Samhain                                                              Fallowturn Moon

Never reflected on the fact that our elections come very near the beginning of Samhain; we regenerated our political life when the temperate climates head toward barrenness.  I don’t know this, but I imagine there is a direct correlation; that is, I imagine we hold elections after the final harvest.

Let me look.  Nothing on that, but wikipedia notes that Tuesday avoids the Sabbath, the traditional market days and made voting easier for farmers who would have to drive into the county seat to vote, a journey of a day or more.  See more below from wikianswers:

“Tuesday was chosen as, in 1845, the United States was a predominantly agrarian society. Most people traveled by horse and buggy. Farmers needed a day to get to the county seat, a day to vote, and a day to get back, without interfering with the Sabbath. So that left Tuesday and Wednesday and, as Wednesday was market day, Tuesday was chosen.^[7]

… An election date in November was seen as useful because the harvest would have been completed (important in an agrarian society) and the winter storms would not yet have begun in earnest (a plus in the days before paved roads and snowplows).”

This puts elections, and by default government, behind the Sabbath, the market day and the growing season in terms of communal values.  Since the Celts began their new year with Samhain [and I do, too], it also places electoral choice at the beginning of a new year.

For most of our life as a nation, government was, in fact, something done during the fallow season.  That’s why many (most?) of our legislatures meet in the winter months, e.g. Minnesota runs from January to some date in May.  In our original constitution determination of voting eligibility was left to the states, the result: the only persons eligible to vote were white men with property* which, in general, meant farmers, so the work of government had to adjust to the rhythm’s of their lives. Continue reading Why November and a surprise about voting and the constitution →