How is Halloween or Samhain observed in Vodou?

Here in the U.S. we celebrate Halloween mostly as a secular holiday, a moral purge of sorts where excess and rambunctious behavior can be forgiven in the morning as long as no laws are broken or effects of earlier rowdiness carry over into the next business day. For our pagan communities Halloween, or as most American pagans refer to it, Samhain, has a powerful religious implication. Most pagan faiths practiced in the U.S. draw religious parallels between holidays, especially those related to celestial, seasonal, or agricultural cycles. This owes largely to the prevalence of ancient Western European practices in modern paganism and the political need for numbers to combat the Christian cultural hegemony that dominates the American cultural landscape. As pagan identity is largely determined by a practice's relationship to Christianity (and to a lesser extent Judaism & al Islam) Vodou is often lumped in with other pagan practices. As such the question of Halloween's/Samhain's representation in Vodou becomes evident: How is Samhain observed in Vodou? The short answer, it isn't.

No matter the ancestry of the exponent, Vodou is an African practice. This isn't simply a matter of cultural autonomy, the realities of seasonal and agricultural cycles differ vastly in the equatorial regions that birthed Vodou from the temperate zones of Western Europe. Simply put, African equinoxes are not the transitory shifts between summer and winter. Likewise, African solstices aren't characterized by length of solar exposure and the climatic changes that accompany it. West Africa's equinoxes are hot, dry affairs with only the Harmattan winds distinguishing the sweeping Autumnal heat(Dzomeŋɔli) from the atmospheric stillness of the Vernal(Pepime). Conversely, the solstices are rather wet affairs with the monsoons defining the Estival solstice(Keleme) and a moist, constant drizzle punctuating the Hibernal solstice(Adame). In other words, Samhain's characteristic revelations of the spirit world, maturations and harvests at October's end are replaced by destructive winds and heavy fog that obscure rather than reveal in the mid month of Adiemakpɔxe which is a hunter's month not a farmer's. There is no impending darkness to ward against. No fae gates that stand open throughout. And the spirits of nature and the dead don't live in an Otherworld, but share space with the living mortal. But we are not without our times of rejuvenation.

The Te za or Festival of the Yam Harvest happens in Anyɔnyɔ, the 9th month of the Ewe Lunar calendar, but Hogbetsotso za, the Ewe Exodus, is observed when U.S. pagans would normally be celebrating Halloween.

Hogbetsotso is a different spirit, a different meaning, having more in common with Pesach as it commemorates the escape of the Ewe from the tyrannical rule of Fia(king) Agorkoli in the walled city-state of Notsie in Togo. It has nothing in common with any aspect of Halloween/Samhain, it is completely inappropriate for exponents of Yewevodou to celebrate it religiously.

Even though we are in the U.S. and it is appropriate to acknowledge our American traditions, we should recognize no spiritual preeminence for practices that are as foreign to us ancestrally as they are to this land and its indigenous peoples. While it's completely acceptable and even recommended that we, as Americans or citizens of some other European country/colony, celebrate Samhain, Halloween, All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and any other such traditions they have no innate prominence in our Mami Wata Yewevodou. Treat it accordingly.