The Turning of the Year

In all their dealings with nature, and especially those aspects of nature that serve human purpose, the Druids and their Christian successors were aware of the awe and respect in which we should hold the material universe of God's creation, and the tools with which we fashion it.

When the corn is gathered in, it is time for the harvest of the hedges and orchards - the blackberries and the apples - finally concluding with collecting and storing the nuts, especially the hazelnuts. To the Celts the hazelnuts, particularly when the trees that bore them grew by a spring, represented kernels of wisdom.
By Samhain, 1 November, all these fruits had to be gathered, for anything left on the trees after that date would be contaminated by evil. They still say of the tasteless blackberries of late September, "the devil has spat on them."

So the Celtic year ends, as our Christian year still does, with a thanksgiving for the harvests. In the Jewish tradition this event is marked by the eight-day feast of Ingathering (Booths, Tabernacles, Sukkoth). It is carried out in accordance with Yahweh's instructions to Moses as recorded in Leviticus that a feast should take place when the produce of the land was harvested.
The Jews were commanded to make booths or rough shelters for themselves at this time, fashioned out of palm branches, boughs of leafy trees, and willows from the river bank and to dwell in them for the octet of the festival in memory of the wanderings of the Exodus. By this means it would be made clear that there is no abiding place in this world, a sentiment dear to the hearts of the wandering Celts. As a further reminder of God's guidance through the desert, great candles were lit at this time in the temple in Jerusalem, reminiscent of the pillar of fire by which the transcendent God revealed His imminence. In northern latitudes the end of harvest coincides with the coming of shorter days, the start of the dark months. So a new cycle begins.

adapted from "The Celtic Year", by Shirley Toulson, pp. 196-197.