You may not be aware of that.
Yes, I'm aware of the calendar. I'm also aware that it was discovered in fragments and the reconstuctions and interpretations of it are highly contested and quite speculative.
BTW, I own books on this subject that you couldn't afford to buy.
I don't doubt that you own books on this subject that I wouldn't bother reading were they given to me. I suspect that instead of archeological reports/monographs you have warmed-over rehashes of 19th century diffusionist and mystical "scholarship."
What I own are dry, dusty, tedious archaeological/anthropological tomes that trace the migrations of the proto-Celtic/IE peoples from their origins to the “modern” Celts.
Well, no doubt your booksellers are quite happy, but I fail to see how the mere ownership of some books translates into your addressing the issue at hand. The books on your shelf are silent. Do you have an argument to back up your blunt assertion that "Halloween is the Celtic “New Year’s Eve” celebration. Nothing more, nothing less," or not?
Hutton's “Pagan Religions of the British Isles” was quaint but I question his motives.
Hutton's discussion of "Samhain" in PRBI was interesting, but his demolition of the Samhain-Halloween connection (and much more) in his _Stations of the Sun_ is more complete and more convincing.
Your "debunk Hutton" link leads to a hilariously bad feminist site that promotes articles on "The Secret History of Witches" and "Rebel Shamans." LOL! I'll trust Hutton over the ramblings of Max Dashu any day. If that's your idea of good scholarship, then I can see why you post silly things like "Halloween is the Celtic “New Year’s Eve” celebration. Nothing more, nothing less."
Go read the CARMINA GADELICA instead. It's contemporaneous.
Contemporaneous with what period of Celtic history?
Why should I bother to read a book on Scottish folklore? Can you give a reason?
I suggest you read Hutton's _The Stations of the Sun_, specifically Chapters 35-37. Reason: it demolishes the idea that there was a Pan-Celtic Samhain/New Year's Eve Celebration, and also knocks down your assertion about the Halloween/Samhain connection.
If you’d bothered to take religion “back to the egg”, as it were, you’d realize the so-called “feminists” have it right.
In the beginning, all paleo-religions were gynocentric.
Later, androcentric religion replaced the ~original~ pagan religions.
The very beginning of all pagan religion revolves around fertility, menstruation and their connection [in male minds] to “magic”.
For every ancient ithyphallic deity carving you find, there will be a hundred gravid, “earth mother” statues.
[check out Malta for some of the oldest “new” ones]
The cults of Hera and Diana predate the cults of male Greek and roman gods by millenia.
Until the way of the warrior ousted the way of matrifocal relgion [ie...EIREland], goddesses were above all gods.
The triple goddess was eternal and unchanging.
The “god” lasted only til he was ritually killed and replaced.
In the Nordic religion, the sun was *female* and the moon was *male*, unlike the gender reversal of today.
Unlike you, I am not satisfied to read a few books by one guy who chooses to ignore reality.
I backtracked historically until I found the seed of all ancient paganism, which, at its core, revolves around the agricultural seasons.
If you [and Hutton] are unnerved by that, that’s your problem.
“I suspect that instead of archeological reports/monographs you have warmed-over rehashes of 19th century diffusionist and mystical “scholarship.”
Quite the opposite, actually and I was fortunate enough to have bought them decades ago when they were not commanding the prices they do now.
None of them are “mystical” by any definition of the word.
*Most* of them are dryly mathematical and agonizingly full of scientific minutiae.
And to answer a question that should not need asking, you read FOLK LORE because ~within it~ are contained the ancient and core truths of a culture.
As you ~should~ know, the Celts had no written records.
ALL knowledge was passed down through the generations via stories [aka “folk lore”] so that those who followed would never forget whence they came.
The “CARMINA GADELICA” is a history book, “written” by the people who lived it.
Sheesh.