The Best Month

Of course I would consider October the best month; I was born in it. But following many beliefs, I guess I should consider February my best month - not. I hate February and I'm very glad that it's short with its gloomy clouds and ice - and years of no Valentines for Mitzi.

Yes; all things considered: October is great. Watch out for cliches! Crisp fall mornings and bright starry nights. Swerve! Here comes another one! The crunch of fresh apples and the cloying sweetness of candy corn. Okay. You're right - not much of a cliche.

I feel more settled in October - I know the winter is coming but it's still just far enough away that I can let it settle on the back burner of my aging mind. I do take it "one day at a time" anymore. Ooops! Almost missed that one!

I do a lot of nesting in October. I take out embroidery that I've been working on for the last few years and try several new stitches. One of the cats usually claws at the thread, ruining it, and I put the hoop, cloth and floss away for another year. I may even bake a real pie, leaving Mrs. Smith to stand outside in the "crisp" air. But baking a pie would mean moving all the pots and pans out from their nesting space in the oven.

I buy little pumpkin squashes and huge pumpkins, golden mums and bronze leaves and make a fall arrangement for my small front porch. I hang out my "shingle" on my front door: " The Witch Is In" it proclaims. And so I am.

October is my favorite month for another reason - it has my favorite holiday within its autumn weeks - Samhein, Halloween.

Now we're going to make a sharp turn - hold on tight!

Samhein is a solemn holiday for my kind. It's the time to honor our ancestors and a time to cast off old habits that we no longer need or want. I've practiced my religion alone - solitary, we call it - for many years. But lately I've found a group of women who share my belief in a nature-based religion. Two years ago I attended my first group Samhein celebration. We quitely formed a circle after being blessed and each one of us received a name. At the end of ritual we went around the circle and read the name and the person's date of death - many names but they had all died within a few months of each other. They had been hanged in Salem as witches. One had been crushed to death. The overwhelming saddness of that dark part of American history is that those people did not give their lives because they practiced witchcraft (whatever that was in the 17th Century). They died because they DIDN'T and they refused to renounce their Christian beliefs to save themselves. They died, not martyrs for today's witches, but martyrs for today's Christians. And yet more than 400 years later in a field in Pennsylvania, thirty men and women, self-proclaimed witches, read the names of these martyred Christians. The witchcraft craze began with lies - all those people were condemned by lies - not because they practiced withcraft.
So when you see little girls dressed as witches for trick or treat or hear a recorded cackle meant to scare you into thinking a hag is nearby, think of the thirty modern witches reading the names of people who died because of lies so long ago.

It continues to this day: in Rowanda, Sudan, Bosnia, Boslan, Russia, Iraq. . . One need not be a witch to be condemned to death. One only needs a lying finger pointed at them.

The Witch Is In