something wonderfully appropriate about that.
Halloween Still Remembers
We have mostly abandoned that way of thinking about time, but there are traces of it still hanging around. Including the name Halloween itself.
It’s All Hallows’ Eve: the evening before All Hallows’ Day.
The important observance has already begun.
We do this with a few other holidays. Christmas Eve still has enormous cultural significance, for example. But Halloween may be the occasion when the old logic feels most natural. Halloween belongs to the night. Children don’t go trick-or-treating at ten in the morning. Ghost stories aren’t quite as effective over breakfast. Witches, spirits, monsters and things that rustle suspiciously in the shrubbery all improve considerably once the sun has gone down.
We may use a midnight-to-midnight calendar now, but Halloween stubbornly refuses to behave like an ordinary modern day.
Fantasy Writers Love Rules Like This
At least, this fantasy writer does. Because the moment you realize that different cultures have defined the beginning of a day differently, all sorts of interesting possibilities appear.
Suppose something must be done by a particular day. Fine. When does that day start? Our modern instinct is to say midnight. But that’s an assumption we’re bringing with us. Someone operating according to a different calendar may give you a very different answer.
And if magic is involved, getting the answer wrong could be considerably more serious than turning up late for an appointment. This is one of the things I love about using folklore and older beliefs in fantasy. The details aren’t merely decorative. They have consequences.
The Celtic Calendar in Magorian & Jones
The old Celtic feast days play an enormous role in my Magorian & Jones series. Across the series, Magorian and Jones are trying to prevent a spell that will bring the old gods back into the world. Casting it requires human self-sacrifice, some extremely difficult ingredients, and a series of deadlines tied to the Celtic feast days. The feast days aren’t there simply to provide atmospheric bonfires and ancient names. They’re part of the machinery of the story.
Which meant that, while writing the series, I had to pay attention not only to which feast fell where in the year, but to exactly when that feast began. And yes, I have made use of the sunset rule in one of the books. I’m not telling you which one. I’m certainly not telling you how.
Some of you who have already read the series may be grinning right now. Everyone else can discover it the hard way, along with the characters. 🙂
Want to Visit Magorian & Jones’ World?
If all this talk of old magic, impossible bargains and inconvenient supernatural rules appeals to you, Rainmaker is a standalone short fantasy set in the world of Magorian & Jones.
And it’s free.
You don’t need to have read the series first, so it’s an easy way to step into the world and see whether you’d like to stay awhile.
So, Happy Halloween
There is something very fitting about a festival associated with boundaries, darkness, spirits and the turning of the seasons retaining this faint echo of a world in which night came first.
Our phones and computers will insist that October 31 begins at midnight.
They can insist all they like.
If you’re reading this after sunset on October 30, happy Samhain.
You’re not early.
The rest of the world is late.
.
.
Newly Released: Street Magic IV — After the Quieting. — Veilbound — Firebird Omnibus