@giant-keith Samhain is the more serious holiday, and it’s mostly about talking to the dead, so no, as a neopagan myself, I don’t look forward to it the way a Christian looks forward to Christmas.
I also completely love Halloween though, because I adore wearing costumes. It’s transformation in real life for a night, and unlike cosplay, it’s something an entire city is doing at once. Love the wildness, the Bacchanal. That’s Halloween, though, it’s not Samhain.
I looked forward to Christmas as a kid because my family celebrated that, but Yule is more serious than Christmas, it’s more about life coming back to the land, slowly.
What the Christians are really missing out on is Beltaine. Maypoles are fun, and that holiday is all about the screwing. There’s nothing like that on the Christian calendar. Easter is kinda close to the same time, but it doesn’t have a giant phallic symbol in the middle.
In the story I wrote of it, the giant was just too focused on the humiliation and domination of his rival to let the pain stop him. He decided afterwards, though, once the adrenaline wore off, (and my narrator stopped telling the story), that it was a one -time event.